Filthy Rich Cleaners Podcast E7: Building a Multicultural Cleaning Company (+ Airbnb Cleaning Tips) with Vanessa Higgins

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Opening Conversation

Stephanie: Hello everyone, welcome to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I’m your host Stephanie Pipkin and with me today is Vanessa Higgins, the owner and founder of Tukasa Cleaning Services in Atlanta, Georgia. How did you enjoy the snow last week in Atlanta?

Vanessa: It was fabulous. I know everyone with snow up in the North probably thinks we’re rookies over here, but we really did enjoy the snow with our kids and it was good family time. Just Atlanta is not able to really handle that traction, so Clean Tu Casa family got a chance to enjoy their families that day.

Stephanie: That’s kind of fun, especially when it doesn’t hit that often. I’m in Savannah, so I’m a little south of you, and I was looking up there in Atlanta thinking, “Holy crap, it looks like Armageddon up there, like everybody was just crashing their vehicles.” And then it was gone by Sunday. That’s how it is down here in the south.

From Corporate to Cleaning

Stephanie: For our listeners, if you’ve never heard of Vanessa, she has a pretty incredible story. She built her business very fast. Vanessa transitioned from a very long-standing corporate marketing career. I want to touch on this and hear how this went because so many people that I talked to are transitioning from totally different industries than cleaning, and I know people look at them like they’re insane when they say “I’m going to go clean houses and start all over when I have a very stable career.”

Vanessa: Oh yeah, totally. They did think I was crazy. But you touched on a really important word – stability. What is stability these days? Look at Los Angeles right now. They’re gonna have to completely rebuild and rebirth the whole city. I think any way you’re looking at it as an entrepreneur or if you’re in a job with an employer, corporate, or just working for a small business, the illusion of permanence and control is at a different level for us, a different reality.

For me, going into a corporate job, I had stability there and it was a wonderful career. I really enjoyed it. I was one of the few at a very young age, 11 years old where I was making commercials on radio, like pretend I was doing radio commercials and I just loved advertising and marketing. And it turned into a really sustainable idea for any business and sustainable idea for me as a career choice.

Building Clean Tu Casa

Vanessa: Clean Tu Casa was built in 2017 after I left my B2B global marketing job from Delta. I went in thinking that I wanted to make sure that my company had great customer service, a great company culture, where it really helped to lift up our employees, make them feel valued, listened to, and well-paid to make sure that they can buy milk and food for their families. Because cost of living does certainly go up.

And we have noticed that through the pandemic, we survived it. We started in doing residential and commercial cleaning and Airbnb. Those three aspects of our business continue today. We serve small businesses, large businesses, homes around the Metro Atlanta area, and Airbnb is still going strong with a great team. I have to give them kudos, we’ve been very fortunate to have low turnover with our jobs and they’ve been really abiding to our company culture and adapting to those values that we try to instill.

The Power of Branding

Stephanie: Can you talk to me about the importance of having a cohesive brand? What does that even mean? Because we all talk about branding, marketing, how that’s so important. My degree’s in marketing too, so we’re talking the same language here. It’s exciting. It really is the secret sauce to giving a certain feeling to the client and to the employee.

Vanessa: Let me give you a little bit of an analogy here so we all can relate to it. Let’s say you’re beginning to date somebody and you start to go out on multiple dates to see who is your type, like speed dating. If you think of it as you’re showing your personality, your charisma, your knowledge, whatever you do to try to win that acceptance and respect, that’s basically what branding is.

It’s really trying to show the personality of that company. And without a logo, without really trying to create posts that explain your expertise, that dive into your before and afters, that just spotlight your employees’ hard work or accomplishments or birthdays, trying to create that culture and really showing that your brand, your company is living and breathing like a personality.

Stephanie: Absolutely, and I think it’s so important to think of every aspect of your business as if you were an outsider. What would you think if you interacted with this business? And it’s literally every little detail down to the employee’s uniform or the team member’s uniform, how do they handle their supplies and manage that?

