Filthy Rich Cleaners Podcast E29: How She Merged With Her Competitor and Built a Cleaning Empire Together

Introduction

Coming up next on the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast: “Being a skilled cleaning technician is so much more complex than people think. If I get like, six to 10 months out of someone, I’m like, ‘Oh, thank you, Lord.'”

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 Dayane Silva from Washe Cleaning

Stephanie: Hello everyone and welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast, the cleaning business podcast, and I’m your host, Stephanie Pipkin. Today’s guest, Dayane, is the owner of Washe Cleaning Services, and she has quite the incredible story. I can’t wait for you guys to hear her entire story, as well as the unique combination of multiple businesses at once with her partner. So Dayane, first and foremost, thank you so much for joining me. It’s a pleasure to have you.

Dayane: Oh, thank you for inviting me. It’s such a pleasure to be here today.

Stephanie: And you have grown your business to darn near a million dollars in revenue now. When did you start your business?

Starting from Scratch in a New Country

Dayane: I started when I arrived to the US. I’m from Brazil, so coming to a different country and starting over was a very unique thing for me. That’s how I started the cleaning business. I needed to do something to survive, and I was looking at all the areas to work. Everything else seemed to not have the potential growth that I saw in the cleaning business.

So I started going as a helper in other cleaning companies. I learned and got experience with other people. And then I was like, I think it’s time for me to start my own business. I think that was two years after I started.

Stephanie: Wow. I think I saw, did you not know English when you came to America?

Dayane: No.

Stephanie: Oh my gosh, so you were learning English as well. That’s amazing!

Dayane: When I arrived, I decided to dedicate myself to learning the process of the cleaning business as well as English. I hired a teacher, and I really dug down into everything. I tried to study as much as possible so I could potentially grow.

I do tell everyone that you do not need to know English fully, because especially here in Florida, where we are, there are a lot of immigrants. I always advise them, you do not need full English to make your business happen. But if you do have it, there are more opportunities for you to grow, because network is out there, and we need to communicate.

Early Business Challenges

Stephanie: What areas were challenging for you in that transition from working in others’ companies to opening your own? Were there any areas that were really nerve-wracking, or where you felt the least certain when it came to running and operating the business? Or were you kind of like me, where I was very naive, and I was grateful for that naivety, because I was like, “It’s all going great, and it’s not hard” until I actually bumped up against those challenges?

Dayane: Honestly, that’s a good question, but not really. I was actually on the naive side too. I was willing to just go everywhere, because all I wanted was to grow. To this day, we’re still okay going everywhere. But of course, we just have some areas where I think you just need to be more smart about it. As long as you’re aware, you should be fine.

Stephanie: I think so too. And knowing that we all have areas to grow, and still to this day, no matter what – you’re always growing, you’re always learning and not expecting yourself to be perfect. It is just a practice, and we mess up, whether that be in sales or closing sales or pricing. I mean, we’ve all made pricing mistakes – every single one of us – where we’ve completely under-bid or had to hang our head and go back to the customer and say, “I need more money.”

Pricing and Target Market Evolution

Dayane: Oh, that happens all the time, especially when you just started. To this day, I still have clients with the old price, and it’s hard to change, but it’s good to have the old clients as well.

It’s very interesting because right now, we do have areas that we used to work in a lot, and we don’t offer service there anymore. It’s not that we don’t, but it’s very rare that we offer service in those areas or market in those areas. Because they’re not our potential clients – they’re not in our range.

Stephanie: Who would you define as your ideal client? You guys do mostly residential, right?

Dayane: Yes, mostly residential. Our ideal client is the regular household family that works. Medium family with two kids, four kids sometimes, and they work full-time, regular jobs. It’s not the rich people.

I always advertise our company as an affordable cleaning service, and that’s on purpose. A lot of times I have friends that share experience and they want to reach wealthy clients. We don’t want to advertise for the million-dollar houses. That’s just a thing for us, because we’re not either.

Finding the Right Clients

Stephanie: People can definitely be out of touch as to what is an appropriate price. I’ve seen a huge spectrum on that. Really wealthy people – I’ve also seen them be very unreasonable and fairly disrespectful as well, where those middle class folks are super respectful, super appreciative, because they’re very busy. Not saying rich people can’t be incredibly busy – obviously, they’re rich for a reason – but that doesn’t mean the middle class isn’t a wonderful place to target and also just feel very appreciated as well.

Dayane: 100%. And honestly, to draw what is your perfect potential client, I think you need to do a combination of factors. It’s the same that we do for cleaners as well. Not everyone is made to work for us. It’s a combination of small factors that you as a company need to create your checklist for.

For us, it’s more easy to work with those middle class clients. It’s a bigger range, more volume – more houses we can get, more clients we can get. Those richer clients are a smaller percentage, so it’s harder to target those people. The competition is way bigger in those areas too. We leave this fight.

Dealing with Competition in Florida

Stephanie: Florida in general, I mean, I think that’s the biggest number of cleaning services are in Florida. I believe Florida, Texas, Georgia, I know have really high numbers of cleaning businesses. That’s just going off of where ZenMaid’s customers are. Florida, Texas, Georgia – there’s a ton of them because there are lots of cleaning businesses and lots of people who are interested in outsourcing cleaning.

