Filthy Rich Cleaners Podcast E15: Tired of Cleaners Quitting? This Owner Kept Her Staff for 9 Years

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Introduction

Coming up next on the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast: “We all know how hard this is physically. People who will be like, adamant, ‘Oh, I’ve done physical labor jobs before.’ If I had a nickel for every time I heard that, I would have a lot of nickels.”

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.

Finding Her Path in the Cleaning Industry

Stephanie: Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I’m your host, Stephanie Pipkin, and with us today is the lovely Maria Dorian. Maria is one of my dear friends that I got to meet in person over in Amsterdam this summer, which was super duper fun, and got to learn about her story, her businesses. She is quite the amazing entrepreneur, and I can’t wait for you guys to hear her story and to learn from her. So Maria, thank you for joining me.

Maria: Oh thank you for having me.

Stephanie: Let’s start from the beginning. Tell me about where your origin story of your cleaning business came from, because it’s really a pretty amazing story, and very meant to be that you were supposed to be in the cleaning industry.

Maria: One day my baby was a newborn, and in the middle of a church service, I actually had to go do a middle of a church service diaper change. It was the weirdest thing. I’m changing the diaper, and there was a group of women behind me just chit chatting, and one of them said, “You know, I clean houses for a living.” The skies opened up. I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I think that’s what I’m supposed to be doing.”

At the time, I was working at a restaurant, and I remember telling my husband, “The weirdest thing happened, but I just got this feeling that I’m supposed to be cleaning houses.” I had no experience cleaning houses, I’d never done it. When I told my manager at the restaurant, “Hey, I don’t think I’m going to come back. I think I want to start cleaning houses,” she said, “Well, great, I’ll be your first client because I have a cleaning lady who I’ve been wanting to fire anyways.”

Fast forward 14 years later, I found myself with a staff of roughly 36, 320-something clients, and it just grew into a thing. Then I ended up selling it and moving abroad. That is my story.

Growing the Business

Stephanie: Were you guys all residential, or what was your split like?

Maria: Yeah, mostly residential. We did a handful of commercials, some overnight, some churches, small offices. But I would say the split was easily 95% residential to 5% commercial. We liked our residential.

Stephanie: That’s really amazing, because that’s something that – and remind me, Maria, what town was your business in?

Maria: Austin, Texas.

Stephanie: Okay, so larger population, because I always – I was thinking our area, I’m like, there’s no way we could get to those numbers with just residential. So that’s a perfect testament to it can be done. It just simply is very location dependent, and I think that people don’t like to take that into account, or think that maybe that’s an excuse.

Developing Systems and Processes

Stephanie: Can you tell me what it was like in your cleaning business when it came to early on? It sounds like you probably very much just, knowing your brain, excelled at putting systems into place and processes into place. So how did that evolve, kind of from day one and seeing yourself as somebody who’s going to be out of the field, and when did you bring in others to help with the administrative side of things?

Maria: That’s a really great question. So I started with just having help, bringing in cleaning help, and then eventually grew to having an office manager. When I had my first office manager, I had zero experience, and at the time, I was not techie at all whatsoever, could barely turn on the computer. And I was very lucky, because she’s like, “That’s my jam. Will not only do it, I’m going to teach you how to do it.”

One thing that I feel was a challenge at the very beginning was separating the “Maria who’s cleaning houses, this is her job” to making that mental transition to “Maria, this is your business, and your new job is to be a business owner, to run the business.” And as you know, that takes systems. Systems are super important. You cannot grow and scale without a system.

Building Effective Systems

Maria: One thing that really helped me was just having the mindset of, okay, I keep sending the same email over and over. Fine, make that into a template, automate it. But the bigger picture, and I still do this to this day, is when something happens in the business, my mindset is immediately: “What system or process do I need to set up to make sure that this never happens in my business again?”

When I started thinking like that, I started thinking outside of just Maria going with the flow and doing things willy-nilly to “Okay, if I want to prevent this problem from ever happening again in the life of my company, what rules do I need to place? What systems do I need to place? What procedures? Who do I need to get to run those procedures?”

And will it work? Great. It might work right now for my staff of six. But what if we have 46? Will it work for a team of 46? If it doesn’t, keep going back to the system until it’s so perfected and all the bottlenecks are worked out and all the kinks are worked out to where it will work for a staff of 46.

Taking Action on Systems

Stephanie: That’s such a wonderful actionable tip for you guys that are listening. If the thing is not going to work if you were to triple your business or add 20 cleaners right now, then it needs to keep being tinkered with and adjusted until it is. And it’s never, as I say about systems and processes, it’s a living entity. It changes as things evolve.

Don’t feel the pressure of this thing has to be perfect, but you just keep tweaking it. Literally, I just this morning or all day, really, I’ve been in a five-hour meeting with my management team, and we have been hammering out our kind of new compensation schedule and plan. We never have – and this has been a long time coming, and we’re almost six years in now, and we’ve never hammered this out. And it’s like, this is going to solve so many problems, and we’re really excited about it.

Keep that in mind – I think probably when a lot of our listeners are hearing, you know, Maria, or any of our other guests, they’re like, “Oh, I’m never going to get to that level.” And it’s like, it’s literally taking an hour here, an hour there. It’s not going from zero to 100. It’s the whole “you eat an elephant one bite at a time.” And so today we took a big, giant bite out of an elephant, and it’s going to be amazing when we serve it on a platter to our cleaners.

