Filthy Rich Cleaners Podcast E25: How Kate Croukamp Built a 7-Figure Product Line in Her Cleaning Business

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Introduction

Coming up next on the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast: “People think they want to do this, and anytime I’ve had a cleaner is like, ‘Load me up. I need more time, more time.’ Two weeks later, they’re crying because they’re just broken.”

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 Kate Croukamp

Stephanie: Hello everyone. Welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I’m your host, Stephanie Pipkin, and today’s guest is Kate Croukamp, and she is the owner of Clean Like a Pro cleaning services over in Australia. Well, not over there for her, over there for us Americans. So I know we have an Australian audience, so I’m glad that you’re joining us, Kate. I really appreciate your time today and waking up, not too early for you, but 7am for you to meet with me.

Kate: Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be a guest on your podcast. And yeah, not too early, my kids are up. It’s a normal school rush, although hubby’s taking care of that this morning.

17 Years in the Cleaning Industry

Stephanie: Very nice. And you’ve been in business for a dang long time when it comes to the cleaning business, so I’d love to hear your background. What were you doing before? What prompted you to get into the cleaning industry?

Kate: Sure, a very long time this year is 17 years, and that makes me feel really old. Prior to that, my husband, Jack and I used to work for Emirates. So we lived in Dubai, and we worked for Emirates. For me, six years, him 10. Now I feel really old. We came back to Australia, and because he’s South African, we came back to Australia. My parents had a cleaning business, and they wanted to step out of it, so we took it over.

It was a cleaning business that was already existing, but they only did carpet cleaning and pest control, which we still do today. We took it over, and we’ve had it ever since. It’s just evolved over that time – lots of highs, lots of lows, and lots of times when we’ve wanted to walk away from it. But I’m grateful today that we never did. We never envisaged where we are now. It was just not even on our radar.

That’s how we got into the cleaning industry, a little bit by default. We didn’t want to go back into the airlines when we came back to Australia. We wanted something that could be flexible around having kids one day, and we thought, why not step into a business that’s already doing really well and take it from there?

Starting with a Small Business

Stephanie: How large was the business when you took it over from your parents? I’m just curious.

Kate: Look, it wasn’t a huge business. It was a couple of employees and my mum and dad. So it was very much owner-operator, which is to a degree still like that today, for a number of reasons. We were very hands-on, especially Jack in the beginning. It was more so him stepping into the business. I was still working in travel, and then it started to grow from there. I came into the business, we added more services and employed some more staff, and just grew from there.

Services Offered and Australian Cleaning Laws

Stephanie: When it comes to the split in the beginning versus now, you have very different services than anything I’ve experienced. When it comes to the pest control stuff, it’s very intriguing to me. But I love the idea because then you can sell to the same people and get more revenue from the same clients, which is wonderful, and provide a valuable service. How much was it 50/50? Was one really strong and the other one not so much? What did that look like?

Kate: In the beginning, it was carpet cleaning and pest control. The reason for that is in Australia, when somebody vacates a rental property, by law, they have to get a professional carpet cleaner in to do the carpets. If they’ve had a pet – a dog or a cat or a bird – they have to have a flea treatment done by law, or a general pest control. Generally, that’s in a tenant’s lease.

Back when we started, carpet cleaning and pest control was really busy because tenants needed to have that service done when they vacated. We very much catered to move-out people, not so much everyday general cleaning, and we still don’t today.

We started to add move-out cleans on top of the carpet cleaning and pest control as a one-stop shop. The tenants have to get the carpets and pests done anyway, and a lot of people don’t want to do their own move-out cleans. It’s very strict in Australia when you move out – the agent will come in and do an inspection to check that the house has been cleaned, carpet cleaned, and pest controlled up to the standard that it was when the tenant moved in.

Stephanie: I’m so jealous. I wish, especially when it comes to the pest control, because we’ve walked into move-outs and the whole place is flea-ridden or whatever.

Kate: It still happens to a degree here, but there are laws in place where the owner is responsible for making sure things like that are fine for the next tenant moving in. There are laws for the tenant and the owner and agent to make sure that when the property is being handed over to the next tenant, they’re moving into a house that they can live in. It doesn’t always happen – there are agents and owners who don’t follow that system, but generally that’s what needs to be done.

Tenants can do their own cleans – they’re not required to get a professional in to do it. But a lot of people don’t want to do their own.

The Reality of Move-Out Cleans

Stephanie: It’s very labor-intensive, as all of our listeners know. It’s so much more, and it’s so funny how many clients have the misperception that it’s going to be faster because they don’t have any belongings in it, and it’s like, no, it’s going to be twice as much work.

Kate: Because when you move everything, you’re like, “Oh, that’s where everything went.”

Stephanie: Definitely some client horror stories when it comes to move-outs of people leaving stuff behind, and then we have to figure out what to do with it, or being accused of stealing things. Can anything stand out to you, of people being crazy or one of the landlords? Do you call them landlords over there?

Kate: Yeah, we call them landlords. Often there’s an agent that is in between the tenant and the landlord. Sometimes if the landlord is renting direct to the tenant, that’s a direct relationship. But I’d say 80% of the time there’s a property manager or agent, so you’re not dealing direct with the landlord.

We come across – because that’s what we specialize in, that’s all we do – a massive misconception that it’s just a quick wipe over or “it’s not that dirty.” As soon as we hear those words…

Stephanie: We pack the price up!

Kate: My price is my price.

With the move-out clean, it’s not just a superficial clean, it’s a deep clean. There are areas that have to be cleaned that they probably never touched – things like windows and tracks and things you don’t normally clean day to day. That always makes us laugh when we get people ringing up and asking for quotes, and they use language like that.

We do see a lot of people who run out of time, and they’ll just leave a lot of stuff in the house. They’re over the whole process of moving, and they’ve just like, “I don’t care. Just do whatever you want with it.” Some things are perfectly fine – printers and things. I think moving is like the third most stressful life event there is after divorce and the death of a family member. By the time people get to us, they’re just stressed.

That’s why we decided to specialize in this, because it’s such a stressful time for people. We can do everything in one stop. You don’t need to try and liaise with different trades to do different services. And because where we are on the Gold Coast, it’s a growing city, and it’s quite transient as well. So there’s a lot of people moving in and out.

Dealing with Strict Inspections

Stephanie: In one of our locations we have a military base, so there’s a ton of off-base military housing with these checklists. The inspectors are like, “You are going to fail our inspection.” I mean, we are super picky, and still, there’ll be a mark on the ceiling, and they’ll be like, “Come back.”

Kate: So there’ll be what we call callbacks. We guarantee our bond claims, but also not everything is cleanable. Some things are maintenance, and it’s beyond the scope of what we as the cleaners are responsible for. You will get some agents or landlords who try and pin it on the cleaner, or say that it’s the cleaner’s responsibility when it’s really not.