When it comes to competition from other businesses, early on, was there anything you did to stand out? Or how were you getting your customers in the beginning?

Dayane: In the beginning, I was very big on the Facebook group communities. That’s the tip that I give to all my friends who are just starting: go out there.

Because as a cleaner, I was just a cleaning lady. I wasn’t a cleaning business, even if I had everything set up. There is a difference. I knew that I was just a cleaning lady, and I wanted people to feel comfortable trusting me. “Hey, I’m here. I’m Dayane. I’m just starting this. I need some clients.” And people are willing to give you an opportunity.

Today, I know they’re giving the company the opportunity, and they know it’s not me going to do the cleaning. It’s my team, and there is a whole structure of company that I didn’t have before. So I started like this, as a young person trying to get some clients here and there. It was good because I gained a lot of experience and trust and a lot of referrals. I think that was very important to build my confidence to have the company structure like we have right now.

Transitioning from Solo Cleaner to Business Owner

Stephanie: A question I see often in the Facebook groups, and I know I experienced this challenge as well, is when I was the main cleaner, just as you were for your clients, and trying to get them off of me, onto cleaners. Everybody asks, “How do you do that?” I guess my answer is that it’s not like you snap your fingers and it happens. It was very painful for me, because cleaners didn’t work out, or they weren’t good, and that client would say, “See, I only want you. You’re the best.”

While that feels good, it doesn’t feel good as a business owner, because you’re like, “I need to get out of the field.” Do you have any practical advice for our listeners when it comes to making that transition actually happen and stick?

Dayane: Yes, I do. We transitioned multiple times during the process. One thing, the most important thing is to be aware that you might lose clients, and you should be okay with that. That’s rule number one. Don’t be afraid of losing clients, because sometimes people are not willing to stay with your company if it’s not you out there.

That’s when I mentioned the difference between being a cleaning lady and being a cleaning business. Sometimes clients want a cleaning lady. They want to stick with that person. When you want to switch your company to this major, bigger level, you need to understand that your company is not going to be a match for maybe your old clients. Maybe it’s not what they’re looking for.

Accepting that is already a relief from the pressure of “Oh my goodness, I’m losing clients.” Yes, you’re losing some, but you’re going to get more, and these new ones are going to be in your new system. They don’t know the old system.

The second thing is to go step by step. Don’t just disappear and start sending people. Yes, they are going to feel uncomfortable. It’s the same to this day – if we have a team, and this team, for some reason, didn’t work out with us, our clients were used to them. So we say, “Hey, we had this cleaner. Something happened, so they’re not in the company anymore. We are sending a new one. But we’re going to go out there. We’re sending our trainer. We’re going to check. We’re going to follow up. Hey, how was your cleaning?”

We have a structure that we need to follow up very hard with this client, because we want to make sure that they understand that we care very much about them. I think that’s the major thing that we always do.

Strategies for Successful Staff Transitions

Stephanie: The follow-up process is key. Don’t just think that it’s the easy way out to say, “Oh great. I can put this cleaner on there and I don’t have to go or do anything else.” It’s not that easy if you want this to be a successful transition.

We experienced that recently. We promoted my former cleaning tech, Hannah, and she got a promotion for a reason. She is now our lead trainer, and she does all of the quality control. She’s the perfect person for it. However, her clients – that was a tough one. They wanted her because clearly, she’s very good. That’s why we’re having her be the trainer.

So what we did was we had Hannah go with the new assigned cleaner, who was still a seasoned cleaner, but for those clients that were just so in love with her, we had them go at least two times with Hannah so that they learned the house. Even though we follow standardized checklists, we wanted to make sure we nailed it, since it was a pretty big transition all at once. We were getting a bunch of clients off of her, so we didn’t want to have a bunch of people unhappy at once.

And honestly, it went so smoothly because we took that time. They went several times, we made sure the notes were super accurate. That’s a great tip too, I think. Even if you follow checklists like we do and standardize everything, it doesn’t mean that you don’t add specific notes to the different clients’ houses to make that next cleaner successful. And that’s something you can tell your cleaners to do. “If you want to make sure that this client is happy, they’re very particular about the corners of the floors or whatever,” and then you can just make sure that you’re nailing it. You’re not getting an unnecessary complaint.

Client Relationships Go Beyond Cleaning

Dayane: Absolutely. One thing that at least we’ve noticed here, and for me it’s a very important thing that I understand about clients, sometimes they don’t care about the cleaning itself. It’s not about the cleaning. You can check every single item on the checklist and get a perfect clean done. It’s about the person that was there. It’s so intimate – they’re in their clothes, in their space.

I hear from my clients, “Oh, the cleanings are amazing, but you set the bar so high. We loved you.” So it’s about us, because it’s not just the cleaning itself. The teams do an amazing job, but it’s the fact that we care a little bit. It’s the personal touch, the approach, how we talk. It’s remembering their kids’ names and asking about them.

