Filthy Rich Cleaners Podcast E4: Wild Client Stories and How to Survive the Hard Days with Cheryl Hajjar

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Introduction

Coming up next on the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast: “Sometimes you have to push the envelope of what you’re comfortable with. You just throw yourself in the fire and if you survive, that means you’ll learn and you can take on bigger challenges in the future.”

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.

Starting with Just a Mop and a Dream

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I’m your host Stephanie Pipkin and I am here today with Cheryl who is the owner and founder of Made Bright in Boston, Massachusetts or a little north from the sounds of it.

So Cheryl, I’d love if you could just share your story so that the audience can know who you are and then we’ll go from there with some questions.

Cheryl: I started my cleaning company way back when my son was about six years old and I needed extra money. I was a single mother, trying to make ends meet, putting food on the table, extreme coupon and all that stuff. And I thought, hey, I love to clean. What if I clean a few houses and get some extra cash?

That’s exactly how I started it. I didn’t have any money, like the story goes. I had a mop and a caddy and a lot of ambition. So I just started asking around my community. I lived in an apartment building at the time and I approached the office and said, “Hey, I offer cleaning services. Do you have anyone that wants their apartment cleaned?”

Early Days and Learning Curves

Little by little I just started to network and get jobs here and there. They were cash jobs – I didn’t know how to price. The only thing I knew what to do was clean. I took a lot of jobs back then for cheap money. I didn’t have any systems in place, and people would expect that you’re going to clean the walls, the ceiling, everything for $10. Back then I didn’t know how to bridge the gap between the client’s expectation and communication and say, “This is what’s included, this is what’s not included.”

I did the cleaning as a side hustle, honestly. And I was also a real estate agent. So I always kind of had this hustle mentality. I don’t know where it came from. My father’s a dentist, he doesn’t have a hustle mentality. My mom was a flight attendant.

The Power of Competitive Drive

But what I think where my motivation came from is when I was younger, in my 20s, I was a national fitness competitor. So I knew about discipline, execution, what it takes to do something really cool. You have to work 10 times as hard as you think you can work. I think that’s where my little motivation started. And then as I get older, I applied that motivation and that work ethic to the cleaning business.

Stephanie: That’s really fascinating how often the parallel of fitness goes along with business owners. I too did competitions. I’ve talked to other owners who have gone down that route of being dedicated to fitness goals. I’ve heard fitness being called the cornerstone habit for a reason because it teaches you how to keep at things and have that delayed gratification, which I believe is one of the biggest skills of business ownership – being able to delay gratification and keep doggedly doing the same things because you know it’s going to work. You just have to have patience and keep trying.

The Importance of Looking Inward

Cheryl: It’s very difficult for someone to have to look internally and see what they’re doing wrong first. As a cleaning business coach, that’s the first thing I teach people in a nice nurturing way. Let’s look at what you may be doing wrong first to figure out how we could have done something else to make the situation come out better.

Stephanie: And just accountability truly and ownership. I’m a big fan of books, and Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink definitely kicked me in the ass – like, hey, everything’s your fault, but that’s a wonderful thing. Because then we can, even if it doesn’t seem like it is, ask “How could you have handled the situation better?” Or “How could you put systems in place to avoid this problem in the future?”

The Reality of Being a Business Owner

When we all point fingers or don’t take accountability, we need to ask – do I have a skill gap? In the beginning, we all have skill gaps, we simply don’t know what those are yet. And so it can feel very confronting or like you’re a failure when it’s truly, you got to get through that in the beginning, because if you’re so afraid of failing or embarrassing or making a mistake, you can’t be a business owner. We have all, both you and I have probably made 10,000 mistakes, but we had to get through those.

Cheryl: There’s been, and I’m sure you can attest being a cleaning business owner too, sometimes you just can’t wait till Friday night because you can wind down a little bit and you don’t have to talk to people or you have to talk to less people.

The Challenge of Adding Staff

Stephanie: It’s very draining, those interactions. And the hard part is, I think, especially once you add staff, it’s like you never can turn it off, especially if you do what maybe is not the best, but I took on commercial in the evenings pretty much right away. So I was cleaning all day or working my full-time job, which I did for a year until I was able to afford to switch to just cleaning. And all of a sudden, it’s during the day, now it’s at night or early mornings, and it never ends.

Cheryl: That’s so interesting that you say that. Like, my story is the same. Once my husband Jay came into my life and things changed, my household was a little more stable. Obviously, two incomes coming in. We took on commercial. And so I was that person in the beginning, I was still in the field for a long time. I’d be cleaning during the day, and then I would go at night and clean a few buildings, a school and stuff. And I was like the energizer bunny. And I thought my body would never quit.