Starting with Simple SOPs

Maria: You know, I hear a lot from business owners, especially like, up-and-coming companies, that say, “I don’t have SOPs. I don’t have anything written down. It’s all in my head.” Well, let me tell you, like you said, taking it one bite at a time – start with one piece of paper. Just write down: How do I answer phones? What is my opening greeting? That’s it. Start with that. That is page one of your SOPs. Seriously, that simple, and then you just build on it.

Even for cleaner SOPs, it doesn’t all mean that you have to do it on your own. I’m sure we’ll talk about the VA company and how I leverage virtual assistants a little bit later on, but it’s as simple as: okay, how to clean a bathroom? That doesn’t mean that me, Maria the business owner, has to sit there with a legal pad and write down or a computer. Literally, “Hey cleaner, next time you clean a bathroom, can you write down all the steps for me? Text it.” That is another page in the SOP.

Leveraging Staff Knowledge

Stephanie: Utilizing your cleaners, and as long as you’re paying them, guys – like a lot of times, they love being asked, and it feels like a form of respect that you respect their abilities and their intelligence enough to ask for their opinion or their input. And honestly, every time we’ve kind of asked our cleaners to add responsibility, again as long as it correlates with being paid appropriately or for their time, they take more accountability and they take more ownership in their day-to-day lives.

So don’t be afraid to do that. And if every time they seem to dig their heels in or they want to do like the bare minimum, is that a good choice of a team member, or are you being unreasonable considering your pay grade? Because it really is interesting – when I’m talking to different owners, the pay is so wildly all over the place. That is, you know, our industry does have a wide range of wages, but sometimes I see like, ridiculously high, where you’re not making a profit, or still way, way, way too low, like even before COVID times too low.

Discussing Pay and Company Culture

Stephanie: Do you have any thoughts on pay and how do you handle that? How has that evolved over time? You were in business for a long time, so how did that evolve?

Maria: Pay is kind of tricky, because a lot of business owners think, “Okay, my people won’t work for less than x amount.” And that’s not always true, because people have needs. They have needs outside of pay.

What we’ve done, I think probably one of the things that I really did well, both at Welcome Home and now with the other businesses and projects that I do, is develop a rock solid company culture that speaks and fills the needs and desires from people on just a human level, and that’s even outside of pay. Yes, believe it or not, pay is not the number one thing.

When we were talking about asking cleaners to pitch in and help with projects, well, first of all, you’ve got buy-in. Second of all, like you said, it makes them feel good that they are now part of something bigger. They are actually part of a story in the making, and that motivates people, and it keeps them happy and it keeps them loyal, which I can go on forever on the loyalty thing, but it just builds a really good company culture.

So yes, you have to pay your people, but do you have to pay them above everybody in your market? Absolutely not. I’ve seen that firsthand with a company that once they sold, the business owner said, “Oh my gosh, these people are getting paid so low there’s no way.” So they upped their hourly pay, I think it was like a substantial raise, three, four dollars. By year end, that company was gone, because the new business owners came in and said, “These people aren’t getting paid enough. Let’s up everybody’s wage.” That’s going to make them happy. That’s gonna make them loyal. It just didn’t.

Stephanie: Nope.

Maria: It just didn’t.

The Importance of Company Culture

Stephanie: Yeah, you can throw as much money as you want at somebody if the culture is bad. You know, lipstick on a pig – like, no matter how pretty the shade is, it’s not going to make the pig not a pig.

I think I’ve shared this story with our viewers before. When we had, I think it was last year, we talked about, “Should we be increasing the starting wage again?” We had done that fairly recently after COVID, and we’re like, “Well, let’s ask the cleaners first, what do they want? Would they like these other benefits?” Or kind of a list of things, and not a single one said increase the wage. It was all these other things that they were talking about.

We’ve always done employee lunches with the managers, and the managers take them out to lunch and they spend time with them. That’s a very affordable thing to do is just rotating through your cleaners, take them out to lunch, and hang out with them. Having the team meetings, giving different types of gifts and gas cards, and things that are kind of money adjacent, but really are more about appreciation.

The Power of Staff Appreciation

Stephanie: Honestly, that I think is one of the biggest things I will scream from the rooftops – crazy amounts of staff appreciation, both internally and externally. When I look at my staff members, 90% of them came from the healthcare industry, and that is where they got, literally and figuratively, pooped on and not appreciated, and terrible hours, always on their feet, and they never – it was like they could never do enough.

They can work their butts off – anybody listening who’s been in healthcare, I know how hard you can work, and it feels really good then to get some verbal affirmation and recognition for a job well done. I’m just not a fan of the thought process of like, “Well, it’s your job, you shouldn’t get a pat on your back just because you did what you’re expected to do.” Like yes, give them a pat on the back. Yes, yes.

Maria: And the cool thing is, how much more reward you will get. You will have more loyal employees. My longest cleaner had been with me for nine years before I sold. Everybody else we’re talking 6, 7, 8, 9 years. To this day, she still cleans for my mom and my office manager. And a cleaner I sold now eight, nine years ago, to this day they came along. Three came along to my new businesses, and that’s a good company culture.

And to your point, Stephanie, we always think, “Okay, I want to do this for my cleaners. Let me add this benefit, or maybe I’ll pay them more.” But ask them. And if you haven’t read the Four Disciplines of Execution – it’s an amazing, amazing book to help you figure out what goals and changes for your company you want, not based on what us as business owners would think that they want, but what they actually want. Because if we know what they want, then we know how to motivate them. And because they’re getting what they want, they’re going to be motivated to do all of the things that it’s going to take for them to get to that goal.