Stephanie: It really is such a personality thing as well, and that’s why for hiring cleaners, it’s not just about whether they can clean. Being a skilled cleaning technician is so much more complex than people think, and I know that you nail it with your team. Finding great people, having really good retention. I definitely want to focus heavily on that in this conversation, because you are so good at it to have basically no turnover, right? For years, you have the same people, which is amazing in our industry. If I get like, six to 10 months out of someone, I’m like, “Oh, thank you, Lord,” because it’s a very high turnover industry, even if you do have an amazing culture. Please share your secrets.

Business Structure and Recent Changes

Dayane: You know what’s interesting, Stephanie? We actually just had a very major transition since October. We had a system in our company, which was the commission system, and it was very good and amazing for years, but we are starting to change that.

What happened was, all the cleaners that we had could choose their own schedule with limitations. It was complex, but it worked, and we were very happy with that. We’ve done that since the start of this actual company. I started seven years ago, and then about three years ago, I merged with my partner. She had her own business, I had mine, and we decided to combine, because the operations were demanding a lot. If I would hire a lot of people to help me, I would rather just have a partner. For me, it made more sense.

Stephanie: Did you use the same name or come up with a new business name?

Dayane: We came up with a new business. It was like a rebranding, basically. We did that on purpose to make sure that clients understood that it was a major change in the business. We didn’t keep any of our old branding. So she closed her company, I closed mine, and we decided to build a brand new one.

Stephanie: And all your staff merged together into one company?

Dayane: All the staff merged together. One of the reasons we decided to merge was we were friends, and we were using our staff together. She had her clients and she would say, “Hey, my cleaner couldn’t do it. Can you send your cleaner?” We were changing staff. So they already knew each other.

It was a crazy thing, but it was working. But we were like, “Let’s make this formal. We need to organize this better.” It was a phase where we were really trying to structure the company well and take a step to do that.

Then last October, we decided to study a lot about how to grow the business and scale the business even more. We realized that with the dynamic that we had inside of the company, it wasn’t working for the scheduling. Juliana, my partner, deals with the scheduling daily, and she was going crazy.

The Independent Contractor Model

Stephanie: Losing her mind?

Dayane: Yes, losing her mind. It was a lot of change because we gave so much flexibility. I think one of the big advantages we had was this scheduling flexibility inside of the company. Most other cleaning companies didn’t have that. So our retention and people willing to work with us was so high because this was very unique.

The cleaner could choose like, “I can work with you on Monday, Wednesday and Fridays, but Tuesday and Thursday I can have my own clients. I can do my own thing. I can work for somebody else if I want.”

Stephanie: These are independent contractors, not employees?

Dayane: Yes, everybody was independent contractors. We had only a few, I would say half of the staff was part-time and the other half was full-time. But even with the full-time, sometimes it was a little hard to deal with their scheduling.

So we decided to change that last October. We started the transition, and unfortunately, a lot of people didn’t want the new system. We knew that would happen. We knew that once you’re an independent contractor, you might not want to be an employee and work on set terms. So we made this change, but it was very successful. We didn’t lose a lot of clients, which was great.

We also had something that was very beautiful to see on Christmas. We did our annual Christmas party, and we saw how beautiful it was to keep the teams together. To this day we still have this team culture, and all the new girls that we just hired could hear and see and feel all this. So it’s beautiful to see the progress of something. Even if you change things, it doesn’t mean that the doors are closed. They can come back and work for us at any time.

The good part is, we had a lot of these people who left contacting us to try to come back. It was beautiful to see. We’re like, “Wow, that’s amazing.” It’s so beautiful to see things like that. We also promoted one of our technicians to be our trainer, because we want more quality control. She’s someone that’s been with us since we opened, so three years now. It’s nice to have people that are willing to put the shirt on and say, “Hey, I’m here for you guys,” because we’re here for them too. It’s a combination of two things.

Business Evolution and Scaling Challenges

Stephanie: You just said so many things! My mind is going in a million different directions with questions. Overarchingly, the theme I’m getting from what you’re saying is: what got you to where you are at a certain stage – for our listeners, whatever got you to 50 appointments a month, 100 appointments a month – that’s not necessarily going to get you to 200. Or if we want to talk about revenue, get you from $10,000 a month to $100,000 a month.

It’s not going to be the same stuff. You’re going to have to evolve. Some things that were working really well don’t scale. What you’re describing with the scheduling – letting them choose their own schedule – that does not scale when it comes to operations, because you need to streamline as much as possible.

Scheduling will always be one of the biggest challenges of our business. It’s complicated; it’s like a Tetris puzzle. If you’re letting the cleaners do that and being very flexible (I’m not saying you can’t be flexible – we’re incredibly flexible), but it needs to be standardized. “Okay, you work three days a week, and these are the shifts that you are available. That means we can book you.” You can always change that, but that’s a static change. That’s how we go about being very flexible but also giving security to your clients, so that you’re not changing everything all the time.

I’d imagine your partner was having to change a lot of things on clients when it came to scheduling, because you were kind of catering more to the cleaners than the clients. I’m not saying don’t do that, but it’s a balance.