In the beginning, we used to get taken advantage of a lot because we were too scared to dispute anything. But now, after all these years, we’re very firm, and we don’t get taken advantage of like we used to. That just comes with time – knowing your job, what you’re responsible for, and not being afraid to speak up to agents, in particular, property managers who perhaps will try and get you as the cleaner to patch walls or something.

Setting Professional Boundaries

Stephanie: I’ve given the example of having my cleaners literally be patching paint in an apartment. No more of that here.

For our friends listening, I’m sure they say, “Okay, that sounds great,” meaning standing up for yourself. What are the exact ways that you do protect yourself or set those boundaries? Is that in client guidelines? Is it in a conversation? What kinds of things do you say to be firm but also professional, friendly, to not come across like an asshole, frankly?

Kate: We’re very clear with our terms and conditions. It’s on our website. When we quote, we highlight our terms and conditions in the quote. We make sure that the client is reading that.

We work directly, mostly with tenants, rather than agents or property managers. We used to do a lot of work for property managers, but we decided it was better for us to go direct to the client, the tenant. That’s worked best for us. We make sure they are very aware of our terms and conditions. We don’t hide it. We don’t make it something they have to go and search for. We put it right there in their quote.

That also covers our cancelation policy. We take deposits. We never used to take deposits, and we used to get stood up all the time. Devastating when you’ve blocked a whole day and you’ve got five staff standing there, and you get stood up. That’s because we never took deposits.

We were scared because we thought a deposit would turn the customer off – they wouldn’t want to pay a deposit. But what it’s done is actually made our customer base, our client base, respect us more as business owners. It’s given them peace of mind that we’re actually going to turn up. And it’s got rid of the clients we ultimately don’t want, who potentially would stand us up on the day.

As long as we presented ourselves professionally, gave quotes professionally, and our terms and conditions were clear, we’ve had no hesitation in clients paying a deposit when they’re booking a move-out clean with carpets and pests, because that’s a full day’s work.

Prior to taking deposits, we would often turn up and either the tenant’s not there to let us in, they’ve already done the job, they’ve booked somebody else and forgot to cancel us, or they chose they didn’t like the price because the price went up due to the condition of the house. So they’ve said, “No, I’m not paying it. Bye bye.”

Deposits have been a game changer for our business. We don’t have anybody ever do that to us anymore. When we know we’re turning up to a job, we’re there to do a job, we’re not possibly being sent away for whatever reason. And the same with our balance payment – we take that before we start cleaning.

Pricing Strategy and Customer Trust

Stephanie: You charge flat rate from the sounds of it then?

Kate: We charge estimates. Because the traffic on the Gold Coast is really bad, to constantly be doing quotes would mean you’d never get any work done. It could take one hour each way to go and do a quote for a move-out clean.

So we give estimates based on the size. We look at the property online – in Australia you have realestate.com.au where generally you can see pictures of the house, the inside, floor plans. We have a look at it, and we give an estimate on what that’s going to cost. It’s very detailed as to what the clean is going to include and what it doesn’t.

When we arrive, that’s when we finalize the price. We’ll do our walk through, look at the condition of the property, and if it’s not overly dirty, then it will stay within that guide price that we provided. If it’s really clean, the price could actually fall below the estimate that we gave.

Stephanie: That’s very fair of you. And also that builds a lot of trust, especially if you do work with recurring property managers or something like that.

Taking Final Payment Before Starting

Kate: Our final payment is taken before we start, basically, when we arrive.

Stephanie: That is a really good tip for people. For us, we charge hourly on move-outs because, like you, we don’t go look at any residential before we clean it. A lot of our listeners are probably still doing in-house estimates, which is useful especially in the beginning so that you can get a feel and practice your sales skills.

But what would you suggest for them to transition away from that? Looking up the houses, I always say production rate audits – see how long you clean. Is there anything else that comes to mind to help people get away from those in-person estimates?

Kate: It does come with time. If there’s a house that’s not a standard size, we will go and quote that in person. For example, there are a lot of big houses on the Gold Coast, mansions, and it’s just impossible to quote that by looking at a floor plan. We need to go and have a walk through of these bigger houses.

But there are also a lot of houses that I could walk through with my eyes closed. They’re the same house, just painted a different color. That’s what the bulk of our jobs are, and eventually you just get to know what it’s going to cost and how long it takes our team to do a clean that size.

When we give an estimate, it’s between “this and this.” So there’s a little bit of room there.

Stephanie: That’s what we do, too – that range. It gives you that wiggle room.

Kate: It’s not like we’re saying it’s $600. It’s going to be between this price and this price, and that’s based on average soiling. If it’s very clean or very unclean, the price could fall outside of this guide price.

It’s just practice. We’ve been in our business for 17 years. We have under-quoted so many jobs that we’ve learned our lesson not to go in cheap. There’s no benefit going in cheap just to get the job – you will kill yourself, you will kill your body, and there’s no longevity in doing that. It’s never a good idea to be the cheapest cleaner in your town. It’s the worst strategy you could ever have.

If anything, it actually puts doubt in the customer’s mind as to your level of service and abilities if you are the cheapest. When you price yourself right, and you’re not afraid to say your price, and you’re very confident in your price, then you will attract the right type of client – the client who respects you and your time and the job that you are going to deliver.

There’s always going to be people who want your services from all price ranges. So why not go for the category of clients who are willing to pay what you’re worth?

Charging Premium Prices

Stephanie: So true. That race to the bottom is never one you want to win. When you think of it from a math perspective, I would much rather have 10 clients who I make the same amount of money from as 20 clients. That’s 10 fewer people I have to deal with and possible issues. The most money that we can get out of the fewest number of clients is actually the ideal.

Kate: Absolutely. There will always be people who are willing to pay more for peace of mind, for quality work. I know when I am looking for something in particular, I don’t go for the cheapest. I never go for the cheapest quote.

We hear it all the time: you get what you pay for. And cleaning is probably the one industry where you definitely get what you pay for.

Even when you’re starting out and quoting clients, I don’t think you should be cutting your prices, because that sets the tone for your business from there on. What’s going to happen with those original clients that you’re charging below what you should be when you start to raise prices? You’re going to upset a whole group of people who might talk bad about you because you’ve upped your price. It’s better to just start at the price you want to maintain.

Stephanie: I literally can see the clients’ faces. When I opened, I started at $30 an hour. We’re at $55 per man-hour now in rural Wisconsin. The ones that started at $30, they stuck. I think the longest I had them was for four years. Zero of them are with us anymore, because in their perspective, they perceive me as too big for my britches, like “This isn’t worth it.” Whereas now, other clients are coming in at $55, which is $10 an hour higher than the highest I made the original clients pay, and they have nothing to compare it to. To them, this is the cheapest price they’ve ever paid. So it really is a perception thing, and you’re teaching them what they should value.