Even this year, we’re like, “Oh, they’re using Walmart bags to take their dirty rags in and out of the house.” But like, that looks cheap, like at least it could be Target. So we got them all linen bags. That just happened to us. I was like, no, that is not the image we’re looking for.

Creating Customer Experience

Vanessa: For 2025, we’re working on a presentation for people that are onboarded as new employees to help them understand what our company looks like from the outside, from the inside, and what’s important to us overall. From leadership level down to the cleaning tech level, we’re all creating a customer experience.

That timeline of that first clean – from how they went to the website and how easy it was to request a clean, to the sales call, how smooth that process was, did we get all of the expectations correct? Did we follow up to set the expectations before the cleaning, during the cleaning? How’s everything going? Anything that needs to be touched on, whether that’s reaching out to the staff, understanding if there’s any surprises, or on the client side, and then the follow-up afterwards.

Leveraging Technology

Stephanie: Talking about AI, I know that a lot of people are like “AI – it’s so overwhelming” and I felt that way as well until I started just using the simpler ones. And it’s so integrated in so many of the softwares that we use now. It really just feels natural to use it.

To give a couple examples of how we use AI in SereneClean day-to-day: helping us write difficult emails or rephrase to be more succinct, or if we need to have a difficult conversation with an employee, we’ll bounce ideas off of it.

One of the most useful examples I can think of is we were hiring for our quality control position. We couldn’t just ask “Can you give me an example of how you’re independent and think for yourself?” – that’s not a good question. So we asked Chat GPT for scenario-based questions based on the specific traits we were looking for. You could totally do this for your cleaning interviews as well.

Systems and Documentation

Stephanie: Even utilizing software and switching to things that just make more sense – an example software that we’ve introduced in the past year is called Trainual, and we’re using it for orientation and documenting all of our standard operating procedures so that all of my management can actually take vacations and everything gets done without incident.

A great tip or a really good book is called “Buy Back Your Time” by Dan Martell. Actually, Ryan from ZenMaid is the one who told me about that one. And that book literally changed my life. And it really helped me frame my time as such a finite, valuable resource.

Learning from Your Team

Stephanie: You know, some of the best ideas have absolutely not come from me. People discredit cleaners as unintelligent, and it’s like, my cleaners are some of the smartest people I’ve ever met in my life. That just is a whole can of worms right there when it comes to respect in the industry.

Listen to them, ask for feedback – we are constantly improving our field procedures, our customer service procedures based on feedback from the cleaners because they’re in the field, they are in and out with the clients all day long, and they’re the ones doing the work.

If they’ve got a suggestion or feedback, allow them to provide it and you may decide it’s not for the company, but at least give them the opportunity to share. That definitely happens sometimes – we’re like, “Oh, can we use this product or tool or whatever,” and for whatever reason it’s not what we want to use, but we always ask. But it couldn’t broach well, why are you suggesting this? Is there something difficult that you’re dealing with in the field that you feel our current processes are not handling well?

Multilingual Staff Challenges and Strengths

Stephanie: My business is in Wisconsin. We have never had a Spanish-speaking employee. So I would love to hear what kind of difficulties you’ve had. Do you have any horror stories when it comes to employees or what do you feel like the strengths are of having dual languages?

Vanessa: I have two things I’ll tell you. There’s going to be more strengths than not. But I can tell you the things that are not is where it becomes a language barrier with client to staff and we need to step in. We just reassure them that they’re learning the language. I don’t want to demean what we’re doing – we have integrity, we have experience, and it’s not like we’re doing brain surgery here. If you tell us what to do and give us very clear instruction, for the most part we’re gonna get it.

The second challenge I see is we have a monthly meeting with our team. We don’t have a physical office – everything’s pretty much online. I prefer that with that fantastic Atlanta traffic that they leave straight to a client’s house. If they need to refuel on supplies, we have a storage facility in Atlanta that they go to fill up.

On the strength side, I see the knowledge and efficiency is prime to none sometimes. I’m a native to Atlanta – my mother’s from Columbia, my dad is American but Irish. I feel more Latina than anything else with my little mud mix. And I can clean pretty efficiently fast, but they can run circles around me.