Dayane: It is. For a long time, it worked very well, because the cleaners already had set schedules. Sometimes we wouldn’t talk with them for like a month because the schedule was so perfect. Unless the client canceled or changed something, it was just a rotation. So it was good.

But as we grew, we started to have issues: where are we going to put these new clients? What are we going to do with one-time cleanings? So we felt that pressure.

Also, as independent contractors, they wanted to grow too. So their schedule started changing: “I was going to work five days a week. Now I can only work four,” and then a few months later, “I can only work three.” Because they are independent people, they wanted to have their own business as well.

We do have people that work with us who don’t want to open a cleaning business. They just want to work. They don’t want to deal with clients or the whole business aspect. They just want to do their thing and go back home. But we also have people who are willing to grow. They want to get their own business going on.

We’re okay with that. We support that. We want them to grow too. Any advice and tips that we can give, we do. We don’t view them as competitors just because they want to grow their own thing. Of course, we do have rules.

Handling Client and Contractor Relationships

Stephanie: I was just going to ask. Have you ever had an independent contractor steal clients?

Dayane: We never had that happen, but we’ve had situations. We had one cleaner who bought a cleaning business – she bought a whole schedule of clients for herself. She said, “I’m not going to be able to work for you guys after August, because I bought my own schedule, so I’m going to leave the company.” I said, “Not a problem at all.”

Once she left, we started our process of transitioning her clients to the new team. We had one specific client that said, “I don’t want you guys. I want her.” And we just let this client go.

Before, especially my partner, we had this concern about “Oh my goodness, the cleaner is going to steal clients.” I’m relaxed about that now. Because you know what? We can’t control clients. If she’s going to cancel with me to go work with her, she could also cancel to go with any other cleaning company – a franchise, anyone. So let her go.

When a cleaner does something that violates our terms – like directly approaching the client, leaving a flyer inside the client’s home while working with us, or advertising to the neighbors during work hours – this is not allowed. But if a client just wants to let us go and hire somebody else, what’s the difference if she’s hiring our former cleaner or a new company? It’s not our client anymore.

Having that open mentality makes you less freaked out about what’s going on.

Controlling What You Can Control

Stephanie: Focusing on what you can control and putting out the best possible service you can, making it so professional, and remembering what we can provide as companies. As we’re growing – and some of you listening may be just starting out, or cleaning for somebody else right now – what people really enjoy is professionalism and prompt communication.

A lot of times, individual cleaners or smaller outfits can’t provide that because they’re in the field. I know for myself, I was in the field cleaning. I’d be in a bathroom cleaning and texting and emailing back other clients because I didn’t have anybody in the office. I knew I had to seem as professional as possible, even though I was physically cleaning and didn’t have an office person.

Dayane: I know exactly how you felt when I needed to stop doing the cleaning. I had a helper, and at the end of the day, the helper was doing pretty much everything, because half of my day I was on the phone, answering, picking up calls.

Stephanie: You know how it is – if you don’t answer right away, your potential client goes to your competitor. I also felt so frazzled trying to handle that stuff while I’m in the field. And I wasn’t organized either. I’d just verbally set a price and it would be gone. I wasn’t doing call recording at the time either, so retaining that information was impossible.

That’s where having ZenMaid was very useful. I could add the notes in the app right there. But either way, my operations were definitely messy while I was in the field, because that’s just how it is.

I know that you guys definitely made a lot of big leaps and bounds operationally. And what I mean by that is how you run the business day to day to make it smoother. Dayane had some really big growth spurts when it came to that, because it sounds like you were pretty stuck when it came to running the business. You were doing everything by paper, right? All of the scheduling?

Moving from Paper to Systems

Dayane: Yes, I had a picture with my partner a few years ago. We had like four paper calendars. It was a mess. Not only were we losing money during the day, but we’d forget things. We’d talk with a client while cleaning a bathroom, and then all of a sudden, forget to put this client on the schedule. We’d forget to answer back that client. A client would ask us to do something extra, and we’d answer yes, but then forget to record it. It’s literally gone. Our minds don’t hold all that information. We’re going to forget things.

So the process makes it easier for you. Using ZenMaid was a big thing for us – it’s everything, because we can remember everything. Even details about the clients, the staff, the schedule – all the details that we can centralize. Of course, today we use other software as well that helps us create balance and make sure that everything is running okay. But definitely, ZenMaid has been a huge part of our operation.

Stephanie: Stop expecting yourself to remember everything. That’s silly. Don’t put that pressure on yourself. Just put tools in place.

For example, yesterday, one of my managers, Katie, messaged me in Slack saying, “Hey, I need help with this thing.” I happened to be out getting groceries at the time, but I opened the message and said, “Yep, I can help you with that.” Then I took a moment and thought, “That’s going to get forgotten, because I just said yes, and now it’s gone from my mind.”

So I said, “Hey, Katie, when these types of things come up, can you please add that as a task in Clickup?” That’s what I use for my task management. Basically, my to-do list and organizing my life is in Clickup. If it’s not in Clickup, it doesn’t exist in my mind.