Maintaining High Standards

Stephanie: And it just like your clients – it really is how you act towards your clients. I think so much we think about only focusing on that side, like the sales and the marketing and making sure our clients are happy. But having happy clients is a side effect of having happy cleaners, and you really just don’t need to focus as heavily if you just internally focus on keeping your staff taken care of and satisfied.

All of these things to be said, that does not mean don’t have incredibly high expectations and hold them to that. Don’t think that I’m saying be easy on them. They will respect the fact when you take, hold them to the high standard and tying that high standard to the purpose. Because I feel like if they’re not willing to stick to the high standard and associate that with the purpose of the business, then they’re probably not a good fit.

Training and Quality Standards

Maria: Yes, for sure. I can’t think of one specific story because there’s just so many – we hire slow and fire fast – but I can tell you the type of cleaner that for us is absolutely not a good fit. First and foremost, our training program is ridiculous. We make it really hard on purpose.

Just to give you a quick outline, on day one, they’re given a study guide. That study guide has blanks, like it might have multiple choice, but then it’s fill in the blanks. And for the first week and a half, they are on a fact-finding mission to be able to fill in the blanks to all of these questions.

Then at the very end of their training, they take a 191-question test that’s not easy. It’s not like true or false. It’s “Hey, if you leave a door ajar and a pet gets out of the house, escapes – tell me the seven bad things that are going to happen if you leave a door open and a pet gets out” and it’s all filled with blanks. “Tell me the nine steps it takes to just pre-clean a bathroom.” It’s intense.

So for us, what is not a good fit is somebody that isn’t willing to bend over backwards and do what it takes to become that high quality standard. And that’s just the test portion of it. We have a field test, and we had a secret shopper. So one of our clients was a secret shopper, and that was a whole thing for us.

Not being able to just do the simple training and provide the quality – not a good fit for us. Another not a good fit: I kind of expect all of my people to say yes, like they are willing to do the things and be flexible. So flexible understanding is huge for us. Having somebody that is too rigid – not a good fit, and probably having somebody who isn’t willing to listen well and understand and not be defensive when feedback is given – not a good fit. I don’t do the butting heads.

Treating Staff as Internal Clients

Maria: I’m not into the “us against you.” We always, I will say, my mindset has always been, we have our external clients, right? But we also have our internal clients, and our internal clients, that’s our staff. So we treat them well. We already know they’re going to get an amazing experience working for us, but they have to do their part as well. And we expect a lot from them, but the more that you expect, the more they step up, the happier they will be, believe it or not, and the more they will want to work and not leave your company.

Stephanie: That’s, you know, giving them something to strive towards. And you know, if the expectations are low, the ability to have pride in your work is really low as well, because it’s like, well, what do I have? I have nothing to own, basically, or to point towards that, like, “Look at this, look what I’m able to achieve.” So having those high standards gives them something to hang their hat on.

The Extensive Training Process

Stephanie: During that onboarding and the testing portion – like, wow, I have never heard of something so extensive. I just imagine implementing that and people being like, “See ya.” So did that happen a lot? What was that like?

Maria: It didn’t, and not only that, I didn’t even mention – so the very first time they take the test, when they feel ready, about two and a half, three weeks of training in, they have to score a 60 or above. If they don’t score 60 or above, automatic termination. You’ve not been paying attention, like you’ve been asleep, basically.

Setting High Training Standards

Maria: We’re strict. We’re strict on purpose. But the flip side of that is everything I mentioned about just the amazing benefits – they feel proud of themselves, like “I made it through that training.” But also what it does for just the quality of our service – there was a reason that on Google, we had 218 almost five-star reviews.

It took a while to implement that. But back to your point, it doesn’t all have to be done overnight. It could be a simple “Hey, at the end, I want you to take a 20-question test,” and then you get back to the systems. You grow, you evolve. Things happen, which back to the systems and processes – putting it in that test, that’s an amazing way for new people to kind of adapt to what’s already in place and processes.

Evolution of Training Methods

Stephanie: And honestly, like for us at Serene Clean – yeah, we got killer quality. Literally, with that being said, literally this past year is when we finally actually dug into training, and didn’t just pull the – when I started, I mean, I’m sure a lot of people listening can attest to this or relate – it was, “Oh, I hire a warm body, and you watch me for a day, and then to the wolves you go and can you sink or swim?” That was literally my training process, because I didn’t have the ability to do anything more, because I’m like, “I got cleanings to do. Go deal with it.”

Obviously don’t do that guys, as much as you can possibly – like, do not do what I just described wherever possible. But training is, it’s freaking hard. It’s hard to nail, it’s very overwhelming, and it’s incredibly expensive. So you just describing that process, all I’m just, my mind’s just going, like, “Cha-ching, cha-ching.” Like affording to be able to do that, that’s a lot of overhead associated with the training.

I know that that scares people, but think of it this way: would you not rather spend that money for two weeks and figure out that this person’s not good, or in three months, they’ve destroyed your business’s reputation, and made you lose other cleaners because they’re so pissed off? So investing in your staff training is very important, and don’t be afraid to do it.

Training Timeline Standards

Stephanie: What do you think is typically – that’s a very extensive training process you guys had – what would you say on average is a good amount of time for most cleaners to be prepared to be on their own?

Maria: We always gave them a month. Like they were officially out of training in a month. I’d say by about a week and a half to two weeks, they should definitely be able to have the basics to where they’re cleaning on their own. And had probably no surprise to you based on what I just described, with just the training to even be able to qualify to get out of the training status, all of our cleaning systems and processes were not easy, not easy.