The Physical Toll

I was working six, seven days a week. I’d clean in the morning, clean from like nine to three, take a break, go to the gym – I was still working out. And then after dinner, I would go and clean. By myself, I’m doing three floors and I’m like, I am crazy. There were other days where I would get up in the morning and do a restaurant from 6am to 9am and then go out to houses. I didn’t know for a long time until one day my body said you’re not going to do that anymore.

Learning Your Limits

Stephanie: I went through the same thing of what I call “the trenches” – like being in the trenches where you’re cleaning and doing it all. And though it’s not fun, I definitely feel like there is some rites of passage and so many lessons learned from putting yourself through that. Maybe not like if I would go back, I would do some things differently. But I will say that working that hard showed me what my capacity was when I didn’t know I could work that hard. And now looking back, I truly don’t know how I did that.

Cheryl: I don’t even clean my own house now! One day when I started to get staff, most of them were W2, one of them was under the table because we were doing a favor or whatever. And I remember two people called out and me and another girl went and cleaned six houses in one day. And I’m like, it was just mind over matter. I’m like, oh, no sweat, I’m just going to go do the six houses. I’ll just put the money in my pocket. But I look back and I’m like, how the heck could I do that?

The Reality of Adding Staff

Stephanie: I remember feeling literally nauseous after cleaning so much because there’s no eating, you’re just going.

When you start adding staff, I think people have an unrealistic expectation that all of a sudden it’s like, boom, you’re done cleaning. And it’s like, no, you’re the backup. You are going to go through so many people until the right ones stick. And just having that eternal optimism of it’s going to work out, you’re going to find good people, but people are people and we’re in the business of managing people. And that’s the hardest part. I don’t think you and I struggle for the sales. We both have our hiring systems in place, but that is the hardest part.

Cheryl: It really is. It takes a while to get a good read on people. When you interview people, you think everyone has the best of intentions. Just ’cause they say they’re gonna show up, they’re gonna show up. And then in the beginning, you take it personal when they don’t show up and then you have to go out in the field. It takes a while for anyone to develop hiring skills.

The Line in the Sand

I work a lot with the people that I coach on hiring skills because they just take it personal and they just get so defeated and they want to quit. And I really feel that that is like the line in the sand – the people that stick it out and figure out how to hire are the ones that are going to make it. The people that just whine and complain and say it’s everyone else’s fault, and they say that nobody wants to work… They do want to work because I have a full staff. Did it take me a long time to get a full staff that loves their jobs? Heck yeah, it took me a long time. But you can do it. You just have to be willing to work for it.

Developing Resilience

Stephanie: Learning how to hire and having a process in place so you have a pipeline of good candidates is also a skill and it’s not something you’re probably going to be good at right away. I couldn’t agree more of the line in the sand – if you are going to be successful it’s most likely to do with your tenacity with sticking with hiring and being constantly disappointed by people and not letting it discourage you to the point of quitting because this never changes. People will always be people. So you just have to stay calm and collected and basically instantly go into problem-solving mode. Okay, somebody ghosted you, somebody didn’t show up, somebody called in or got caught stealing or whatever, the crazy shit that employees have done to us.

Cheryl: It’s really true. I used to go up on the emotional rollercoaster. You’re up, you’re down, what are we gonna do? I think if you, as an entrepreneur, learn how to maintain even keel, just go straight across and where nothing bothers you, that’s when you’ve turned the corner.

Leading Through Challenges

Stephanie: When you have a team, they’re looking at you to be the rock. I’ll give you a perfect example. In the past 24 hours, we just got three commercial accounts that total is gonna be over eight grand a month in revenue. I just this morning had my weekly operations meeting with my managers and the stress was permeating of how we’re gonna staff this. It was my job to calm the room and get focused on what needs to get accomplished instead of just saying, “Oh my gosh,” and celebrate the win that this is – like, listen guys, this is finally going to be the thing, we’re going to hit 1.5 mil this year.

Managing Team Morale

This is a wonderful thing. And taking what should not be like – yes, it is stressful, I understand that, but this is the name of the game. This is what we do. This is how you grow. So we can look at all the challenges we faced before and staffed them, we’re going to do this. So calming the nerves of your troops, if you will, that’s your job. If you’re showing them that you’re not confident or that you’re cracking under the pressure, they’re not going to feel confident in you.

Cheryl: Yeah, you have to hide it a little bit. I always say, okay, we got to put the face on in the morning. Let me give you an example of a complaint we just had. The couple had never had a cleaning company ever work. Their house was a shit show when I went to go do the walkthrough – for lack of a better word. There was just a lot of chaos, clutter, they didn’t know what to expect.