Kate: Absolutely. A perfect example of pricing is when you go into Facebook community groups, and somebody will ask, “I’m looking for a cleaner. I’m looking for an amazing cleaner in the world. Is it expensive?” You will see all these cleaners in the comments all vying for this client, whereas I don’t want to go anywhere near that client, because that whole post is a red flag to me. They want the best, but they want to pay minimum. They dictate how long the job should take – “it should only take you two hours.” By whose standard?

Stephanie: Anytime they say “how long” – okay, this isn’t gonna work. You’re a walking red flag, because who are you to tell a professional how long it’s going to take?

Kate: “My last cleaner only cost me this much.” These are the things that should instantly be, “I’m not interested in trying to get this client.” Like, what happened to your last cleaner? Why are they no longer working for you?

We almost have to interview the client as much as they have to interview us.

Creating a Mutually Beneficial Relationship

Stephanie: It’s a mutually beneficial relationship. Otherwise, it’s this weird power dynamic of them lording over you. No, you get to make that decision if you want to work with them too.

I know, especially in the beginning, it’s easier said than done. We all took jobs that we absolutely should not have because we’re like, “A job! Somebody wants us!”

Kate: And that’s okay. We’ve done that so many times, and there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s how we learn. We go, “Okay, well, I’m not going to make those same mistakes again.”

For us, one of the biggest mistakes that we were making quite a lot in the beginning was not taking deposits and not getting the final balance when we start. So we would be left in a vacant house, not knowing where the tenants have moved to.

Stephanie: Those are the most risky ones. They’re not coming back to pay. You can’t undo the cleaning.

Kate: They’re beautifully sitting in their new house. They won’t answer their phone, and they’ve gone. They’re happy, they’ve moved on, and we’ve just spent five of us a whole day on our hands and knees, scrubbing, and we don’t have the payment.

Stephanie: That is really heart-wrenching when you have worked your backside off and the tenant has just disappeared off the face of the earth.

Kate: That happened to us enough times in the beginning where we had to be really firm with our payment arrangements. This is why we’re really clear about it when we quote and when they pay the deposit. We reiterate that final payment. It’s overkill in the beginning, because we don’t want to get to the house to get their final balance before we start and there are any disputes. They know exactly what they’re signing up for, and it’s just smooth sailing from there. They can’t then say, “Well, you didn’t tell me.”

Having really clear terms and conditions, your guarantees, everything like that will save your backside and just avoid any heartache during that whole process of working with that client.

Managing Multiple Services

Stephanie: I’m also intrigued about your process of managing the different sections of your services. Let’s say we have a move-out clean, and they want you to carpet clean, do pest control, and clean. Logistically, speaking with your team, can you run through what order? How do you handle that? Is that the same team? How do you do that?

Kate: It’s the same team. With a move-out clean, carpets, and pest, the clean always starts first. The team will go in and do the clean. Depending on the day, if it’s super busy, we will ask them to make sure that the carpeted rooms are cleaned first, so then the carpet cleaning can be done in those rooms, and we don’t have to go back in there.

So things like making sure the fans and the air cons, the walls, the windows, the tracks, the robes, fully vacuumed – that’s all done in the carpeted rooms. And then if we have to do the carpets earlier, before the end of the day, those rooms are ready to go.

Stephanie: Interesting, because when we clean, it’s always the wet rooms first. It sounds like you have to do the exact opposite.

Kate: We’ll generally have four people at a job. Everyone kind of has their own areas. With the move-out cleans, we try not to have our team there for longer than six hours each, because it’s so labor-intensive, and after six hours, your body is done.

That’s why we tend to have, for a standard four-bed, two-bath house, at least four people there. Everybody has their areas – one could be in a bathroom, one could be in the kitchen, and one could be in those carpeted rooms, getting those cleaned out.

Vacuuming is a big thing when we start. We will vacuum everywhere before we start spraying any type of chemical. So the bathrooms, the kitchens are fully vacuumed to remove hair, dust, crumbs, anything like that.

Stephanie: You’re not making a wet mess, basically.

Kate: If you’re trying to clean-spray when you’ve got hair and everything, it just takes twice as long. So vacuuming is important – we’ll have two vacuums going as soon as we walk in the door. One person’s vacuuming bathrooms, another’s vacuuming kitchens, and then they’ll move on to vacuuming the carpeted rooms.

We don’t start spraying any chemicals until vacuuming is done. One person will be doing the high dusting, the fans, and the air cons. We do try to start high. If we need to get the carpet cleaning done earlier in the day, that’s when we’ll get somebody into those carpeted rooms to get them done. But otherwise, it’s very much like you say, starting with wet areas, but with a really thorough vacuum first. The pest or flea treatment, if there’s been pets, that’s the very last thing that you do.

Dealing with Infestations

Stephanie: What if there’s evidence of an actual infestation? Does that throw off the entire day because you can’t have your cleaners in there?

Kate: We walked out of a job earlier this week because it was infested with fleas. They were actually jumping.

Stephanie: We’ve had that – jumping on our cleaners!

Kate: Yes, we do flea treatments, but that’s a whole other level that requires a process, not just a basic vacate flea treatment.

Stephanie: I’ve never thought about that. For us, we would say you call an exterminator – the only reason you get a flea treatment is if there’s an active infestation. This is such an interesting concept that everything’s treated regardless, and you’re going in with the expectation that there are not active fleas jumping around that you can see. So you’d need an exterminator.

I’m assuming you explain all of this thoroughly. Do you still charge them that down payment to cover your lost time or cancelation fee?

Kate: It doesn’t happen very often. The situation that happened this week, we’ve not had that for a long time, so we just refunded their deposit. We said, “Listen, this needs to be taken care of first,” and that’s something that probably needs to be handed back to the agent to deal with. Yes, we’re licensed pest controllers, but this requires a full process.

Stephanie: It’s a multiple treatment thing.

Kate: Multiple treatments, sealing up the whole house and putting what they call pest bombs. Depending on what it is – fleas or general pest control – a big thing is a cockroach infestation, especially German cockroaches. They’re these tiny, little, pale cockroaches. Once they take hold of a house, that’s a huge job, and a vacate pest control is not going to fix that problem.

These cockroaches will get into your dishwasher, into your toasters, into anywhere they can squeeze – into your cabinetry. They will come out of everywhere. That’s when you need to get a proper process of elimination to treat infestations.

The flea treatments in Australia, when someone vacates, if they’ve had a pet, it’s a preventative measure to avoid things getting out of hand.

Stephanie: I think it’s the hatch cycles. I just had to deal with fleas when I moved to Savannah, which is in the south of the US. The fleas here are impervious to normal treatments because there’s no winter. The first year I was down here, I couldn’t believe it. I threw everything at them, and it was so embarrassing because I couldn’t get rid of these fleas in my house. My dog would bring them in, and then my cat would get them. It is very stubborn. Even if you kill the active ones, there’s still that hatching cycle.