Hiring Strategy and Experience

Stephanie: Absolutely. And yeah, it’s just that instinct. A lot of times we hire – we typically aim to not hire people with cleaning experience. I know that some cleaning companies want somebody with experience, but we actively seek out those who have not professionally cleaned before, because the habits that they pick up or the lessons they learn at other cleaning companies are usually not up to snuff, and they often are very combative over those habits that they’ve picked up.

Meaning we try to teach them the Serene Clean way, and they dig in their heels, or they just blatantly disregard and do things the way that they want to do them. For what you know, there’s a reason we do things the way we do. We don’t just do them because we want to – there is a reason always. It could be a safety thing, it could be a liability thing.

I know I’m focusing a lot on employees, but obviously, you have a knack for training them and having really great longevity and that loyalty. That is something to be very impressive, because I would say turnover is going to be all of our listeners’ biggest issue.

I know a lot of you are struggling, maybe to get leads right now, or to make the sales happen and all of that. And that’s something I focused on in a lot of conversations so far, but honestly, like, once you get that sales system down, I think most of us are going to struggle with getting staff. That’s at least for sure been my experience. Would you say – has it been the opposite for you, Maria, or was it also staffing, like just keeping quality staff?

Training Philosophy

Maria: Yeah, so not so much keeping quality staff, because I have a little bit different mindset with quality. Back to what you were saying, and to make another point on that is, I want to teach my people how to think – how to think my way when they’re cleaning. Hence, if you’ve had an experience in the past – yeah, sorry, I want somebody that has zero experience. I want to teach you how to clean. I want to teach you how to have an eye and I want to teach you to think like I think.

So to answer your question, I kind of have a different mindset in that if somebody has the basic qualities that I need and want, I can make them great. So I’ve never really thought of it as, “Oh gosh, my people, they just don’t care about their job.” I have none of that. It’s “I’m going to make you great, or you just don’t work for me.” It’s really simple. We hire slow and we fire fast.

The Interview Process

Stephanie: What does your vetting process look like on the interview side then before you even do hire? You keep saying hiring slow, and people are probably like, “What does that mean?” So can you talk about that?

Maria: Yeah, for sure. So first and foremost, we hire for culture. And what that means is – let me back that up. What I mean is we hire for culture based on our core values. So if you don’t have core values, get your core values.

Our core values – there’s a little acronym called PAID UC, and it stands for Patience, Accountability, Integrity, Dependability, Understanding, and the C is Communication. What that means is, if I bring a problem to you, as opposed to getting defensive, I need you to understand what I’m saying and why I’m saying it.

Building Company Culture

Maria: That was challenging. It’s not the easiest thing in the world, but highly recommend it. And what that does is, then you’ve got the same culture, like you can look at all your employees, and they all start thinking the same. They all behave the same.

I can give you a great example. In my culture, I never once anywhere on paper – this actually always kind of tickled me, but it was the truth – never did we ever have a rule “no cursing,” ever. We just didn’t. But as a company culture, nobody cursed. And so what was interesting is, because nobody – I’m talking 36 people that just didn’t curse.

What was really interesting is one day there was a working interview, because we did do working interviews as well. And at the end of the day, they came back to the office, and I asked the team lead and the team, “Hey, what did you think about them?” “We don’t like them.” I’m like, “Why not?” “Because they cursed all day in the back seat. Their speech was riddled with curse words.” And I’m like, that’s company culture, right there.

The Value of Self-Policing Teams

Stephanie: What you just described is your team polices themselves. They tell on themselves. And it’s like, if you’ve seen Full Metal Jacket, where they start beating the guy with the sock full of butter – extreme, but that’s kind of what you want. It’s like they’re policing themselves because they’re like, “You don’t fit this. You make us look bad.”

Because honestly, when somebody slips through the cracks of our hiring process, and they make it – meaning that they’ve bamboozled us, they’ve charmed us, because that will happen. They’ve kissed our butts and made it through. And then when they get comfortable and get with that trainer, get with their co-workers, oh, do they stand out like a sore thumb.

We actually have a Google form that at the end of each training day, the trainee and the trainer fill out, so that we can see both of their experiences. We put that into place after a total nightmare situation where a lady slipped through the cracks, she actually made it to paying clients’ houses, and that’s when her true monster, horrific form showed, and we’re like, “Holy crap.”

And then once we fired her, all of the cleaners that had worked with her were like, “Oh yeah, I thought she was just having a bad day, but I didn’t want to say anything,” because in our culture, we don’t tattle. We take accountability. But unfortunately, that worked against us, because they all thought that they were snitching. And we ate a bunch of snitches so they thought that they were doing that, but it was like, “No, that’s the type of feedback.”

If we had known that five different people thought she was having a bad day because she was like a psycho to deal with, then she never would have gotten into paying customers’ homes and businesses, and we wouldn’t have had that damage control that we needed to do.

Implementing Feedback Systems

Stephanie: Now we give them the space to ask the questions of, like, “Is there anything, as managers, you think we should know when it comes to attitude, behavior, how much do they want to jump in? Were they complaining?” Were they talking about – that’s another thing. Like, if they tend to complain about life in general, at job sites or anything like that. That stands out like a sore thumb, because, in general, our staff just doesn’t complain.

Maria: For sure. In our working interview, the team or team lead doing the working interview has a list of questions that throughout the day the interviewee doesn’t realize is happening. They have a form with sample questions: How is their speed? Are they excruciatingly slow or too quick? I want to know that because if they’re too quick, it might mean they’re rushing and cutting quality. If they’re excruciatingly slow, their speed probably isn’t going to get any better.