There are so many simple fixes to make your lives easier. If you constantly are texting or emailing the same things, save it as a template in your email provider. We try to avoid phone calls as much as possible, so that we have that written chain of communication. ZenMaid is always open, so that when somebody says something, we add the note right away. Don’t go to the next thing until you add that note, because it’s going to get forgotten. And then you’re going to feel terrible.

I was a waitress for like seven years, and I remember waking up in the night thinking, “I forgot that ketchup or the ranch for table seven,” hours later. It’s the same thing.

Dayane: It’s when we’re in the field and we’re like, “Did we wash this? Did I forget to put something away? Hopefully the client doesn’t notice.”

Stephanie: “Did they lock the client’s door?” There’s always a question. It’s like with your curling iron at home – you go back and check it seven times to see if you actually did that thing.

Just stop giving yourself anxiety attacks. We already get enough anxiety from having employees. That is an anxiety attack – having staff members and dealing with a bunch of nonsense, even if you have great ones. I’m sure you have plenty of instances where you’re like, “Why are you like this? Why are you doing this?” Because that definitely happens to us all the time. It’s just the name of the game – dealing with frustration. So make it as easy as possible on yourself. Dayane, it sounds like you’re doing that better every year.

Creating a Strong Team Culture

Dayane: Thank you. We do have internal processes that work really well. For a long time, we just thought we were doing our thing. Then we realized, no, this is a team culture that we created. We didn’t know that was why we had such good retention for the cleaners.

Even though we did a transition, we already know at the end of the year we are going to have good results. I think it was a lot of small little things that we added – meetings with the cleaners, connecting with them in specific months of the year, helping them, getting to know them.

The biggest issue I see when we hire someone – every single person that comes to us who has previously worked for another cleaning business says the way they were treated in the other place was bad. Sometimes you just need to understand your person, your employee or contractor, whoever is working for you. It’s about communication and how you approach them. Talk their language, and you’re going to have a much better approach.

Even if you’re like, “But I do things this way,” yes, but there is a way you need to communicate so they can understand. There is a way you need to talk to those people so they understand what you want.

Maybe you need to be a different person when you’re with the cleaners. Here in the company, we have a specific person who deals with the cleaners, because she knows the language. She knows how to deal with them. Sometimes it’s not for everybody to handle just because you’re the owner.

Leadership and Respect

Stephanie: 100%. I love that. Anyone who says, “That’s just the way I am, and they need to take it or leave it” – that sounds like a failure of a manager right there. If you want to be a leader, which is truly a million tiny little skills all bundled together, you need to adapt.

I can think of several failed leadership moments of mine, where I had a “Stephanie moment” and put my foot in my mouth. I deeply hurt some of my staff members’ feelings. Other leaders might not have apologized, but I did.

Don’t act like you’re better than your cleaners just because you’re technically the boss or the leader. Have some humility, apologize when you’re wrong. They will respect you even more for it. Having their respect is the most important thing. That respect means sometimes being tough and having high standards, not just always being their friend, but you never demean them.

What you said about your cleaners having really bad experiences at other businesses, probably being treated poorly or like they’re beneath management – respect your people. We have all been disrespected because most of us have been cleaners or in some type of service industry. A lot of my staff have come from the healthcare industry where they were treated very disrespectfully, run down, and made to feel like they could never do anything right.

I feel that you have a really good understanding of what leadership is, and that having humility is very important.

Small Details Make a Big Difference

Dayane: It’s the small details too. It’s not just avoiding the huge bad things, but the little touches that they appreciate. Even when they make a mistake – yes, we’re going to talk about that mistake. But there’s a way we can do it. We’re all humans. “Don’t worry, it’s fine. Just be better next time. Pay more attention.”

The way that you talk can bring people up or put people down. When we talk about flexibility, it’s not just saying, “Oh, but I’m a cool person.” Are you really? Or just sometimes?

Especially when difficult situations come up, we tend to freak out. You receive a big complaint – how do you treat that? If it makes us scared, imagine how it makes them feel. If you show that you’re stressed about a situation, and you’re saying, “Oh my goodness, we need to call the insurance, we need to do this and that,” they already feel tense.

We need to know how to separate the stress and tension of dealing with clients. Just because we heard something from the client doesn’t mean we need to pass that stress on to our staff. We need to separate things and address issues correctly. I think that’s the major thing.

Leading with Empathy

Stephanie: Having empathy is important too. Most of us have not all been self-employed since birth. We’ve worked at other places. Do we do well when somebody is just shaming us for a mistake that we made, especially if it can be fixed? If you missed something or broke something – how would you feel if somebody was freaking out at you for that? It wouldn’t be very effective. And then we’re coming at it from a place of fear. I don’t want anybody to be afraid of me.

I want this to be a partnership. That’s why vision and sharing your vision and being very motivating to your team is so important. “Listen, this is why we’re doing this. This is the importance of the job.”

When we mess up, it’s like, “Hey, this isn’t the end of the world, but it doesn’t align with what our vision is.” And then collaboratively addressing it: “We’re having issues with cleaning XYZ. This is just a problem to tackle.”