Kate: It’s a bit of a nightmare. I think the whole reason behind having these vacate pest and flea treatments is to try to avoid issues like that getting out of hand. We live in a very humid part of Australia. It’s very hot here. So I think it’s to try and avoid issues like that completely taking over a property.

Training Cleaners in Multiple Services

Stephanie: Your cleaners – I initially envisioned you would have a carpet cleaning technician or a treatment technician, but this is truly one and the same – your cleaners all know how to do this?

Kate: Well, Jack, my husband, does carpet, upholstery, mattress cleaning, the whole lot. He does that. But when we’re really busy, we will also bring in someone else to help too. He’s also a licensed pest controller. You need a license to do pest control in Australia, and if we’re really busy, we have another licensed pest controller that we can use also. But our cleaners don’t do the carpets – it’s Jack or another actual carpet cleaner.

Stephanie: That’s a lot for the six hours, like you said. Do you run employees or independent contractors?

Kate: We have employees. We had contractors in the start for many, many years, but we found that having an employee setup was much better for our business, much better for the cleaner. It was just a better arrangement than contracting.

Plus, there’s a lot of laws in place in Australia around contractors. If they’re working for you a lot, then they should be employees, not contractors. So now all of our staff are employees.

Managing Employee Workload

Stephanie: Now all of our listeners know I’m a fan of employees. I’ve never had an IC, but there are a lot of ways to skin the cat. It really is region dependent.

I just had a consulting call yesterday with a wonderful lady who was in California. She moved to Texas, and her business and the laws – you can’t have ICs pretty much in California, because the whole state was like, “No, everybody’s doing illegal things with ICs.” They were running them as ICs but truly treating them like employees and with no benefits. So that’s good to hear.

When it comes to availability and scheduling, considering you do a lot of move-outs, how many per week would you put on a cleaner? I know for our team, they get really worn down by move-outs, and they’ll actually request no more than two a week. Do you have that issue?

Kate: We will very rarely have more than one move-out clean in a day. We won’t have two. We’ve heard other businesses who will have multiple move-out cleans in a day. I don’t know how they do it.

Stephanie: My cleaners would quit if I made them do two ovens in a day!

Kate: We will have one a day. This week, we’ve had four move-out cleans with carpet cleaning or with pest control. This is why we’ll have four cleaners minimum at a job, because we need to spread those hours amongst the team so they’re not going over the six hours. Often it could be four or five hours, which is fine.

If it’s a bigger property, then we’ll possibly have five people on the job. If it’s a really big job, it may spill into the next day. We’re really aware how physically taxing these move-out cleans are, but again, some weeks could be quiet. It could be two the following week or five the week prior, so it kind of balances out. But this is why we go in as a team, and we’re not just having one or two people at a move-out clean – that’s too overwhelming.

Stephanie: It really is. You’re beat before you even start.

Kate: You know how much work is ahead of you. We do it just depends on the size of the house.

At most, our employees are getting scheduled for 30 hours a week. Nobody’s doing 40 hours a week – it’s too much. A lot of our staff are either students who are studying, or they perhaps have another job, which works really well with our business. Sometimes we can be quiet or busy in our other business, so we may not take on as many jobs.

We don’t mind that they possibly have another job or they’re studying, because it works out really well for us that they’re not under pressure to have 40 hours a week. They’re really happy to do 20 hours a week because they all have something going on in their lives.

Really, our jobs start in the morning. They start at 8:30-9am in the morning, and then from say 1-2pm they’re finished for the day. It allows them to study or have another job at night. It works well for us, because we don’t feel like we have to give full-time hours. And it works well for them because they have other things happening in their life.

The Benefits of Part-Time Staff

Stephanie: You’re preaching, Kate, because that is exactly how I feel. I’m so happy you said that. I am such a fan of part-timers. I had part-timers only for probably a year and a half. We still have so many incredible part-time staff members who either have another job or their life circumstances dictate that 40 does not make sense for them.

Like you said, 100% the pressure is off if they don’t expect 40, because what happens when somebody does cancel? It makes it so much more stressful.

I know for a lot of our listeners, they’re just starting out, or they just have a few cleaners right now, and they stress about that. Stop hiring and promising for full-time, guys. You can’t deliver. Most likely, you can’t deliver. It’s also the nature of our industry – it’s hard to deliver on that if you’re doing residential. Commercial is easier because you can consistently build it up, but it’s tough to deliver full-time.

And like you said, the physicality of it – people think they want to do this. Anytime I’ve had a cleaner saying, “Load me up. I need more time, more time,” two weeks later, they’re crying because they’re just broken, and then they quit. It’s like, no, you think you want that, but you don’t.

Kate: It catches up with you eventually. As the business owners who still work in the business to a degree, it catches up with us too. It’s really hard to say no to a job and to knock that money back. You’re like, “Just book another job in, just book it in.” And then the day arrives, and you’re like, “Why did I do that to myself?”

Your body and your mind is just so broken, and that’s when you start to get sick, that’s when you hurt your back, that’s when you have injuries. Sometimes the older you get, your body doesn’t bounce back. If you want longevity in this industry, yes, money is important, but you need to also consider: Am I going to hurt myself? Am I going to be able to get through the day? Am I going to be able to do the job to the standard required and not have customers complain?

Because you can’t deliver when you’re just too full, too busy, you’ve over-committed. It’s just finding that happy medium. It’s easier said than done, especially if it’s seasonal, where one week you’re really quiet, and then the next week you have so much work and you’re trying to constantly catch up to make up for any quiet times.

This is why we have our staff on a casual or part-time basis, because they’re happy to be called in when needed. But if the hours aren’t there, it’s fine because they have other things happening as well.

Seasonal Patterns in the Cleaning Business

Stephanie: Do you guys have a slow season? Obviously, for us, it’s usually January, February. For most of the US, I would say at least, unless you’re like Florida or something. When is your slow season? If you have one, is it the opposite for you guys because of the seasons?

Kate: For us in move-out cleans, we always find around March-April, for some reason, it quietens down, and I have no idea why. December, January, February is actually really busy for us, and that’s our summer. People tend to possibly move more in the summertime. March-April can sometimes drop off a bit.

We also do some commercial cleaning now too, which keeps us quite busy. We have those clients every single week, so it’s nice to have that backup. If it is quiet on one side of your business, you know that work is there as well.

Finding Move-Out Cleaning Clients

Stephanie: I got you. Do you have a lot of relationships with apartment complexes? I think about somebody trying to come in and they’re thinking, “I’m gonna focus on move-outs,” and the reason I’d suggest not is because of that inconsistency.