Are they complaining? Are they talking about partying? Are they talking about injuries? If in the working interview they happen to say “My back always kills me, I have to take pain medication” – that’s all I need to know. Then we’ve got to consider: Is this a pre-existing condition? Do we need to worry they might get into medicine cabinets?

Real-World Experience with Staff

Stephanie: You’re really trying to get them to tell on themselves and show who they truly are. They are not going to do that to a manager or boss – they are going to be perfect little angels to all of us until they feel comfortable.

Actually, funny enough, I had gone back to Wisconsin last year and was training a new staff member on a commercial account in the evening. We spent several evenings together and she asked “So how long have you worked here?” I said “Oh, about five years.” She said “Oh, okay.” Then somehow it came out that I was the boss and owner – her face went white as a ghost! She was super sweet and great, but just that “Oh shit, this is the boss” moment. They speak much more candidly when they don’t know, and I’m a very casual person, but it’s kind of fun when that happens – when they don’t even know and are acting as if you’re just a co-worker.

Maria: Factory default settings.

Physical Requirements of the Job

Stephanie: So funny. And even just what you said about the physicality of it – that has happened multiple times where we’ve been concerned about it. It is a physical job, guys. Any of you that are cleaning right now, throw your hands up, because you know how hard this is physically. People will be adamant, “Oh, I’ve done physical labor jobs before.” If I had a nickel for every time I heard that and then they quit a month later because it was too physical, I would have a lot of nickels.

I remember one lady – we gave her a chance. We were concerned about her ability to physically do the job, but she was adamant. Then a couple weeks in, she was with her trainer and there was a piece of paper on the ground – like an actual piece of paper, it wasn’t planted. She walked past it and her trainer said “Hey, you need to get that.” She said “Well, I can’t bend over and get that.” Obviously that didn’t work out.

Additional Job Requirements

Maria: Yeah, and another thing most people don’t think about is making sure they’re not allergic to dust or pets. A lot of times they’ll think “Oh, it’s cleaning houses, I love cleaning.” Then day one they get in somebody’s house and they’re like “Oh wait, achoo achoo, I can’t do it.” Make sure they know right off the gate – you’re in people’s homes, there will be dust, there will be pets. If you’re allergic, taking an allergy pill and hoping the issue will go away probably won’t work.

Stephanie: And if you hate children and are allergic to children – because we’ve had that too. We’re like “Oh, you don’t like kids at all? Well, you’re gonna be around them a lot.”

Managing Unemployment Claims

Maria: Unemployment – so everybody, it’s an insurance obviously, it’s your right as a working cleaner, as an employee. However, as the business owner, we don’t necessarily want to pay out, because it’s just like insurance. You have a claim, you lose that claim – guess what? You’re going to pay more on your unemployment insurance for the next three years.

So we want to keep our rates low. How do we do that? Great systems and processes, document everything. In fact, if you don’t write it, if you don’t have a signature on it, it never happened. It doesn’t necessarily mean you have to do write-ups, because we actually never believed in write-ups, but things were still documented.

Documentation and Procedures

Maria: “Hey, so-and-so, this is your second complaint for the week. You’re not in trouble. We need to fix it. This is not a formal write-up, but I’m going to type in everything we talked about, and I’m going to just have you read it, make sure that you agree with it and sign it.”

So document, document, document. If you have an employee handbook, which you should, make sure that all of your – I call it like a totem pole of consequences – make sure that you follow those to the T.

For example, “Hey, you’re going to get a write-up, maybe a coaching session first. Then you’re going to get a write-up if it happens again, then you’re going to be suspended for three days if it happens again, maybe then you get fired or a pay cut or whatever.”

Make sure that you know – you get an employee who does something wrong, you don’t automatically go to “That’s it, I’m going to fire them,” maybe because they slept on the job or something like that, which is not in your employee handbook. Just make sure that you’re following the line and make sure that they know that the offense they’re doing is a fireable offense. They have to know that the thing they’re doing is going to result in them being fired.

Learning from Experience with Unemployment Claims

Maria: That actually won us the case. We have had 17 claims against our company. One of them, we lost. We won all of the rest. One of them we lost, where we had to go into a courtroom in front of the judge with the employee.

It was really interesting, because as the employee was talking – I already knew all the rules, and I had studied the cases, because you can study unemployment cases in your state, which is a fascinating topic. Your state, at least the state of Texas, published past court cases: “Hey, the company lost because they didn’t do this, they didn’t tell the employee that it was a fireable offense,” or “The employee won because whatever, it wasn’t their fault.”

Studying those court cases – super interesting. But in this particular case, the judge did ask the person, “Hey, so the last time that you were late for like the sixth time, the last piece of paper said that ‘Hey, you’re five minutes late again, that’s it, you’re done.'” The judge had asked this particular employee, “Did you know that you’d be fired?” And the employee said, “Well, I did, but there was traffic, and then I was late.” I was like, we just won the case, and I knew we won.

The Importance of Clear Documentation

Stephanie: It’s about them knowing and signing to things. For us, our onboarding process with paperwork is jaw-dropping. I know that a lot of people have never signed so many documents, but it is truly to cover our ass and make sure they know what they’re going to be held accountable to.

It doesn’t have to be seen as this bad thing when it comes to like you’re trying to screw the person over. You’re trying to be clear. Being clear is being kind. You are making sure that this is an agreeable workplace for everybody, and that they know exactly what the expectation is, so that they can nail it.