When Cleanings Go Wrong

So I went through the clutter talk, you know, let’s just make sure we get everything off the floor. I had met with the wife, but the husband decided that he was gonna take over the conversation. And then when my staff were in the house – there was four of them, highly skilled staff that do a ton of deep cleans – the woman decided to take a Christmas tree down in the middle of the deep clean. And then the little boy was following one of my other girls around, like on her leg, and she’s trying to clean the baseboards. And one of the other girls was trying to clean the office, and he’s going in and out of the office, pacing back and forth.

So was this a disaster? When stuff like that happens, it throws the team’s psyche off. He’s like, “Well, it didn’t come out the way I thought.” And I’m like, “Well, maybe because your wife was taking the tree down in the middle of the cleaning.”

Learning to Handle Problems

So I came in this morning, nothing was phased. They’re like, “How was the cleaning? Was he happy?” And I had to just let the team down a little bit and be like, well, I think there was a little communication breakdown and expectation. You need to learn how to deal with the ups and downs of things and just solve problems.

Building Stress Management Skills

Stephanie: For the newbies listening, take solace in the fact that your stress management skills will go through the roof the longer you stick with it. Because the things that would phase me back then are literally not even on my radar, like the things that would make me cry or be upset for a week. It’s like, it means nothing to me now. It’s like, “Oh, that happened.” It will get better. It’s a muscle that you have to get the reps in of practicing, and saying it’s not the end of the world. Me freaking out well, that didn’t make this problem go away. It just made it worse.

Cheryl: Right, right. I think if you go up and down the roller coaster, the worse people feel about what’s going on. And then it just becomes a big stress. So once you learn how to just be like, you know what? Okay, the first complaint, not a big deal. We’ll deal with it in the morning. And you can shut it off. Years ago it kept me up at night. And now I’m like, no, I’m just gonna go to sleep and deal with it in the morning.

Using Data to Solve Problems

Stephanie: We have what we call a dumping ground. We track every complaint that comes in, who it was on, what it was, what was the client. And so then we can look at the data without emotion and say, okay, this cleaner is getting more complaints – there’s a problem there. Or it’s this client that complains every time – is it not a fit? Or something overarching, we’re getting the same type of complaint – that’s a training issue. And so it helps you realize where is the hole in the boat that you need to fill.

The Reality of Being a CEO Being a phenomenal cleaner doesn’t mean you have the mental fortitude to stick it out and be a CEO. Two totally different things. And that’s okay. The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber explains so well that just because you are a phenomenal technician – just because you can bake cakes better than anybody doesn’t mean you should open a bakery.

Understanding Your True Goals

My goal is to be a business owner. I was made to be a business owner – that could have been anything. I happen to love cleaning and I see the benefit. It’s a low-cost venture, there’s all these practical reasons we get into cleaning, but I truly feel I could run any service-based business at this point. And it’s not easy dealing with hundreds of clients on a monthly basis, dealing with all your staff. Your staff doesn’t realize and your clients don’t realize just how much you feel in a day. It’s overwhelming how many people you talk to.

The Journey to Administrative Help

Stephanie: I would love to hear when did you add administrative help and what did that look like in the beginning versus what is it now? Because I think one thing people look at incorrectly is they think they need to add on like a full-time office manager. And they’re like, “Well, I can never afford that.” And it’s like, well, none of us did it that way.

Cheryl: So I’m lucky in a sense that I have my husband, Jay, who’s a techie. He’s a numbers guy. So he loves to do the schedule. I can do the schedule, but he loves the way he does the schedule better. It’s a compromise and I don’t have to do the schedule. He’s really good at logistics, operations, and then I’m really good at sales, marketing, customer service communication.

Building a Remote Team

We have someone who helps us overseas with the marketing and stuff like that. I write the content, she gets everything out there, she’s great with designing. She actually is my daughter-in-law and is originally from the island of Mauritius. She was here on a tennis scholarship, met my husband’s son, and then they just got married last year and moved back to Mauritius. I also have another administrative assistant in the Philippines. Then we have one girl that does all the things like filling the chemicals, ordering the supplies, doing the laundry, and sometimes she jumps on the truck and goes to do a basement clean out.

Making It Work Without a Big Budget

We sort of just make it work because we know if you go out and hire an operations manager like everyone thinks – “company is going to get big enough and I’m going to hire an operations manager” – well, in the U.S. that’s going to cost you about 60-70K. So that’s not the best thing for us. My husband and I are used to that higher level of work. We’re just used to on a Sunday, picking up the computer in bed and looking at the schedule on the TV.