I know that you’re really big on social media, and I’d love to hear about your social media strategies, TikTok, everything like that. Is that where you’re getting clients as well? If somebody is starting out and is interested in pursuing a heavily move-out focused cleaning business, what would you suggest to them for finding clients?

Kate: In Australia, I don’t know what it’s like anywhere else, but with property managers and real estate agents, you’ll be on an account job situation, so you’ll do the work, and then you’ll wait to get paid. But generally, the cleaner is the last to get paid.

If there’s any kind of dispute between the tenant and the landlord or tenant and the agent about the property that they’re leaving, that could be drawn out for months. That’s why we chose to go direct with tenants, because it just gave us more control over the payments and cash flow of our business and removed that stress.

It can be an immense amount of stress when you’re waiting for thousands and thousands of dollars in outstanding payments to come through, and you’ve still got your staff to pay, and there’s all this money sitting there that you can’t get.

Eventually, we moved away from agents. It served its purpose for the time that we did use agents, and it was fine, but then eventually we were able to go direct to tenants, which gave us that control back over the flow of money coming through our business.

Stephanie: I’m sure that was a relief and definitely something that is good for our listeners to work towards when possible. I would love to hear about the social media strategy you have. If you can give some background on what you guys do on social media, because that has gained quite the popularity and an astounding audience, and I’m sure that has led to many opportunities.

Building a Social Media Presence

Kate: We’ve been in business since 2008, and back then, when we started, we were in Yellow Pages – the book with all the ads in it. That was costing us $35,000 a year to have two full-page ads in a Yellow Pages book.

It was so restricting at the time. We didn’t know any better, that was what you did. You put an ad in, and that ad is there to stay for a whole 12 months. You can’t change it. It is only for your local city.

Eventually, we committed all this money to Yellow Pages, and then what felt like overnight, it just stopped working, because people were moving away from that form of getting their information, and they were moving to online. It seemed to happen so fast. We didn’t adapt quick enough.

So we really felt the pain of having to pay all that money out in Yellow Pages ads and not getting any business in return, and then wondering what’s happening. We very quickly had to move from this old way of thinking and get a website up and running, which costs a lot of money back then – you couldn’t do it yourself, you had to pay someone to do it.

Facebook back then was not used for business. It was just starting, and businesses on Facebook were not a thing. We had to adapt really fast and think outside the box, but it did take a few years of really struggling to find our feet again in our business.

We started doing video for Facebook, and later for TikTok, Instagram, and even YouTube. We started doing video showing cleaning transformations, also carpet cleaning transformations. It really gained a lot of traction very quickly. When I look back on them now, we were one of the first in our area, and maybe even in Australia, doing cleaning transformation videos like this about 12 years ago, and it kind of evolved from there.

Then we got better at making the videos, all on my phone. We don’t have any special equipment. We still don’t have special equipment. We just use our phone.

When TikTok came along, we jumped on TikTok, but we really didn’t know what we were doing. We were just showing cleaning transformations. Then we started to show how to do cleaning, because a lot of people don’t know how to clean. They were never raised in a home where cleaning was a thing.

For anyone that was raised that way, you kind of just take advantage that that’s normal for you. But there’s a lot of people who were never raised or taught how to clean or keep a house in order. The more we shared and showed people how to clean what, for some people, is just a normal thing to know, we realized that there’s a whole audience of people who are too embarrassed to ask for help on how to clean something. So they were really tuning into our content.

We were having other cleaners tune into our content because they wanted to start their own cleaning business, and they wanted to learn how to clean to start their business. So we just organically grew an audience through TikTok and now through Instagram. Facebook was where it started. It evolved from just sharing our knowledge that was second nature to us, showing people how to clean, what products to use – things like that just grew from there.

Finding Purpose Through Content Creation

Kate: It actually gave us a bigger purpose as well. We really felt that we were doing more than just cleaning for our clients, which in itself is an amazing job to have. You’re really helping people by offering that service. But this was my creative outlet. I really felt like I was doing something to help a bigger audience, and that was really rewarding to get that feedback.

The more we share, the more people say, “Thank you for this content. This has really helped me. I’m not in your city, but now I know how to do this in my own home,” or “I’m starting my cleaning business, and this has been really helpful.”

It gave me a creative outlet, and it just added excitement to our day. That content grew an audience daily, and that led to opportunities with brands. The brands would reach out to us and ask if we would do paid partnerships. They would send us their products, we would try them out, and they were paying really good money.

That money really helped us to launch our own cleaning products. It was just a dream, and it was like, “That would be amazing one day, we’d love to have our own products.” It was really just a dream, and it was like, “That only happens to other people,” to be able to do something like that, or people who have a lot of backing or a lot of money.

But just from creating content, seeing that there’s a real need for this type of content out there, sharing our experience, having brands reach out to us, paying us to talk about their products – that has just opened so many doors for us. It all just stemmed from putting ourselves out there, removing our ego. It’s not about us. It’s not about Pete and Jack. It was about “Who can we help with this content?”

As soon as we removed that ego and made it not about us, it just opened so many doors. So if you’re in a business and you’re looking for a creative outlet, or maybe you’re thinking about doing video, just prop the camera up and just start filming yourself. It doesn’t have to be scripted, doesn’t have to be polished. It’s just you being real and sharing.

We have so much to give in this industry and so much value that we can offer people, but we get that imposter syndrome, or “Who would be interested in what the cleaner has to say?”

The Power of Authentic Content

Stephanie: So inspiring when it comes to the product side. Everything that you’re saying really resonates with me. I had those same feelings when it came to putting content out there. From the very beginning, I was recording myself and putting it out on Facebook, and I look back at those videos and cringe, but it was talking about things that I cared about or thought about when it came to cleaning.

A lot of times you don’t realize who needs to hear that. Many times we tell ourselves, “Well, this has been said before,” or “There is no such thing as an original thought.” But it’s not said from you, and each of us have a very unique perspective and experience.

Even just talking to the podcast guests that I have – we’re all in the same industry. Cleaning is cleaning is cleaning. We’re all cleaning houses or businesses, whatever it is that we’re doing, but we have such wildly different backstories and perspectives and experiences. They really shape you – what did you do before this? All of these things make us very unique.

So to our listeners – do not be afraid to share what you think. Don’t be afraid to share your perspective, because you don’t know who needs to hear that. And you also don’t know, as Kate is saying, what opportunities can come from that. So many opportunities have come from me just propping the phone up and talking at it. That’s why you guys are all listening to this – because I was sharing. I was going through things, and I was sharing what was working, the funny things, the bad things, what mistakes that I’ve made.

That authenticity and being vulnerable – I’m glad you said not scripting it, because you don’t need to be perfect. The imperfection is much more relatable, because none of us are perfect. We don’t edit out the mistakes or blurbs that we do wrong in this.

