Frustrated with your scheduling? Try the easiest-to-use calendar app, made by and for maid service owners.
Brought to you by expert maid service owners
Listen on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube
Introduction
Coming up next on the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast: “And you’re going to have problems that an owner who knows how to clean is not going to. Because if you do not want to clean, who is the backup? All of a sudden, it’s not passive anymore.”
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.
Table of contents
- Introduction
- The Need for Business Defense
- Insurance Coverage and Requirements
- Insurance Growth and Professional Review
- Workers’ Compensation Audits
- OSHA Compliance and Safety Requirements
- Managing SDS Documentation
- Secondary Container Labeling
- Understanding OSHA Fines
- The Discrimination Lawsuit
- Handling Felony Discriminations
- The Government Facility Situation
- Preparing for Legal Defense
- Learning from Experience
- Staying Current with Business Laws
- Closing Thoughts
The Need for Business Defense
Stephanie: Hello everyone, welcome or welcome back to Filthy Rich Cleaners. I’m your host, Stephanie Pipkin, and in this episode that is off the cuff, I want to share with you about owning a cleaning business, or any business at all, means you need to be on the defense. Things are going to be attacking you from every direction and trying to destroy your business, greatly affect it negatively, take your money in all sorts of ways.
The reason this is top of mind is I found out this week that Serene Clean’s getting taken to court, and we’re gonna win. I’m not even gonna hire a lawyer – that’s how confident I am. I want to share this with you guys, because it could be something that you are doing or have done in your business that 100% is putting you at risk of being taken to court and potentially breaking the law when it comes to discrimination.
Insurance Coverage and Requirements
Stephanie: First, let’s talk about insurance and not being properly insured, or making sure that if you use independent contractors, that they have insurance, or that your staff members have insurance. Something that I did not do in the beginning, which we now absolutely do, is make sure we get a copy of our employees’ vehicle insurance.
We require our staff members to have their own reliable vehicle for work – we don’t have a fleet of cars, and a lot of you guys do this. Previously, when I first started out, I just assumed when they said, “Yes, I have car insurance,” that they weren’t lying. And shame on Stephanie for her ignorance, because employees do be lying sometimes, and sometimes they just don’t even know that their insurance is out because they’re scatterbrained or their lives are a mess.
That’s no reason for it to negatively affect your business. If they don’t have car insurance, that just makes it a lot harder if and when they get into an accident on company time in their own vehicles. I’ve had that happen before, and when it’s in their own vehicles but they’re driving for work purposes, then your insurance companies kind of duke it out – their car insurance versus your insurance.
Insurance Growth and Professional Review
Stephanie: The first year we went through Next Insurance, which was fine. It was great – it was like $42 bucks a month. But then as we grew, I wanted to have a local insurance provider so that I had somebody like an agent that I could talk to and ask questions.
Veronica looked at our policy and we had a bunch of gaps. She was like, “Oh, if this happens at a place, you’re not covered.” Insurance companies like to write things in a way that benefits them, not the person paying for the insurance. If you don’t know or you’re not an expert on reading this stuff, you may not realize some of the gaps in coverage that you have.
It does not hurt you to go to several insurance agencies and be like, “Here’s the coverage I have. This is the business I have. This is the type of cleaning services that we provide. What gaps do I have based on what kind of services we provide, based on the fact that we are going into people’s businesses and homes?”
Workers’ Compensation Audits
Stephanie: Worker comp audits can be a bitch, frankly, and you may not realize that every year you are going to be getting audited and making sure that you paid enough in because workers comp is based off of your payroll. After every single year, or every policy year – I think ours is April to April, maybe that’s everybody’s, I don’t know – we get audited based on the previous year’s payroll, actual numbers, because truly, we’re just guessing.
Almost always you’re going to have to pay in more. So you may not be prepared or realize that this is going to be coming at you when you add employees. Insurance sucks, guys. There is no ifs ands or buts. It sucks having to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars into insurance over the lifetime of our business, if not millions, depending on the size that you get. But when something happens, you’re gonna be darn happy that you have it.
OSHA Compliance and Safety Requirements
Stephanie: Making sure that you are OSHA compliant is crucial. This week alone, we have been just wanting to shake our cleaners because I don’t know how many times we need to tell them: do not use any product that the client asks you to use without explicitly sending it to us for our approval.
Yet again, another cleaner offhand mentioned, “Oh, I use this at this person’s house.” We need to have the Safety Data Sheet (SDS) on hand for every single product that your staff member is going to potentially be using, and that needs to be readily available. That can be in digital form.
Managing SDS Documentation
Stephanie: Make sure that every product you use, just Google safety data sheet for whatever it is that you’re using. We have it downloaded, we have it in a binder in the office. Obviously that doesn’t help a cleaner in the field, if they were to get something in their eye, so we have it uploaded to a Drive folder. We also have it available in our Facebook group that we have for our staff members.
Katie, my manager, and I were just talking about this yesterday when we were expressing our frustration that this keeps happening. We are now going to start docking their raise potential every time they violate this because it’s so absolutely risky.
Secondary Container Labeling
Stephanie: Secondary labeling like labels for spray bottles – that means if you’re going to dump a product from a gallon jug into a secondary spray bottle, you need to have that properly labeled as to what that is, because it’s like, is that bleach? Is it water? We don’t know, and that can cause issues.