That is one of my biggest pieces of advice for every owner I talk to – all of our listeners, please, please, please, get some documentation in place that you have them sign upon hiring, or if you put a new policy in place, have them re-sign it. Have the new one sign. You have to have them do it, otherwise you have not a leg to stand on.

And yes, I have had many, many, many people try to get unemployment off of me. It’s not just the money side of it. For me, it is, I take it very righteously, like you are wrong, and you aren’t getting this from me. It feels like a battle a little bit, and a point of maybe stubbornness on my part, but I just don’t think people should get away with something when they’re clearly wrong. They shouldn’t get away with it, and it’s our job to hold them accountable and also not allow basically unemployment fraud, because that’s what it is.

Maria: Right, right. Your job is to protect your business and having frivolous unemployment claims being approved and approved and approved, that’s not being a good steward of taking care of your business financially.

Legal Considerations and State Laws

Stephanie: Yeah, absolutely. And always, no matter what guys, you can always consult a lawyer, search online for your state’s laws. At least in Wisconsin, it’s an at-will state, I would imagine Texas is too – obviously it’s Texas – but depending what country you guys are listening to, because I’ve talked to many people, we have guests from Australia, we have listeners in the UK – laws vary drastically compared to America when it comes to employee rights.

Take all of that what we’re saying as overarchingly, you need to know this, and ignorance is not an excuse. One mistake will oftentimes be painful enough for you to get your ass in gear on this type of stuff. Don’t let it happen again. Just like Maria mentioned earlier, pay attention and don’t allow things to keep happening to you. That’s insanity.

Quality Standards and Accountability

Stephanie: Some great examples is having an employee handbook that they have to read and acknowledge, a code of conduct. This could be dress code, attendance policies, quality standards and spelling out what does that look like for us.

We have quality standard stipulations that they sign off to because I was sick of people having quality issues that I had to refund and then send somebody back to redo the work, and all these people get is basically a slap on the wrist, but it’s not hurting them financially. I was sick of it, because it hurts us in so many ways when we have these quality issues, and nobody gets hurt except Stephanie.

What we put into place is that for whatever amount of time it takes to redo that work and bring it up to standard – so say Sally gets a complaint, we have to send Susie for an hour to fix Sally’s screw ups, then Sally gets docked to minimum wage for that hour, and we have them sign and agree to it. Minimum wage in Wisconsin is still $7.25, so when they’re dropping from whatever they’re at – $20 an hour-ish to $7.25, all of a sudden that hurts. That hurts them. And then they take a lot more accountability for it.

I could never legally do that unless they agree to it and sign to it. And again, this is not advice. This is just what in Wisconsin we are allowed to do. So keep that in mind, guys. But that’s a perfect example of like they agreed to it. You can hold them accountable to things like that.

Transitioning to Virtual Assistants

Stephanie: So kind of switching gears, I’d love to hear more about the VA side of things and how you kind of stumbled into that and transitioned into owning Task Away and just talking about that in general. Would love to hear about that and explaining to our listeners why a VA may be a good option for them.

Maria: I think my first experience with VAs was when I had my cleaning service in Austin, because we had two VAs that worked from home, and we had two office managers. If they ever couldn’t answer the phone, then it would ring to one of the two VAs. Because my goal was that we answer our phones 100% of the time, that’s what I was going for.

Finding Her New Path

Maria: After I moved overseas, it was as simple as “Oh my gosh, I’ve worked all these years. I’ve worked so hard. Now I’m in a new country, and I don’t want to work anymore. Just want to enjoy life.” That lasted for six months. My apartment was constantly clean – you could eat off my floors. There was nothing to clean. I was bored.

I remember one day crying. It was a Saturday, and I cried, “Oh my gosh, what have I done? I’ve made a huge mistake in selling my cleaning service.” At the time it felt like that was my identity and what now?

I remember crying about it on a Saturday, and that very night I got an out of the blue phone call. Somebody actually said, “Hey Maria, we watch you on Facebook. We know you have a ton of time on your hands. We know you know what you’re doing with the cleaning business. We need a VA. Do you want to be our VA?”

It was amazing – nothing that I would have ever thought of. I remember telling this gentleman who was an acquaintance, I didn’t know him very well, “You know, I literally was crying about this this morning, so you’re not going to hear it in my voice, but I am so excited, and I’m going to do an amazing job for you.”

Growing Task Away

Maria: Honestly, it just kind of grew from there. Task Away is something that’s super special to me, because we get to help almost 80 clients now. We’ve got well over 50 something VAs that literally dedicate themselves to helping maid service owners grow and get out of the field and write the SOPs and answer the sales calls and book clients.

It’s something that’s super near and dear to me. I love what I do. I’m very honored to get to do what I do, because it feels like at the end of the day, we’re actually helping business owners not only grow but also maintain that work-life balance.

There’s nothing like “Oh my gosh, I went on vacation for a week. I never had to think about my phones. I never had to worry about if complaints were coming in and how they were being handled. I got to rest. I got to relax.” The business was not only there when they came back, but it was even better than how they left it.

That work-life balance is something that I did not have when I was first growing my company – there were lots and lots of crying in empty parking lots. It was just so hard when you’re in growth mode and making that transition. So that’s what we dedicate ourselves to, is helping maid service owners grow.

Understanding the Industry’s Needs

Stephanie: I just love when I speak to business owners who serve who their former self was, because I just feel like you know the pain so well, so you know how to fix it. Whenever I am looking at introducing new software, I like to know the origin story, because it’s like, do you know my pain? Do you know who you’re serving?