Kate: The mistakes are what makes it more relatable and more endearing as well. For me, when I’ve been cleaning for all these years, I would put on my headphones and listen to a podcast, and that’s what often would get me through a day. It would get me through an oven clean. It would get me through a job, putting something on that really inspired me.

Some days in cleaning, honestly, it can be really demoralizing. It can be really “What am I doing? Where am I going?”

Stephanie: For sure, I’ve cried at many cleans. I’m like, “What is happening right now?”

Kate: You need to feed your brain. Podcasts and things can keep you on track. You may not know what that track is or what that goal is, but it’s just keeping your head in the game and not letting you lose focus on the bigger picture, not the thing that’s right in front of you – that oven, that moldy shower.

You can feel really defeated some days. Having podcasts like this, or anything that resonates with you, helps you get through your job, keeps you motivated and focused and inspired.

That’s why we love doing content, and it’s not about us. You’ve created this podcast, and it’s not about you. It’s about who you can help and serve and the message, and that’s what content is all about.

Creating Content with Purpose

Stephanie: I think coming at it from that perspective of keeping that in mind – this isn’t about you, even if you’re sharing stories about you. There’s a goal with this, whether it be to educate, to inspire, to empathize, to make somebody feel like they’re not alone. These are the goals.

Just talking on motivation – you think that we’re always motivated to get up and get going? No, you borrow motivation from other people. That is what I love so much about content – it can change the state that you’re in, your mental state. It can completely change it.

That’s why, literally, every day I’m watching YouTube or whatever I’m doing, even to clean my own house. I need to put a video on of somebody else cleaning. I know it’s so much harder to clean your own house when you’ve been cleaning professionally.

What would you suggest, tactically speaking? What things have done well for you? It sounds like it’s very authentic, very personable, and from the heart, but are these voiceovers of cleanings? Is it a variety of things? Is it you talking through or talking at the camera while you are doing it?

And additionally, being that this is definitely serving others, when it comes to getting local clients, have you seen that work? I have talked to several people where they have a pretty good audience on Instagram or wherever, but it’s not converting to actual cleaning clients for them. Do you have any suggestions on how to get clients out of this?

Kate: Mostly with the content, it’s a combination, and we’ve gotten better over time, and we’ve really found what works for our audience. But again, it’s not polished. It is real cleaning content, and I think that’s why people like it, because we don’t sugar coat it.

We are hot and sweaty, and we are on our hands and knees scrubbing, and we will show the good, the bad, and the ugly of the industry. And we’ll also show the good parts as well. So it’s really relatable content. A lot of cleaners enjoy it because they feel seen in our content.

With the videos, it could be just propping up the phone, and it just be content of me cleaning, but then I’ll do a voiceover where I’m telling a story or about our journey, or what works for us in our business, or how we work with clients.

Other times I will actually demonstrate how I’m cleaning something or how I’m using a particular product and why this product’s great and what it does. And I’ll talk to camera. We just edit through TikTok or CapCut. I’m not using any special editing software.

It’s just about going to a job and propping your phone up and forgetting it’s even there, and just having this bank of content on your phone that you can pull out at any time when you feel inspired to create content. It doesn’t have to be, “Oh, today is a content day, and I’m going to do all of this.” That’s so much pressure. We do have days like that now, but it was never like that. It was just, “I’m just going to prop the phone up and see what comes of it.”

As far as getting clients in our local area from our content, we still find Facebook is the best way to do that, because it’s a more local kind of audience we have on Facebook. We do get inquiries now via TikTok and Instagram for cleaning clients, but our focus has shifted because our business has now evolved from the day-to-day cleaning.

We still do the cleaning. We do still have cleaning clients, and we still do that, but we’re so busy now in our new business that has come from all of this – our Clean Like a Pro products – that we aren’t grasping for the clients like we used to.

It’s really nice to have that now, because we’ve been desperate for so many years to have cleaning clients and enough cleaning work to keep us and our staff in business. But it’s really refreshing, and it’s kind of a little bit unnerving sometimes, that we aren’t reliant on that like we have been for 13 years.

You can still get your clients through socials. You just have to be very direct with it. “I’m on the Gold Coast. These are the services we offer.” Just have to be very direct with your message and your call to action when you do content on, say, TikTok, and put your location tag on with your content too, so people know where you’re located, and it will hone in more on that local audience.

Every social media channel can be very overwhelming – which one do I focus on? It just depends on the goals. We find that local community Facebook groups can be a double-edged sword – great, and it also can be really not great, because of the quality of clients you can get through there.

Stephanie: People are ridiculous in those groups.

Kate: It’s a battle in those groups, with every cleaner in the community all vying to get that customer, and it’s like, who could be the cheapest? So it was good for a certain time in our business, but we rarely go into those groups now, or rarely will get recommended. But we’re not in there saying, “Look at us, look at us.”

Stephanie: That’s the best one – when your clients are recommending you, and you don’t even have to. That’s the ultimate because then you don’t have to get your hands dirty, figuratively.

Kate: We run Facebook ads again. We don’t have a huge budget for that, or we don’t put a huge budget into that – it’s just enough to fill our weeks. And that’s fine for us at the moment. We’re not in growth mode for our actual cleaning business anymore. It’s enough where we’re at because our focus has shifted.

Which is amazing that in this industry, it could open up so many doors. For so many years, we were so tunnel vision on one particular thing, thinking, “This is it, this is all we can do, and it’s not going to get better than this.” And then as soon as you start doing things a little bit different – that was content for us, getting on video – it opened up doors we didn’t even know were there.

And now it seems like a knock-on effect. We open one door, and then we dabble in there, or we work on something in there, and then something else opens up. So now it feels like we’re in momentum, and it’s very nice after a decade plus of really trying to find our thing in this industry.

But every part of the process or the journey has served a purpose at that time, and it’s all led to this point, and this point is going to lead to who knows where. That’s the exciting bit.

Embracing the Unknown in Business

Stephanie: It is. I don’t know where my business is going to be in five years, and that’s super exciting. I just hope it’s still open. That’s the goal, right? And other than that, it’s just like, who knows?

We’ve had insane opportunities come our way that if you had told me when I opened that, “Hey, in three years, this insane thing’s going to happen to you,” I’d be like, “You’re the insane one. There’s no way.” But it’s just doing the right things, putting in the work every single day.

By that I mean consistently doing the things that you know are gonna move the needle. If you know that you get leads from Facebook, keep posting on Facebook. If you know that you get leads from Google, keep getting Google reviews. If they come from your website, keep making your website better. Keep doing SEO articles.

Trust the data, don’t just be guessing. And also think about where your market is hanging out. Do you think that dual-income couples in their 40s are on TikTok looking for a cleaning company? Probably not.