The Reality of Work-Life Balance

They always say when you become an entrepreneur, you’ll work more for yourself than you did for someone else. And that’s totally true. But it doesn’t really feel like work to me. It never does. And when I think of work-life balance – and it’s maybe like a hot take – I truly don’t care about that. I love what I do. I have no idea how many hours I work a week. I mean, could I track it and cut back? For sure, but I don’t want to.

I have such a fire and passion for the business as well as just the whole industry because I think our industry is so unique – it does cater to a lot of female owners who are doing this for specific reasons. They’ve got kids, got a family, they want to offer a job for other mothers.

Creating Opportunities for Working Mothers

And that’s where like, I’m not a mom yet, but 90% of my staff is women. It’s historically always been the case, except for my janitorial work where there’s more guys – that’s just a preference thing for them. The first and only benefit I could offer was extreme flexibility that other employers can’t. And that was the first thing I could give them. The reason I have part-timers who have been with me for years now is because they know that Family First is truly a core value and we will stick to it.

Creating a Family-Friendly Workplace

We’ve got a playroom in our office that they can drop their kids off and my managers will watch their children. We specifically found our office so it would have a separate room for that. And if there’s a two-hour delay, and we want our cleaners to get to their cleaning so they can make that money, we can make that money – we’ll take them, we’ll drop the kids off at school or whatever.

I know that’s not feasible for everybody. But it’s looking at like, what can you offer? Because in the beginning, yeah, you can’t offer shit for benefits because you don’t have any money. And so flexibility and a wonderful company culture actually caring is another place where it’s like it’s such a balance.

The Danger of Getting Too Close

Caring also means you’re opening yourself up to getting hurt because you get too close. You get too close and you don’t set boundaries and you want to be their friend and not their boss. And I’m talking to 22-year-old Stephanie who when she opened – I just let an employee live with me one time and then like her Chihuahua kept peeing all over my house!

Cheryl: When you’re still in the field, it’s really difficult to be the boss because you’re doing the same task as they are. You’re in the same car and it’s inevitable that they’re gonna talk about their boyfriend or they’re gonna talk about their kid or their mother. So they get close to you. And I think that it’s very difficult when you need to discipline or something – they think they’re on the same level as you. It’s jarring.

Setting Professional Boundaries

Stephanie: It’s like reality check. And as soon as you introduce money, that’s not a friendship. Once you start putting those transactions in it – and I’ve gotten very burned. Some of my worst emotional traumas from the business have been friends who I hired, and then all of a sudden things shift. And now we’re not friends anymore. And it sucks. And that’s hard.

Taking Chances on People

Cheryl: I never hire friends or relatives. That’s what they say. But I remember one of our cleaners that was loyal to us for years and years – we hired her when she was in a shelter. She was a single mother just getting out of the shelter, getting her housing. We interviewed her and we had a good feeling. Now most people would say that could be risky, not gonna hire her from a shelter, but we hired on integrity. She didn’t have any professional cleaning experience, but I knew she would be good. I knew she needed a job and we gave her a chance.

And she stayed with us for five and a half years. I think there’s a lot to be said for how you treat people. You gave her that belief, you believed in her and she proved you right. She ended up being one of the greatest hires of all time that we’ve had. But you have to learn how to take chances. We’ve taken other chances that haven’t turned out that good. But you don’t really know – you have to just use your gut instinct.

Sometimes it’s not gonna work. Sometimes it’s gonna be ugly. You’re gonna hire people that a month down the road steal from a client. We’ve all had that happen. That’s not fun, but inevitably that is going to happen if you’re in residential.

Dealing with Theft Accusations

Stephanie: Even just being accused and dealing with that stress – it is difficult and staying rational and calm. Sometimes clients be crazy and they are trying to – like the cleaner will always get blamed first. I remember last year our cleaner Annie, she’s young, she no longer with us but she’s super sweet and would never ever take anything, I would bet my life on it. In the ZenMaid notes, we said to turn the lights off throughout the house. When she went to go turn the lights off, one wouldn’t stay on. And she’s 19 years old, and she went to the breakers and turned all the breakers off. I know, I know. So now it’s a rule – don’t touch electric breakers. You gotta say that apparently.

When Simple Mistakes Turn Serious

So they got home and all the breakers were off. And this turned into the paranoia of the owners thinking we were trying to steal their jet skis and scope out the house. And so they got their police friend involved. Nothing actually happened, but basically, they were trying to bully us into saying this is what we were trying to do. And I’m like, dude, we don’t want your jet skis.

Common Theft Accusations

They always blame the cleaner. There were two instances I can think of years back – one of our clients asked if we had left the door open because she couldn’t find her cat. So now I’m panicking, I’m like, “Oh my God, it’s on us.” And that’s when I was still in the field. And then six hours later, she finds the cat.