Payment Structures and Incentives

Stephanie: Do you have any tips on making sure that they are incentivized to do the best possible work when it comes to paying commission? Is it having a tiered system? And what are the qualifiers?

Vanessa: I truly feel it has to be something very simple to understand. We do have to realize when we’re talking with different education levels, language levels, you want it to be very black and white in a sense that this is what you’re getting paid for the job. And then if you have W2 employees, these are the incentives that you get in addition.

Each month we award employee of the month and they get dollars. We award $25 to the one every month that gets the most five-star Google reviews. So they’re encouraging Google reviews, they’re motivated to try and do better at work. To get that employee of the month reward, it has to meet five different criteria – consistency on the job, punctuality, collaboration as a team player, different factors that really play into being a stellar employee.

Hiring Biases and Lessons Learned

Stephanie: That was definitely one of my mistakes. I’m super extroverted – shocker, Stephanie’s extroverted. But that meant that when I would interview somebody who is absolutely opposite of me – like introverted, super quiet, just buttoned up – I was like, I don’t know if I can trust this one. Why are they hiding by not talking? Or it’s just like, they’re just quiet.

And then also making the mistake of thinking, oh, if somebody’s super outgoing and personable, that means that they’re going to be a great employee and they’re going to be amazing and they’re a good person. And some of my worst nightmare stories of employees were people who dazzled me with their personality because typically that means that they have the ability to manipulate very well.

And some of my best employees are super duper introverted, quiet, keep to themselves. So just keeping that in mind – what are your biases? Just because somebody is like you doesn’t mean they’re going to be an excellent employee.

Employee Benefits That Matter

Stephanie: We try to kind of balance our current very today-oriented benefits with those long-term ones when we’re thinking about adding benefits. Also having the conversation with the staff members – that was a really useful tool. I remember last year when we were like, “Okay, are we gonna raise the wage ceiling?” That’s what me and my managers thought all of our employees would want.

So we sat down and asked them, “What benefits can we be adding?” because we already had 401k with company match, health insurance, all of that good stuff. And they were like “No, not money. It’s XYZ.” We want this, we want this. And so we added employee assistance program, which is free therapy for all of our staff and their family members, a car care benefit which basically reimburses them for car-related expenses, increased PTO, PTO for part-timers – all of these things that I mean they do cost money, of course, but it was more of a well-rounded benefit program instead of just continually throwing money at them.

Vanessa: That’s funny because our employee of the month, we offered three options. Each month the winner would be able to decide which one they want. We ended up only keeping it as $100 cash – that’s what they wanted. Because the other options were up to six hours of babysitting for their kids, or a 60-minute massage. Nobody ever chose the babysitting. They wanted the cash.

Recognition and Appreciation

Stephanie: Once a month we choose an employee and we handwrite a card, mail it with a hundred dollar bill to their house and write a heartfelt thing. There’s something very visceral about a hundred dollar bill – that’s why I say do that, don’t do 20s, do a hundred.

When I look at my Christmas cards that I wrote for all whatever 30 employees, I handwrote those – they probably couldn’t read them, I mean, I know I have horrific handwriting. That’s beside the point. The effort – I got so many messages of like “this made me ball.” The money was beside the point. The money in the card – they were like that card meant so much to me.

And as you mentioned, giving them accolades in front of their family and calling that out – it’s such a wonderful thing to boost their confidence and remind them that this is a job to take pride in, not something to be ashamed of, which is what some people see cleaning as – like that’s a shameful job or you just do it because you have to and you have no other option as opposed to a profession that we are choosing to do.

Managing Airbnb Services

Stephanie: Let’s talk about Airbnbs. I got a bunch of questions for you.

Vanessa: That’s my jam too. Who knew when I left corporate how fun, sexy cleaning could be? Because it really can be so gratifying. I mean, I love the instant results where you just see all your hard work turned into something beautiful after just a few hours.