So if you’re spending all of your time trying to get your TikTok up, but it’s only other cleaning business owners who are watching you, that’s fabulous if you’re selling to cleaning business owners, but you’re not – you’re trying to get clients. So really think about where your audience is hanging out.

That’s why it’s really important to say, who am I serving? Who is my ideal client? Because if they’re not using that social media, or if they’re only using it for entertainment purposes and not to find clients, then what’s the point? It takes a lot of time and effort to make good content and to make it work.

Kate: When we started our TikTok, it wasn’t called our cleaning business name. We have our Facebook, which is called something completely different – that’s our actual cleaning business.

When we started TikTok, I don’t know why I thought this at the time, because I never envisaged where we are now, but I just knew I didn’t want it to be about getting cleaning clients. I wanted it to be a bigger something. It was my creative outlet, so the content was Clean Like a Pro, because I wanted to help people, teach people, and show people how to clean.

It took a lot of time, but that has now paid off. It’s paying off now. A lot of people won’t want to be able to or want to put in that amount of time without seeing an immediate return.

It is really hard when you try and juggle a business and create content for something you’re not getting an immediate financial return from. If you have a bigger vision, and you can see yourself doing something bigger than the day-to-day cleaning, you have to put in hard yards without seeing any immediate result. There’s no other way around it.

You just have to say, “I’m doing this content. Yes, it means an extra half an hour at this cleaning job that’s out of my pocket, not the client.” We clean empty houses, so it’s easy to make content – we’re not in someone’s living room. So it’s just that extra half an hour I have to work today. It’s going to be an extra half an hour longer at this job, but it’s for a bigger goal.

You just have to say, that’s what it’s going to take and be consistent with it. If your goal is to have something bigger or different to what you’re doing now, it just requires sacrifice for an extended period of time. But it opens up so many doors.

Finding Joy in Sharing Knowledge

Stephanie: It does. And honestly, especially if that just is what you enjoy. Years ago in the ZenMaid mastermind, I started just making videos showing other cleaning owners, “Hey, this is what we’re doing for this” or “This is how we do group interviews.” I look back at that video, and I’m just this little child talking about group interviews, but I still share it with people. It’s still useful.

It was just fun – it’s really exciting to share what is working for you. I’m such an extrovert, and I really like connecting with other people. So I have a feeling that you enjoyed that sense of connection. Being of value feels great, it really does.

If you can be of value to not only your cleaning clients, but to our fellow industry people – that’s something I do love about our industry. Though it can be very lonely at times, it also feels very close-knit, weirdly enough, and I think that’s because of our community groups.

Kate: That’s what I also got from it. We’re an owner-operator business. This is our 17th year. A lot of the time we have felt isolated and disconnected and lonely. So for us, the content and connecting with other cleaning businesses or just the general public, we felt connected to people, and it was like having a community that was directly linked to us.

For so many years we didn’t have that, and I never felt like I got that from Facebook. But now with TikTok, that’s what opened up for me. I think we’ve been on TikTok three and a half years, maybe. But in the beginning, I really didn’t take it seriously. I just played around with it, and I posted one week, and then a month later, I might post. I didn’t really understand the power of TikTok or the content.

But the more I started to see the reaction, the more I was encouraged and I felt drawn to create the content. It just depends what your goals are. If your goal is to have a great client base and to fill your week and make enough income to live whatever life it is that you want with the actual cleaning, then that’s fantastic.

If you have another goal that is beyond the day-to-day cleaning, then great. Everyone’s on their own journey, and everyone’s mind will change a million times.

For us, the catalyst, the thing that really changed for us was putting ourselves out there and creating content. I’m an introvert, so to start doing that was really scary.

Stephanie: It was a big growth thing for you too, just putting that out there, and like talking to strangers, because that’s what you’re doing.

Kate: You would never know that I’m introverted.

Stephanie: I would never know!

Kate: That’s just from so many videos. You just kind of put it behind you and go, “Okay, well, nobody knows what I’m really like.”

Protecting Privacy While Creating Content

Stephanie: One thing I wanted to mention, just because you are in vacant homes – this is something for our listeners to think about from a very practical, liability sense. If you’re going to be filming in people’s houses, make sure in your client guidelines you have a marketing release clause.

In our client guidelines that everybody signs, it says we can take video and photos for marketing purposes unless they opt out. They need to physically tell us that they do not want us to do that.

No matter if they do or don’t allow it, we always avoid having any personal photos, family photos, or you know how people have their names on things. Never, ever want to have that in video, any pictures or kids, whatever. So just be cognizant of what is around you when you’re doing that.

If you do commercial cleanings, same thing – you don’t want to be showing anything that could be private information. Make sure that you are doing that, as well as with our employees – we have them sign a marketing release as well, to ensure that we’ve got our butts covered and that they are okay with us taking video of them or putting them on our social media. We never want to put somebody out there that is uncomfortable.

It’s way easier in empty houses. Those are the best. Vacant homes are the best for content, because you don’t have to worry about any of that.

Kate: We still have that on our website, and we still send that in our terms and conditions when we provide quotes – “We may film in this vacant house. Are you okay with that?” We’ve never had anybody say no, but we always send that out when we’re providing quotes.

And same with staff – we always make sure we don’t film our staff really so much. But if they do appear in some capacity, they’ve given permission to do that, to be on that footage. This is so important, because you don’t want your employees to leave, and then they say, “I didn’t allow you to use my image.”

Stephanie: Exactly. So just cover your behinds, guys. That’s why I just wanted to mention it, because before you go out and film every client’s house you have and then not have them agree to anything – we have had it happen a couple times where they’re like, “Please don’t share the before and afters,” even though they’re completely anonymous. I think they’re just like, “My friends will recognize my house in that, and I don’t want that.”

Kate: We don’t show the facade of a house, it’s always making sure that we don’t show the street or the front or certain things. It’s more so close-ups of showers or ovens or that sort of thing. But you really do need to cover yourself, and it’s just a mutual respect between you and your clients and your staff as well.

Clean Like a Pro Products

Stephanie: Absolutely. So great thing to touch on. When it comes to your products, Kate, I know that they’re super duper natural and effective. Would love just to hear the variety of products that you have as well as – is this something other cleaners are purchasing? Is this something that our audience could check out online?

Kate: This April, it’s one year since we launched. When we launched the products, we wanted to create products that are for cleaners, but also for everyday home use. It wasn’t just for cleaners, but naturally, we’ve had a lot of cleaners buy our products, and they use them every day in their cleaning businesses.

We wanted to launch with a core product that you could go into a vacate clean and that’s all you needed. It would cover everything, and it would also cover things like mold in showers or really greasy ovens or range hood filters and things like that.

So we launched with five core products, but two of those were real problem solvers – mold and really built-up shower screens. It’s always nice to have those products in your toolkit as backups in case you do walk into a house and you’re like, “Oh, I need more than just a multi-purpose cleaner here.”