Another one that just recently happened, probably four months ago, really good client of ours – she’s missing a bracelet. As soon as I hear that, I feel panic, right? But I know, okay, Sam lives in that house, they’ve been with us a while. The bracelet was her mother’s and she was getting ready for her mother’s memorial mass. I’m like, great. Oh Lord. She’s like, “It’s always on my jewelry case. Can you ask the girls if they’ve seen it?” And that’s kind of the client’s way of saying, “Did they take it?”

When Items Go Missing

So I had to have that conversation. Of course, my girl said they didn’t take it. And then of course, the woman finds it a week later in her office. I’m just like, oh, come on. So I’m panicking for a week thinking do they take it or not take it.

But a lot of times clients will just say, oh, these other people have been in my house, maybe they took something. And more often than not, the client usually finds the item. Yeah, it’s misplaced.

And yeah, usually it truly is, you know, I understand why their mind goes there because there are cleaners who steal like I’m not saying that that doesn’t happen. So I try not to get offended and just like understand and say let’s think about this rationally and and and go through all avenues and we say we will be absolutely cooperative and we want to solve this case just like you do.

But I’m also not going to say that my cleaners did that because I don’t believe they did. And I, one of my consulting clients, I remember, oh gosh, he had just bought this cleaning company in I think Florida and he inherited all of the staff and one of the staff members, three houses in a row during Christmas time had Christmas gifts go missing.

It was like cards off of trees. Oh yeah. And that cleaner literally was stealing like Christmas cards off of, you know, like, like envelopes with gift cards or whatever in them, like, like, I’m like, you had the Grinch working for you. And just and all the clients, they handled it with beautiful finesse. And that’s it’s, I like, I don’t want to scare everybody listening, but it most likely is going to come at you sometime if you’re doing residential, it’s just inevitable.

A Detective-like Resolution

And so having, I have a good one. So this was last year. We hired this girl. She was, um, had a lot of energy and we have this client, um, who’s, who’s a lawyer. Okay. And so he calls me and he’s like, can I talk to you for a second? And when you hear that, you’re just like, Oh God.

And he’s like, you know, he’s like, my daughter is missing a bottle of perfume. So immediately when he said bottle, I’m like what kind of bottle I was glad Perfume, yeah thinking people could take drugs or whatever and he’s missing a bottle of perfume and she’s he’s like You know Amanda who’s always been in my house. It was Amanda and it was you know a girl I didn’t recognize so Felicia’s you know or whatever and so he’s like this is what I’d like to do with your permission He goes because I really like your service. I like your staff. I don’t want to cancel your service.”

I said, “Okay.” He’s like, “Let’s do this.” He’s like, “I’m going to put the same exact bottle of perfume in my daughter’s bathroom.” He goes, “Can you have her come in two weeks? Have her come with Amanda? Have the same girl come and put the girl in the bathroom and let’s see if it’s her.” Now, this is his lawyer. Wow. Yeah. This is like, this is like, I don’t know, like detective work.

So I agreed to it, right? I’m usually like, low drama. But so I agreed to it. And I told the man, I said, this is what’s going on. So we stuck, you know, the girl in the bathroom, you know, same bottle of perfume just appeared. It wasn’t like an expensive like Chanel or whatever. It was Paris Hilton perfume. I’m like, what is going on?

So needless to say, we found out the culprit, we knew it was the girl, you know, we let her go that night. And, you know, some people are just kleptomaniacs, right? Why would they steal the same amount? Sometimes people are just going to steal and you have to just get used to it. Hopefully, it’s nothing big. That’s all you hope for.

Identifying Problematic Clients

Cheryl: Because just like employees, you’re red flags for clients. Like you start to hone that of like, ooh, this lady who was terrible said these same types of things or behaved in this way. And I, you know, I hate to use the word, but because there’s a lot of nice Karen’s out there, but your and meter starts to hone in, you know, like, who’s going to be a problem?

And here’s a prime example. This is a really good example for anyone listening out there. When someone says, you know, I’ve gone through four or five cleaners, do not take them. Do not turn it away. I don’t care. They’re paying you a million dollars. That person is going to torture you and torture yourself.

Stephanie: Yep. There’s a reason. There is a reason why they basically couldn’t maintain a relationship, you know, multiple times in a row like that.