We actually share all of our complaints as a team, but never identify who made them. So it’s more like, “Hey, we got three complaints last week. These are the issues. How can we avoid them? What’s the problem? Why are we having these?” And then we all work together. And then in private, we ask, “Can you give us more context? Why did this happen?” Always coming from a place of curiosity first, because we’ve definitely come in hot before, not understanding that there was context missing.

Maybe the client’s husband told the cleaner not to do something, and we came in saying, “You were supposed to do this,” and we didn’t know the full story. It’s about communication.

Communication is Key

Dayane: We always say to our clients and our cleaners when we hire them, and all the time, this is our phrase of the day, every day: “Communication is the key.” Always.

I think the good customer service that we have is because we have good communication. The relationship we have with our cleaners is because we have good communication. We’re very transparent with everything. We don’t hide anything from anyone, even when we’re trying to solve situations.

Sometimes my partner or others want to send something privately to me, not even a private message, but like, “Dayane, I want to talk about this with you.” And I say, “Let’s talk on the group chat. Everybody needs to know. Your other team member needs to know too.” We don’t need to hide anything here. We need to talk openly. There are no secrets. So that builds trust.

Stephanie: They must trust you guys because of that open communication and also giving the reasoning behind it. I know a lot of people don’t buy in on things unless you explain the reason why. So you explain there’s a reason why you’re putting a policy in place, or you’re behaving the way you are.

“The reason this is a big deal, guys, is because of XYZ.” Like, we’re still having issues with people using products that the clients provide. For us, that makes us not OSHA compliant. Once we started explaining, “If we get an OSHA violation, it’s $20,000 minimum,” suddenly it’s like, “Oh, this is why they keep harping on this,” because there go everybody’s Christmas bonuses – not really, but it would affect things greatly.

Building Trust with Your Team

Dayane: Absolutely. It’s so important to focus on trust and building that relationship. It’s very important for us here because sometimes people try to take advantage of situations.

A lot of cleaners that came from other companies feel that the owners always give the client the benefit of the doubt. Don’t get me wrong, we do too.

Stephanie: Where maybe it’s the client who is being unethical.

Dayane: We try to work with the client, but we always tell the cleaners, “It’s not because we agreed with the client that we believe that you’re lying.” There’s a line for us. Just because I told them that we agreed on something doesn’t mean I actually agreed with them. Sometimes it’s more about customer service, trying to make things better and make peace.

But at the end of the day, I honestly think sometimes people should give the cleaners more credit. They’re there. They know the situation, and if you build this trust, they are willing to work better with you than if you don’t. Because otherwise they’ll think, “What matters? They’re not going to listen to us anyway, so it doesn’t matter.”

Stephanie: It’s like when somebody labels you as something, a lot of times it’s like, “Well, why even bother? Maybe I will do this thing then.” It’s just like when you have a bad egg in the group, and your employees see you seeing that and not doing anything – your best people are all of a sudden going to stop caring. Because it’s like, “Why bother trying when that person over there is getting away with these things?” It just plummets your entire workplace culture.

I also love that you said when new people have been coming in, your current staff members are really showcasing your team at its best – they’re championing you. That happens with us too. The newbies come in and the old seasoned pros are like, “Oh, this place is great. Never had a place like this.” So they’re kind of selling you as an employer. And that only happens if it’s real. Otherwise they’re like, “Good luck. I wouldn’t come here. I’m stuck now.” You don’t want that.

Dayane: You know, that’s the first impression you need to have. Otherwise, you’ve already put fear in them, and the person’s like, “I think I shouldn’t accept this job. I think I shouldn’t be here.” So it starts right there. It’s very, very important.

Setting Clear Expectations

Stephanie: Saying that, I don’t want to encourage you guys to let things slide, because I think you might have just heard that and think, “Oh, I just have to be super nice and not bring the hammer down.” There’s a difference between being nice versus being kind.

That was something I struggled with a lot in the beginning with staff members. I just wanted them to like me. I wanted to be nice, but they definitely took advantage of that and saw that weakness and pounced. They did a lot of things that I would not permit now.

That firmness and having boundaries – you can be super kind, but that means being really clear what the expectations are. That is something I remember seeing that you had put out there – just being really clear 100% of the time what the expectation is. Because then you can just point at that and say, “Hey, you’re doing this, this is what the expectation is. There’s some misalignment here.” And there’s nothing mean about that. That’s not mean.

Dayane: 100%. I agree with that. We make that clear from the interview. One of the errors or mistakes that cleaning business owners make is they’re so desperate to hire people that they just hire everyone.

Are you really being selective? Do you know what kind of person you want to have in your company working? Have you made a checklist of things that you want to see in the people working with you? Or do you just want to have someone working because you’re desperate to grow your business, and you just want to hire everyone?

Our business is not for every cleaner. And honestly, having cleaning experience is the least important thing. I don’t even care about that.

Stephanie: We actually don’t want it, because that means they probably learned bad habits from other companies.

Hiring for Character, Not Skills

Dayane: If they have some previous experience, okay, but it’s different than cleaning your own house. But there is a big issue about hiring people, because I always say to everyone in the company, and for everyone that knows me: you need to hire for character, not skills, because character you can’t change. The personality, the attitude, someone that can smile all the time, someone with a good vibe – you can’t teach that.