We have five products, and then we launched another product about three months after we had launched our initial products, and that was for pet odors. It’s a probiotic cleaner. So if you’re on a septic tank or bio cycle tank water, you can put this in your toilets and things like that. It actually is a septic tank enhancer.

Stephanie: Wow, that’s such a good idea, because I’ve had that where the water literally stinks at a client’s house.

Kate: You’re really restricted when you’re on tank water on what you can and can’t use to clean your house. You can’t use antibacterial cleaners, you can’t use any kind of bleaches or anything like that – very restricted.

So we really wanted a product to add to our already five products that were doing amazing – a product for people who are on tank water or septic or bio cycle. That has been one of our best sellers, one because of that market of people who need that, but it’s also great for pet odors. So cleaning out kitty litters, or if there’s been a pet accident on the carpet, it helps to neutralize the odors, get rid of that bacteria that causes that foul odor.

We have a mix of people who buy our products. A lot of cleaners swear by them now, which is really validating, because we knew we loved them, and we created them and tested them for months to make sure they were good enough.

We put them through their paces at the worst vacate cleans you can think of. As soon as I would walk into a house that was extreme, I’m thinking, “I’m so excited to test out our products here.” We tested them for four months at so many vacate cleans, and then we’re like, “Yep, these are good enough.” We made a few tweaks as we went.

It all came from our brains. We didn’t engage branding specialists because we didn’t have the money to do that. So we really just wanted some bright, colorful, happy, cheerful products – more cheer, less chore type thing.

So it’s 10 months since we launched, and we’re on track to hit seven figures in our first 12 months.

Stephanie: Congratulations. That’s so exciting. And to hear that you put them through the paces like that, because I’ve definitely tried products before where I’m like, “Did they just spend all the money on the packaging because this doesn’t work? This is doing nothing.”

Kate: A lot of cleaning products have aesthetically beautiful bottles. But the promotion of them is they’re tested in these beautiful, already clean showrooms. It’s already a spotless, beautiful kitchen.

We’re on our hands and knees, sweating, rather than standing in a beautiful, polished kitchen in beige linen outfits. We were really there in the depth of these really dirty vacate cleans, and it was so exciting to test them out in that environment and to get the results we did.

I think that’s why a lot of cleaners jumped on and gave our products a try. They are reordering – we have a huge reordering customer base because we tested them in real-world cleaning environments, and they do what we say they do.

Cleaning Horror Stories

Stephanie: You literally just triggered a cleaning memory that I totally forgot about for years now. It was years ago, and we were doing a cleaning for a landlord, and she had houses in the college town that we serve. So this was a frat house, and I swear to God that they dropped a pizza in the bottom of the oven and just never removed it and just continued to bake it into the bottom of the oven. It was the worst oven I’ve ever seen in my life.

Kate: A lot of special tools.

Stephanie: I remember opening it and being like, “Oh no, pepperoni.” We did like three move-outs in that day. Oh, that was a hell day. Oh, God, no wonder I forgot about it. I was repressing it.

Kate: We all certainly see a lot in this industry.

Where to Find Clean Like a Pro Products

Stephanie: Where do you ship your products to? Where can your customers be from?

Kate: At the moment, it’s still only Australia. We’re relaunching New Zealand again in the next few weeks – there were logistic customs issues, but that’s all been sorted. So we’re relaunching New Zealand, which the Kiwis are really happy about. And we keep getting requests for the US.

Stephanie: I was just gonna say, can you send me a box?

Kate: How do we get them there? It’s just, you know, so challenging.

Stephanie: It is challenging.

Kate: Because it’s a cleaning product, because it’s liquid, because it’s heavy. But we’re constantly trying to find ways that we can get our products into more countries next. It’s only been eight months.

Stephanie: I mean a year from now – I mean, you guys are still – that is so wildly impressive in that short of time. So you should absolutely be proud of yourself. Definitely whenever they’re available, you let me know, because I would love to give these a try.

We’ll definitely link your website Kate in the description below, so any of our listeners can go check out the products, especially our Australian listeners and New Zealand listeners. Would love for you guys to check out Kate’s product. Anything else you would like our listeners to know about? Where can they follow you? Because I want to go watch your content, obviously.

Clean Like a Pro Social Media

Kate: So TikTok is “Just a Clean Up, Clean Like a Pro.” I’ll tell you about this real quick. I wear this t-shirt with pride because we are often told we are “just a clean up” and to shut our mouths and just do our job and not have an opinion.

But we are very valuable in society, and I think cleaners need to really know that about themselves. We’re not “just a cleaner,” or we are “just a cleaner” – what’s wrong with being just a cleaner? We are helping. We are essential workers, and the world is unimaginable without cleaners. It would be diabolical.

So never be embarrassed to say you’re a cleaner, and there are big opportunities within this industry. You just got to go for it.

Stephanie: Wear it with pride, absolutely, because it’s something to be proud of. To do something people can look down upon, but to do it at such a high level – that is something to take pride in.

When I look at my staff, I could sing their praises. Almost all of my staff came from “professional” jobs or careers. And the eyebrows get raised when they switch over to working for us, and it’s like – they’re making more money. They actually see their family.

Kate: More money than somebody who went to university or has a degree or has a corporate job they don’t like. We need to change that. We deserve every dollar we get. And I’m not going to be embarrassed about the money I make. We work hard, and we deserve it. So absolutely, went to uni, fantastic, if you didn’t, okay, whatever. Become a cleaner if you want to make more money.

Stephanie: No, for sure. And actually have a visceral before and after – like, you made a difference today. You’re not just some cog in the machine. You are literally making people’s lives better today. And I can’t think of anything better to do with your time. I literally can’t.

It’s a wonderful profession, and I say it with pride, and I always will – that this is an amazing thing to do. I like to break the stereotypes of what a cleaner is or should be, and what is possible in this industry as well. You can become filthy rich as a cleaner. I mean, hence the name of the podcast.

Kate: I won’t be embarrassed about that at all.

Stephanie: Well, we’ll definitely check you out Kate and link all of your socials down below. This has been awesome. Can’t wait to listen to all the other episodes.

Kate: I’m really happy that somebody’s made a podcast like this. I think it’s really exciting for the industry that we have something to listen to and inspire us. So thank you.

Stephanie: Absolutely. Between that and the true crime, you know, we gotta have some inspiration between the murder stories. So thank you so much, Kate, and thank you guys for watching. Definitely hit that subscribe. Hit that like. Hit the little notification bell so you know when the new episodes drop every Tuesday and Thursday, and we will see you in the next episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners.

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

• ZenMaid
• Clean Like a Pro products
• Yellow Pages
• TikTok – Clean Like a Pro
• Instagram – Clean Like a Pro
• Facebook
• CapCut (video editing app)
• Realestate.com.au
• ZenMaid Mastermind