Clarifying Service Boundaries

Cheryl: And so some people confuse cleaning with organization and housekeeping. Yep. In organizing. And so you have to be really clear, like, you know, we have a document that we bring the difference between cleaning and tidying up. So they understand, you know, we’re not really, we’re not going to organize all the papers, of course, we’re not going to leave them everywhere, but we’re not going to, you know, organize things in your kitchen or all your, you know, salt, pepper and shakers you left out, we’re just going to move them clean, but we’re not going to reorganize them back into the cabinet.

Stephanie: Yep. And everybody listening can make that decision. I’ve had conversations where people do offer those services, but you need to be super clear and and what do you want to do and understand the ramifications of that from a training perspective, because it is darn near impossible to train organizing in my humble opinion, because it’s like you could, what are you running into? What does that person want? You’re touching their stuff a lot more and putting it in places maybe that they don’t know.

Cheryl: And like, I just feel like it opens a can of worms that is really hard to close. And so we just personally, you know, we, if a cleaner likes to maybe do a clot like very minor stuff as an add on, and we also would only do it for specific clients, we don’t advertise that at all. So I just prefer not to. If they if you know, when they send the request into us, if they’re looking for cleaning and organizing, I usually try and have a conversation and see what do you mean by organizing. And I’ve turned people down. I have, I refer a professional organizer that will go in and organize things. I refer her out. I’m like, if you’re looking for organizing, Rachel’s the person because we’re cleaners. We’re there to clean, to disinfect, and to make your everything stress-free, no anxiety.

Service Limitations and Specialization

Cheryl: And so, you know, we’re disinfecting. So we’re not necessarily organizing. And I think are the trouble is, is some people have had a housekeeper, maybe someone that lives with them, or maybe someone that comes three days a week. A housekeeper will do different things than a cleaning service. A housekeeper will fetch the mail, and the laundry, all the dishes.

And again, like, we will make exceptions if we know like, hey, they want us to wash dishes for three hours, and that’s what we do when we go, Okay, that we may make that decision on a case by case basis, but it’s not the expectation. It’s not what I hire people to do. And you have to be fair to your cleaners and your staff and not ask them to do things that are outside of what you hired them to do. And that’s not fair.

Stephanie: Absolutely.

Handling Unique or Challenging Jobs

Cheryl: So anytime we have an unusual job, I, you know, we don’t advertise that we do hoarding cleanouts or anything like that. And we, we don’t do like organizing, it’s more of can we throw everything in a dumpster then I will on a case by case take those on and I typically will personally do those jobs because I find them so enjoyable and they’re a gold mine for content. People eat that stuff right now. So I’ll record the whole thing and turn it into like before and after videos.

However, if we are considering it, we will open it up to our entire group of staff and send pictures and say, this is the situation. This is the reason it’s like this. If you are interested, let us know. But this is absolutely not required. We don’t expect this and and give it to them. And the ones who really like that work, jump at it. But we’re also not expecting the ones who don’t want to do that type of thing. It’s they weren’t hired for that. So I’m not expecting it.

Stephanie: That’s tough. Like that takes up, you know, there’s a lot more going on with orders than just having a clean, right? Dealing with someone that has years of stuff going on with their family, mentally, and they just are so challenged that they can’t mentally throw anything out. So you’re dealing with a whole different animal, and those are for everyone.

Cheryl: Yep, absolutely.

Stephanie: I have a couple of people that I’ve worked before that were super interested in doing the forensic cleanings.

Cheryl: Yeah, I’ve had staff members ask about that, and I’m like, again, can’t have worms. I know you can make a lot of money, but like, yeah, that’s, that’s, yeah, that’s not for us. We’re, you know, we stay in our, we stay in our wheelhouse. We want to stay in our wheelhouse, things that are duplicatable that we can teach people how to do and keep doing the same thing over and over.

Stephanie: Absolutely. The scalability of it all.

Exploring Additional Services

Stephanie: And, you know, you want to be able to put, like, personal touches and that’s where like notes and things, but at the end of the day, you standardize things as much as possible because you’re setting your cleaners up to fail if you are doing all of these things and just you know we going to like the other services that your family provides I would love to hear how do those things work together and you mentioned you have an administration person that kind of manages all of that but like can you explain for the people who are perhaps interested in providing other types of services or maybe their their family member their partner is like, how do those things work together?

Cheryl: Okay, so I started the cleaning, you know, residential, commercial, our residential is much bigger than our commercial, but we still have a commercial. And then one day, my husband and my husband’s like, what if we added power washing to the services? And I was like, so I have the mentality, grow, grow, grow. I don’t have a shut off button, you know what I mean? Right, so I’m like, oh, that’s kind of a cool idea. He’s like, I’m gonna do it. I’m like, okay.