Stephanie: You can teach cleaning, but not core values. So how would you suggest to our listeners – “That sounds great, Dayane, but how do I figure that out when I’m interviewing them? How do I figure out that they have these character traits?”

Dayane: I think it’s honestly very easy to find out when you know what you’re looking for, especially if you already have someone like that in your team. If you have a few people in your team that you think, “I want more people like that,” you already know what to look for.

If you do an interview and a field test one-on-one with the person, you can observe: Is this person approachable? How does the person react when you correct some mistakes? During the teaching, make notes. “They acted this way when I did something.”

I told the person, “Hey, you forgot this,” and the person was like, “Oh no, no, I was going to do it.” If they’re very closed-minded, if they overreact to things, if they’re super anxious about every single thing, or if they’re hesitant to deal with certain tasks – look at their facial expressions.

Learn about reading people. Study a little bit, read some books or watch videos online about how to read people. As business owners, it’s important to learn this – even about clients.

During the one-on-one, you can really see: Is this person willing to follow the rules of the company, or is this person going to give a little bit of trouble? If you feel they’re going to cause problems, don’t even hire them, because in two weeks it’s going to be a problem.

The second thing is to have training in the field with your trainer. Cleaning businesses require you to be on location with them. I don’t have the ability anymore to be every day with our cleaners out there, so like you have your trainer now, that person will be able to tell you. She gives us feedback: “Hey, the way they walked inside the client’s house, the way they acted at the client’s house.” This speaks volumes for us.

Is this person listening to music out loud? Are they picking up the phone, talking about their personal problems while cleaning? Are they swearing?

Stephanie: Yes, swearing in front of clients, or even in homes without clients. There are so many things. We literally have a feedback form that we have both the trainee and the trainer fill out at the end, and that’s really helped us catch these little things that maybe otherwise they wouldn’t share because they feel like they’re snitching or tattling.

But truly, if you can catch these things in the beginning, it’s only going to save you money, time, and your reputation, because they’re hurting your brand. A lot of times, I find that people can put on a really good face for the owner and try to schmooze us, impress us. But then when they get with somebody they see more as an equal, they put their guard down, and they actually show who they are.

Looking back, now that we’ve had so many failed staff members or people that left, we have all these different categories of why somebody didn’t make it or quit. A lot of it has to do with personality, behavior, ethics, morals, etc. Now it’s like, “Oh, they’re giving me XYZ vibes. They’re acting just like this person acted.” You start to see patterns, because there are patterns in behavior.

For example, every time they get a complaint, they call in for days after, or they give you back talk. You start to see these patterns in behavior. Not that those can’t be corrected, but if you can just avoid a bunch of problems from the get-go by waiting and hiring better.

I think it’s really hard, especially in the beginning – heck, not even just the beginning. It still takes a lot of discipline for us. We’ve had to learn the hard way, again and again. Just because you desperately need a body doesn’t mean the wrong body is going to solve the problem. Actually, it’s going to make it worse, and you’re probably going to be a lot more discouraged.

It sucks to have to wait when you have all these clients who want you – you’ve got this wait list, or you’re feeling all this pressure to fill this spot. But the wrong person isn’t going to solve the problem. They’re going to make it worse and cause you a bunch more stress and probably lose you business. So just wait. I’m saying that to myself – just wait.

Trusting Your Hiring Instincts

Dayane: But honestly, as people are listening to us right now, they’re like, “Oh, but do you have a hard process?” It’s not as complex as it sounds. It’s your feeling. You need to trust your gut too.

Maybe you’re missing out on someone that could be a potential good cleaner for you. Maybe. But you know your company. You’re dealing with people day in and day out. You already know. You’ve developed that muscle.

Stephanie: That muscle that you grow. I think when we started younger too, we didn’t know people as well. But I know that for me, people being able to easily trick me or just tell me what I wanted to hear, and me ignoring the red flags – now the longer you go at this, the more discerning you get. You can feel your gut. You can feel that something’s off. You may ignore it, but it’s there, I promise.

Dayane: And I think once you know those red flags, write them down, because otherwise you won’t remember those things for the hiring process. Yes, you need to follow your emotions, but it can’t be based only on emotions. Your hiring needs to follow a process.

So as long as you start writing this down and you have requirements to meet, okay. The person passed, and even if it was a good pass, because like you said, in front of us in an interview, the person can put on a face. But in the field, they’re going to really show you how they work and how they do everything.

Don’t let bad situations go on for too long. If you’re seeing that a cleaner – doesn’t matter if you just hired them today or if they’ve been with you for six months – if they’re starting to give you trouble, you put this cleaner with Team A, Team B, Team C, and it doesn’t work with anyone, the problem is the person. They need to go.

We need to start being more understanding of the field. The field is so important. Yes, you can’t do business without clients, but if you don’t have a good team in the field, what’s the point of having clients if you don’t have good people?

So I think the hiring process is much more critical to think about and work on. Have a team culture inside of your company that’s really strong, even if you’re just starting. Think about what you want for the future. Make a board and think about what your company wants to be in the future, even if it’s only you working right now.