Stephanie: Obviously we make a living with vacation rentals, commercial, residential – like everybody seems to get into all of them, which we do all of those as well. But I know I made some very terrible mistakes like taking on so many vacation rentals. We ended up chopping a bunch out because they were just not the right fit. And they can be truly nightmares. So how do you balance even just scheduling them into residential cleans?

Vanessa: Yes, that’s where you teeter off into an abyss of unfortunately not being able to really meet the needs for that Airbnb host. We have evolved from serving as much as 30 Airbnbs at one point in time before the pandemic to now serving about 10 or 12 Airbnbs on a more consistent basis. Those that still work with like a hotel check-in and out, maybe five to eight turns per month or more.

Evolution of Airbnb Services

Vanessa: After the pandemic, we took a whole relook at how we’re gonna approach Airbnbs. The two bedroom, two bath became just that sweet spot that we needed, and a three-night minimum stay. In our line of questioning when we’re first interviewing an Airbnb host, one of our essential questions that had to be answered was, “What’s your minimum stay?” Because that helped us understand if they’re doing their vetting process on their side to really understand what kind of guests are staying in their home.

Stephanie: During COVID, they were all coming out of the woodworks. And we’re like, yes, yes, yes. Because obviously we didn’t have everything else – was concerningly slow when it came to residential, at least in the beginning of the pandemic. And then a year later saying this has become a beast. And it’s horrific and we hate it because of like you said the large homes and we’d need two cleaners on it for six hours and it’s just like how do you fit that in and so much laundry?

I remember one was like I think it slept like 25 people or something as a giant log cabin. And I cried at it, my managers have cried, and all my cleaners cried at it because it was so frustrating to do. The stress of knowing they’re going to complain – the owners had such unreasonable expectations. Not about cleanliness – we can nail cleaning. It was all of the property maintenance tasks.

Finding Vacation Rental Clients

Stephanie: What tips do you have for somebody who wants to get vacation rental clients? Where should they go?

Vanessa: Go to Facebook. If you have a Facebook account, type in Airbnb in your city name and you’ll be introduced to a bunch of groups for Airbnb hosts or cleaners in that area, but you really want to look for host groups. It’s pretty consistent where people’s eyes are always on in those groups because they help each other out.

If someone’s pipes burst during the winter storm last week, they weren’t able to accommodate their reservation for four people, they go on those groups to say “hey, does anybody have a location available for a family of four? My pipe just burst.” That camaraderie is created in these local groups.

If you start to become like a knowledge expert, not always promoting your business – if someone’s pipes did burst, you can say, “oh, I have some available tarps that can be helpful for you if you want to borrow some and maybe I can help with some cleaning that you may need after work is being done.”

Closing Thoughts

Stephanie: Vanessa, I would love to talk to you again. I think we really are two peas in a pod with how we see our businesses and what we’re doing here, which is providing a valuable workplace and providing a valuable service to the community that we should be proud of.

Vanessa: I’m glad to be a peer amongst you and so many others that have that same sentiment.

Stephanie: Yeah, we’ve got some great people in our community. That’s for sure. It’s a very special industry and I’m very grateful to be able to have these conversations. Vanessa, if anybody wants to follow you or your business, where should they go?

Vanessa: Go to Clean Tu Casa Instagram, Clean Tu Casa LLC on Facebook and LinkedIn. And just give me a shout out if you have any other questions. Give us a call – my number is 404-382-0470. I love helping out other cleaning business owners. And en Español también si yo puedo ayudarte!

Stephanie: That’s fantastic Vanessa. Well, thank you so much for your time and we will definitely be talking again. And thank you to everybody for watching this week’s episode. Be sure to tune in, hit that subscribe button if you haven’t done it and share this with anybody you think it would be value for. Thanks so much guys. See you next time.

Note: This transcript has been edited for clarity and readability.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Trainual
• “Buy Back Your Time” by Dan Martell
• Clean Tu Casa
• Clean Tu Casa Instagram
• Clean Tu Casa LLC Facebook

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