Obviously you and I both are hardcore ZenMaid For Life hashtag. And there’s a reason for that, because it’s made by cleaning company owners and it’s heavily influenced by cleaning company owners, including yours truly and Maria, because we get to have that influence and saying “Hey, this is what we need.”

It feels really good – even like the SOS button. You were there when that topic came up in Amsterdam in July. And then lo and behold, it’s now January of 2025 and now we have this incredible feature that focuses heavily on the safety of our staff members.

What to Look for in a VA

Stephanie: Just like to have companies that actually listen and care about who they’re serving. And so keep that in mind, guys. When you are looking at different softwares or companies, there’s a lot of VA companies out there, and there’s a lot of great ones. For sure, it is great to have ones who are specified to our industry. So is there anything specific that you teach your VAs, or when it comes to the cleaning industry in general, or if somebody is looking for a VA for their cleaning company, what would you suggest for them to look for? Even if it’s not your company that they’re looking at, what should they be looking for when seeking out a VA? Because it’s a nerve-wracking experience.

Maria: It is a nerve-wracking experience. When you think about the characteristics that we have in our industry, like how we talk, we’re not overly corporate. Most cleaning companies are laid back, professional, absolutely.

Stephanie: Very family and cozy, and again, it’s a women-led industry too.

Key Qualities to Look For

Maria: Exactly. So I think you want to look for somebody first and foremost that isn’t that executive type. You want to look for somebody who is kind of like you are, like how I am, just laid back. We can relate to the clients, we can empathize with our clients, and all of those traits then also leads to sales. I can make you laugh, you can make me laugh – that will lead to having a good foundation for sales.

Can the person listen well? Can they have the foresight? You obviously want them to have good spelling, grammar – that’s key, but you also want them to be able to think creatively, because Stephanie, as you know, running a maid service, things are not black and white.

Things are very “Okay, what do we do in this moment?” I feel like our maid services kind of live in that gray area where we have to really think and be creative on how to solve the different unique challenges that we have, because they’re not always the same. So somebody that can have that foresight and thinking ahead is really important.

Communication Skills

Maria: And then obviously, somebody that knows the industry, can communicate well and be able to compose emails that communicate effectively to the client.

For example, you’re going back and forth, 10-12 emails in with a client on rescheduling. And there’s been different things, but the next one is going to be a deep clean, and then three weeks after that, it’s going to be a regular clean. But can you only do the downstairs and you’re just kind of going back and forth.

You want somebody that’ll say, “Okay, so to recap, I have you on the schedule for next Wednesday, January 29 with an arrival time of XYZ. We will be doing XYZ. We’ll be focusing on these things. Your next cleaning after that is…” So somebody that just has the skills and ability and even foresight to be able to effectively communicate is going to be really, really important.

Administrative Skills and Attention to Detail

Stephanie: Yeah, and just what you just described is like the perfect office or administrative staff, of just being able to succinctly wrap up everything in a pretty bow and make sure there’s no loose ends. Because when it comes to even scheduling appointments, there is so much that goes into that, making sure the notes are updated, making sure if you have ICs, everybody’s communicated to.

Obviously having ZenMaid is great, and it does a lot of that stuff, but there still is a ton of manual labor when it comes to the entire process or the onboarding process of a new client. If you are having this person do that stuff, there’s a lot of stuff that goes into getting a new client, it’s not just okay they book and then we show up.

You gotta make sure that they are good at crossing their T’s and dotting their i’s, and are quite meticulous. Because I know for myself I am a big picture person where you’ve described yourself Maria as you are really good in the fine minutia details. I’m much more like “It’s all good, this is what we’re doing.”

Delegating and Maintaining Oversight

Stephanie: So when I look at my administrative staff, they have to be the complete opposite of me, because otherwise, problems are going to arise. Even like, I got an executive assistant, a virtual one about six months ago, and it’s changed my life, because boy, is she meticulous.

I honestly loathe doing all of that stuff and all of the details, because it takes me away from what I’m really good at. And it’s not to say one is better than the other, but play to your strengths, guys and delegate what you hate, all with the caveat of you still need to know how to do it so that you can audit and make sure nobody’s embezzling from you or whatnot.

Any office staff, any VA from anywhere – this does not take away your responsibility as the ultimate person who’s in charge, and you need to know how to do these things. It’s like bookkeeping – I know a lot of you guys hate bookkeeping, and it sucks and all of that, but if you have absolutely no idea what the heck’s going on financially or day to day, you’re gonna get burned in some flavor, I promise you that.

So you still need to know how to do that, even if you delegate. I could do every role in my business, even if I am rusty, I still could check in on it. So keep that in mind, guys, and it’s just a good practice overall, not just for a VA, but an office person in general.

The Importance of Accountability

Maria: Absolutely, even to be able to look in at any role in your company and say “Hey, you know what? I noticed that you did a really good job with the reconciling.” Back to your example of accounting – “Hey, you know what? It’s really cool to look in on the 29th and it’s not even the end of the month and you have everything reconciled. Amazing. Good job.” I’m so happy that is a form of accountability. They now know – you just told them “I’m watching.”

Stephanie: Oh, that’s a good point. It’s very subtle. Like, good job that you’re checking that or even asking questions. Yeah, I am checking in on those things. My manager, April, she does all of the credit card payments and documenting all of that. So it’s like, yeah, me asking about “What is this charge?” – it’s telling her “Hey, I’m looking at this.” Not that I’m worried about April – I love you April, you’re great, because I know that they listen to this in the office.