Now he had done it a little bit when he was younger, but he dove into it. So this is like probably like, I don’t know, September, October, three years ago we’ve had it. And so in the winter up here, we’re shut down for four months of power washing because it’s too cold. So he just dove in and he did his research and every single night on the TV, what do you think was on power washing videos, power washing equipment.

Stephanie: I love the rug washing one side note, ’cause they’re so soothing to me. Power washing is great too, it’s so satisfying.

Cheryl: Cool, and so he’s learning all these things, watching the YouTube, he’s finding all the guys that are doing it and connecting with them or whatever, and then he’s doing equipment, and he’s trying to talk to me about equipment, and it’s like talking to a wall, I’m like, I have no idea, I’m like, but All right, let’s run with it.

Investment in Equipment

Cheryl: So we bought a trailer. The thing about power washing is that there is a barrier to entry. You need good equipment. You know, that Home Depot rig is only gonna get you so far. You’re probably gonna do a decent job on a ranch. You can’t hit a double or a triple colonial 5,000 square foot house. You need the right equipment.

So first, I want to say I don’t mean to scare you this but the first one he school go bigger of a home The first rig we bought was like $25,000. So Did we part with $25,000 worth of cash? Absolutely not. We financed that. That’s another, you know, Another tip: you can always finance something before you, you know, part with all your cash.

So we buy this thing and I’m like, I’m like, oh my god, but it’s finance over three years. It’s not a big deal. We paid for the thing in like four months. You know what I’m saying? So it’s like, you have to have like a bigger picture.

Expanding the Business with Power Washing

Cheryl: Now the thing with the power washing that is cool is number one, I don’t have to physically do it. But I do all the pictures and all the videos and all the content for it, but he does it. We have a couple of guys that he hired that, you know, they work, you and work eight months out of the year and then do whatever in the winter and then they come back with us.

So he has that going. Now we have two rigs. So last year we bought a, the first year was a trailer. So 24 trailer that looks like a landscaping trailer that has all the equipment. Second year we bought one that fits into the back of a truck. So it’s a lot more, you can get into smaller spaces because up here we have town, seaport towns like New Brayport, Salisbury, Amesbury, where the streets are narrower, they have cobblestone walkways and driveway, so the truck can get in there where the trailer couldn’t.

So we have these two things going. And we tripled the business within two years. I couldn’t believe it. I was like, oh my god, this is so cool. So it’s cleaning, but it’s exterior cleaning. But what we can do is, and what we do do is we offer services to our existing interior Maid Bright clients and saying, you know, Maid Bright cleaning is now offering power washing services. And so we get some of that business, plus we get new business from power washing people.

And then we introduce the cleaning to them. So now– We run it all under made bright financially that that’s a question I have or these separate entities. So we do for now. Mahalo. Okay. The name of the company is Bright Power Wash. So B R I T E. So we’re trying to put together the big bright umbrella.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Cheryl: But we’re wrestling with names because the word bright cleaning is so Yeah, we’re dealing with that stuff. So eventually, one company will be a holding company for all of them. But it was a great addition.

The price points are higher, like we’ve done commercial jobs that have been $10,000 and then down to $350 just like a 1,100 square foot ranch. But Amazing adding yeah adding those kind of complementary things where you know, they feed each other they feed Leads to each other and it it’s it relieves the boredom sometimes you get sick of like a residential Estimate this and that you have something else over here on the side That’s exciting the profit margins in the power washing for anyone that has a husband and wife team I strongly stress looking in a power powerwashing because the profit margin and powerwashing are high.

Partnering in Business

Stephanie: That’s why I wanted to ask you because I know there are a lot of couples who want to get into this type of thing, but then you kind of stay in your lane because obviously working with your partner can be challenging if you’re on top of each other and even just like the complimentary skills. We had kind of talked about that hopped on the call was how, you know, finding the people, if you’re going to partner and with somebody in your business, whether that be like, you know, your spouse or an actual partner outside of that – one, you know, take care and take caution, there’s a lot of reasons that fail.

But you need to have complimentary skills. If you’re the same person, then you that’s the wrong person, they need to fill in your gaps, and you need to fill in their gaps. And that’s when I, you know, did take the leap of having administrative staff that was, you know, taking from my cleaners who came to me and said, “Hey, I’ve got this experience.” And we gradually transitioned them to now I have, you know, three full-time managers as well as my executive assistant who is virtual.

Cheryl: But I, when I look at why we all work so well together and sometimes clash heads is because we’re quite different. And I am I’m absolutely the first of all, the eternal optimist and the jumping bunny from idea to idea, like let’s do it all. That’s that I know. And the risk taker and being impulsive of like, you know, let pulling the trigger very quickly, because you have to be able to make those. I’m very decisive. But that means sometimes, you know, like it’s too fast type of thing. I know.