That is actually something that we got dinged on, and we got a warning about from OSHA a couple years ago. Luckily, we just got a warning, and we had 48 hours to fix it all and provide proof that we fixed it. But a second ding on that same topic, we don’t think would be so lucky. That’s why I’m so psychotic about this.
Understanding OSHA Fines
Stephanie: Go look up how much minimum OSHA fines are for this type of thing. We are talking thousands and thousands of dollars. I think like $13,000 we had looked up, and it can be even more than that. Think about you as a small business if you got smacked by a $20,000 fine – what that would do to you?
Please get those SDS sheets on file. Do that today. Do that as soon as you get back to the office. It’s literally on the internet. It is free. It will take you 20 minutes at most to do this and to cover your ass.
The Discrimination Lawsuit
Stephanie: Finally, why is Serene Clean getting taken to court? This one really grinds my gears. When it comes to discrimination laws, you cannot have anything in your job listings that say that felons cannot apply or will not be hired for your job – that is discriminating, at least in Wisconsin. Check your state, check your country, check your region, to see what the laws are there.
There is a gentleman, Richie Levine – if you want to Google him, he has a whole book on how to come after businesses who do this. He’s in New York, and he has never applied to a job at Serene Clean, but he’s suing us for discriminatory practices against those with felonies. He does this dozens of times a year. He goes after businesses all over the country. He went after my own parents’ company, actually.
Handling Felony Discriminations
Stephanie: The thing is, if you’re breaking the law on this, he has the right to do it. It’s just really effing annoying. That’s why I’m trying to tell you guys – do not put anything about no felonies, no XYZ, nothing like that, because that is discrimination.
Serene Clean has convicted felons on my staff. I have hired felons, and they’re some of the best staff members I’ve ever had. I’ve got like six or seven right now that have records, and they’re fabulous people. I do not see that as a reason to not hire somebody.
The Government Facility Situation
Stephanie: Our largest commercial account is a government research facility for natural resources here in western Wisconsin. This government facility has the most stringent background checks I have ever seen – they take months and months, and it is a requirement from that facility that there cannot be any felonies and there cannot be any drug charges, even marijuana, because pot is not legal in Wisconsin yet.
We asked our contracting agent, how do we list this specifically? Because we’ve never done anything like this. She gave us the exact verbiage. We specified this is a government facility – their background checks mean they will not accept anyone with a felony or with marijuana charges. It was highly specific to this facility based on their requirements, not us.
Preparing for Legal Defense
Stephanie: I called our state’s Department of Workforce Development and talked to multiple people there. I talked to an investigator, and he said to go to the pre-hearing conference in March. As long as you have the proof that this is a requirement of the facility, if you have any email chains or anything in writing, we should be good.
He was like, “We have felons on our staff.” He’s like, “That works in your favor too, to show that you don’t discriminate against felons and that this was facility specific.”
Learning from Experience
Stephanie: Just because you don’t know something and you do something wrong doesn’t mean it’s not wrong, especially when we’re business owners. It’s our job to learn. It’s just like bookkeeping and passing that off to somebody, and then they steal money and they embezzle from you because you don’t know how to check your own books.
Most likely somebody listening is doing one thing illegal right now, and you don’t even know it, because it’s impossible to keep up with all the laws. That’s why being involved in the communities, exposing yourself to outside sources, and not just being in your little bubble is important.
Staying Current with Business Laws
Stephanie: It’s just like when the non-compete thing went through last year – non-competes are no longer allowed in our area. You gotta stay up to date in our community. Make sure you’re still in the groups, make sure you’re online and following anything that has to do with being a small business owner.
This can help you so that when things happen, and maybe there’s a grant available – maybe during COVID with the PPP – I was on it because I was paying attention and listening. It’s super important to make sure that you have your eyes up, and not just sticking your head in the sand about stuff, because it’s gonna come down on you. It’s gonna come down on you hard.
Closing Thoughts
Stephanie: I know it’s not sexy talking about risk mitigation – that is not a sexy topic – but it is the one that you need to think about as a business owner. It’s not all about making that coin, it’s about covering your ass too, so that you can protect that coin.
I hope this was helpful. Let me know in the comments – are you covered in all of these areas? If you’re not, what are you gonna go do right now? What are you gonna go fix? And tell me so I can pat you on the back, and then I’ll yell at you if you don’t do it, because that’s what I’m here for. To give you guys a little gentle tap in the right direction, sometimes not so gentle.
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.
Note: This transcript has been edited for clarity and readability
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- Next Insurance
- Department of Workforce Development
- OSHA Safety Data Sheets (SDS) Requirements
- PPP (Paycheck Protection Program)
- ZenMaid
QUICK TIP FROM THE AUTHOR
Simplify and enjoy your scheduling with a scheduling software made for maid services
- Have a beautiful calendar that's full but never stressful.
- Make your cleaners happy and provide all the information they need at their fingertips.
- Convert more website visitors into leads and get new cleanings in your inbox with high-converting booking forms.
- Become part of a community of 8000+ cheering maid service owners just like you.
Start your FREE ZenMaid trial today and discover the freedom and clarity that ZenMaid can bring to your maid service! Start your FREE trial today