I thought about that when I started. I was only by myself, but I always thought, “When I have teams, I want people to be excited about doing this. I want them to be excited to join me, to be by my side. I want them to be proud to say, ‘Hey, I work for her. We work together, we’re a team.'”

Supporting Your Team Beyond Work

Dayane: Just yesterday, one of my cleaners had a car problem with her insurance. She doesn’t speak English. I said, “Give me the phone number. I’m going to call for you. I’m going to help you out.” Those things – being there for them too – I’m sure it comes back to you. It’s like karma. It comes back to you.

I’m just giving you a small example, but it’s the empathy that we need to have in those situations. We had a cleaner since we started the company, for three years, and she was always late. She was always late, no matter what. We started booking the clients at different times and didn’t tell her. So let’s say we booked the client for 9:00, and we told her 8:00, so she’d show up at 9:00.

But she was such a good person, such a good soul, but she had this problem. We tried to work with her. We called her attention to it. We told her, “Hey, you need to get better on this. What’s going on?” But when she ended up leaving for a better job last year, which we’re very happy for her, the message we received from her made me cry. She was like, “Thank you very much for dealing with my BS for this whole time.”

Stephanie: They realize how good they had it when they go to another job. I know exactly what you mean, because not everyone is going to be accommodating. It sounds like she may have had ADHD, where time blindness is a total thing.

Dayane: She was telling me, she started crying in the audio message thanking us. She said, “I have three kids. I’m by myself.” She has three kids – I think one is four, the other two were under two. “It was extremely hard for me to deal with everything.”

No one is responsible for her life and her situation, but at the end of the day, couldn’t we just let her go? Yeah, we could definitely. But sometimes it’s not just about that. You need to know what your dealbreakers are or aren’t. For us, it wasn’t a big deal to change this schedule here and there to adjust for her, because we knew she was struggling a lot.

Stephanie: Was she trying to get her kids to school? For us, we bumped up all of our house cleaning start times, typically like maybe half hour later than most would. I don’t know what is typical in other businesses, but that was such an easy decision: “This doesn’t affect anybody at all financially.” Meaning, for us to bump all the appointments back half an hour – and all of our staff members, or 99% of them, are parents, and probably the ones taking their kids to school or dealing with the morning routine. If you can do something across the board that makes somebody’s life easier and doesn’t affect you – do it, of course. And they’re going to appreciate it.

Creating the Right Teams

Dayane: When we talk about this, there are so many things that impact the company and why we do what we do. When you’re hiring people and you start creating teams, pay attention to those things. Don’t put together a person that needs to pick up a kid at 5:00 with someone who wants to work until midnight because they want to make money.

You need to group people correctly. It involves so many details that you need to pay attention to so people can be happy. Sometimes they’re not happy because they’re like, “Well, I wanted to make money, but my partner here – I love working with her, but she needs to be at home at 4:00 because of her schedule.”

Group that person with somebody else who needs to leave at the same time or is willing to work with that schedule. That way you have happier people. If we need to adjust our schedule, we will, because I think it’s easier for us if the cleaners are happy. We’re happy, and our clients will be extremely happy.

Stephanie: That is the perfect encompassing lesson here. Words of wisdom: if your cleaners are happy, they’re going to take care of your clients. Happy clients get you more clients. Happy cleaners get you more cleaners.

That’s why focusing heavily on taking care of your staff – not getting taken advantage of, but truly having this respectful partnership and seeing it as “We’re working together to accomplish a goal, and nobody’s better than anybody else. We’re just working together, and we’re coming at it from different angles. We need every single hand on deck, and everybody has different skill sets.”

Dayane, clearly you guys are doing wonderfully, and this has been really educational and also inspiring, because you care. It’s so evident that you care. So I appreciate you taking the time. Is there a way that our listeners could find you or follow along with your business’s journey?

Dayane: Oh, yeah, actually through social media. I’m actually starting to post more things out there. I wasn’t super huge on social media, but I’m trying to because I think it’s nice to share.

Closing Thoughts

Stephanie: It is nice to share, and it can be lonely. So it’s fun to connect with other cleaning business owners, especially who are at the same level, and kind of help each other with the same challenges that we face. Thank you, Dayane. We’ll definitely link your business website and your social media in the bio, and I hope we can talk again. This was so fun. Time just flew by.

Dayane: Thank you very much. I really hope our conversation can bring some insights and ideas to people’s minds, because that’s what I wish I had when I started – just some conversation, real talk. Business is about learning the real thing. You can study the formal stuff as long as you want, but it’s the real stuff that matters.

Stephanie: Absolutely, those practical little tidbits. I would love to hear from you guys in the comments below – let us know what your favorite moment in this conversation was, anything Dayane said that really sparked an “aha” for you. I would love to hear it.

Thank you for listening to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I hope to see you in the next episode. Give this a like, hit that subscribe and share this with your cleaning business friends, because we all could use a little bit more community. Thanks, guys. See you next time.

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
• Washe Cleaning Services
• Clickup
• OSHA Compliance