But it’s more about just like you need to have a finger on the pulse, even if you are in another country. Most likely it’s going to be a long time before you are just able to say sayonara to all of this checking in. And honestly, I don’t know if, unless you’re going to sell the business, I just don’t foresee that ever happening.

Maria: I certainly would agree. I like doing it.

Remote Management and Accountability

Stephanie: It’s very soothing, just like when I’m updating my tracking sheets and my key performance indicators and looking at all of that. It’s soothing because I am across the country from my business, just like – I mean, you’re in Spain, right Maria?

Maria: Yes.

Stephanie: So it’s like you are literally completely remote from all of your VAs and so it’s like, you need to hold them accountable. Accountability is truly one of the biggest parts, I think, of a successful business – both from holding yourself accountable and holding your cleaners or office staff accountable as well, and holding your clients accountable.

Standing Firm on Contract Terms

Stephanie: Side note, little story time – today we got an email, or yesterday we got an email. I had shared a couple weeks ago that we had gotten three commercial accounts that said yes to our bids. And so it’s part of our practice, of course, is that they must sign their contract with us, and that’s going over all of our payment expectations and behavior and all of that good stuff, and they can cancel at any time. So when I say contract, we do not lock people in the contracts. However, it’s just basically the agreement of this is how we are going to behave.

Anywho we get an email saying, “Okay, here’s our version of the contract. All good, and we’ll get this signed.” And we look and they had adjusted our non-solicitation of staff clause, which is a $1,500 training fee if they steal basically our staff member – we are able to charge that to them. They had changed it to $500 and that was weird.

And so we emailed back and we’re like “Um, no, everything is good, but change back our non-solicitation clause to $1,500 – that’s the fee.” And their response was “Well, we don’t want your cleaners or employees. We just want you to clean.” And my management team says “We cannot sign this agreement if that clause is in there at all, but we’re not going to steal your employees. And please advise.”

And we’re like, that’s pretty sus. Why would you say you’re not going to try to steal my employees, but you’re not going to sign a non-solicitation? That was a $2,000 account that just happened like four hours ago, that we stood our ground, we dug our heels, and said “No, you will sign this. So we’re not working together.”

Learning from Experience

Stephanie: And honestly, former Stephanie, younger Stephanie in my business, absolutely would have bent, would have been there and allowed that to happen, and I would have been kicking myself six months down the road. So I am sharing this with you guys – please, please, please, dig your heels in on things that are important. Don’t bend to the client’s will when you know that it’s not what you want.

I know that’s hard to say no to money, but it’s going to hurt you. I guarantee it’s going to hurt later. And I’m sure you’ve got plenty of examples of that, Maria, of like clients hurting, or employees too, when you bend and allow yourself to be influenced because you feel bad or you want to make the sale, so you go against your better judgment, and you get your ass handed to you basically.

Maria: It’s true. It’s like, then you have nobody but to blame but yourself. And you’re like, “Dang it, what was I thinking?”

Looking Ahead to 2025

Stephanie: And I have so many instances of like, I’m so glad that at this point, my managers are very strong in that of sticking to the boundaries. Because it was just sticking to guns, sticking to boundaries. And if I’m ever being weak in that point, because at the end of the day, Stephanie, miss people-pleaser Pipkin wants to get a sale and wants to make the client happy, and so they’re a really good reminder as to “No, we don’t do this. This doesn’t make sense. This is not our ideal client.”

Taking clients on that only makes sense is truly like our vision for 2025. So what does that look like for you, Maria? What’s 2025 look like for you? What are the goals?

Goals for 2025

Maria: Let me think, well, for the maid service, for sure, right now, we’re sitting at 33 clients, so by the end of the year, we definitely want to see that grow to well over 100.

Stephanie: Caveat, guys, new maid service. New maid service.

Maria: Yeah. So we actually run a remote, 100% remote from a different country. Y’all just the power of VAs. We have VAs that are running a maid service in a completely different country, doing it quite beautifully. We love them. And so our goal for that one is to see to grow to 100 clients, which is super exciting and super special.

On the Task Away side, we haven’t done our 2025 goals. On the Task Away side – so we are known for having our VAs be able to book and convert sales. That is what we’re known for in our industry, because I have a third business called Listening Sells. We teach all sales everything, and we do coaching, and that’s my jam. So this year, we really want to really focus on that training and that documentation and the systems and the processes for all of our VAs, for all of our VAs to be even stronger salespeople in 2025.

Wrapping Up

Stephanie: Oh gosh, I could… Okay. Well, next time we talk Maria, I want to know all about this sales stuff, because clearly you are an expert at sales, and we focused really heavily on internal things. So next conversation, put a pin in it, and we’re going to talk about sales and then also running remotely, because clearly you know what you’re talking about. So guys, please go follow Maria. Maria, where can they find you? Where can they find just you in general, but also your businesses?

Maria: Task Away VA, it’s T-A-S-K-A-W-A-Y-V-A.com, easiest way to find me. Shoot me a message. If I’ve said anything on this call, on this podcast where you’re like, “I want more information,” or “I want more examples of, for example, the core values and how to shape those interview questions,” anything and everything, just shoot me an email. I’m literally always happy to help.

Stephanie: Awesome. Well, guys, definitely go follow her. We’ll link all of her information in the show notes or in the YouTube notes, and thank you for your time, Maria. Guys, definitely hit that subscribe, and I will have her back. Of course, I love chit chatting with her, and we will see you in the next episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners. Bye, guys.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• ZenMaid
• Task Away VA
• Listening Sells
• Four Disciplines of Execution