Stephanie: Yeah, you have to be like, boom, boom, boom decisions.

Managing Team Dynamics

Cheryl: But now looking at my management staff of like, okay, they, as I let you know, as I like to say crystal lovingly, peas in my cheerios all the time, like why pissing in my cheerios? Because, but she has to, because otherwise I am, I’m blind to the negatives of perhaps an opportunity.

And looking at some of the things that we did, I wish I would have slowed down, but that is also who I am. And I have to honor, like, this is where I come in and say, no, we need to take this leap. We need to take this risk, guys. It is worth the reward.

And some of the biggest opportunities, like our largest commercial account that we’ve had now, we just hit a year. It’s a big federal building. It’s $11,000 a month. And the background check process for that is like a three-month process. It sucks. And after we got that bid and said, “Oh shit,” you know, like they were very, very like this, like we should have never bid this and that night and I’m like looking and I’m like, we made it work. It’s worked.

Stephanie: And so sometimes you have to push the envelope of what you’re comfortable with. I was like, if I didn’t take my first commercial account, which I absolutely was not prepared for at all, I learned as I went, you just throw yourself in the fire. And if you survive, that means you’ll learn and you can take on bigger challenges in the future.

Taking Business Risks

Cheryl: I just say, like, what’s the worst that can happen? You fail, all right, not a big deal. And so many people are afraid to fail. So many people are afraid to take chances. And I tell, you know, like we talked about earlier, there’s a low barrier to entry to cleaning, to residential, you know, commercial. You have to have funding because you have to full payroll. That’s like a different, you know, a different thing.

But you have to say, take some sort of risk. So, you know, my husband came to me and said, “Okay, here’s the, here’s the first power washing rig is going to be $25,000, we can finance it over three years, gonna be $1,000 a month.” So you think the poverty mindset would think, “Oh, my God, $1,000 a month, that’s debt, that’s this, that’s that.” The growth mindset says, “Okay, it’s dollars a month, how much do you think we can generate in revenue a month?”

And so you have to be able to make that jump to understand that if you’re going to, you know, grow to, you know, 500 or million, million and five, you have to spend money, you have to invest and you have to take chances. There’s no way around it.

Investing in Personal Growth

Cheryl: And that, and that goes into investing into yourself of like you, you know, you as an entity is are worth the investment. So that could be education, that could be getting coaching or or mentorship or anything learning you need to be investing in yourself. And that includes time listening to podcasts, like all of our listeners are doing right now listening to books while you’re cleaning.

As I always say, if you are cleaning and just listening to random, you know, crime podcasts or fun Z books, like you could be using that time to elevate your business sense, you could be learning right now. So like, I’m going to encourage you to stop doing that and utilize that time because your time is limited while you are in the field. So why don’t you put some earbuds in and learn and start applying things and trying things out because you don’t have a lot of time.

Stephanie: Right. No, totally. And I had a desk job and I wanted to hang myself before I couldn’t do a desk job. No, I think the biggest misconception when people start a business, whatever kind of business it is, is they say, “I’m going to start a business so I can work less hours.” Whatever I do when I’m like, that is such a joke. You’re going to work 80 hours a week.

You’re going to be working like, I mean, like I work like sometimes when I write my content. So I have a very, you know my schedule is I get up early. I was never an early bird riser I get up at like 4 a.m. Like a crazy person because the house is quiet my husband sleeping my son sleeping. It’s just me and the cat and I sit there and I write content for two hours or you know, whatever it is. That’s my quiet time.

I work on Saturday morning Sunday mornings. I do stuff all the time, but it’s what I choose to do. I don’t want to sleep on on the Sunday, I want to get up early and get something done. I want to go to the gym after. So by the time everyone gets up, I’ve whatever written all my content done all my scheduling, you know, done some marketing, I worked out and everyone’s just getting up and I’m like, whoa, you know, I’ve been awake for five hours.

Maximizing Productivity

Stephanie: But that’s yeah. And if you’re not willing to create those pockets of time, it’s like, if you think that you’re going to get your deep focus work done during the typical workday when your cleaners are coming at you and your clients, you are absolutely sorely mistaken. You are not going to make progress on actually building the business and systematizing and making things better.

And yeah, like, I know that may mean like, well, I, you know, I’ve got kids and blah, blah, blah, you got to get up earlier or you have to stay up later. Like, like, if you are not willing to make that sacrifice, at least, you know, in the beginning to get things moving, then go work for somebody else. And I know that may sound harsh, but yes, today I was up at five, I worked for an hour and a half on my giant auditing spreadsheet that I’m like updating, and then I went and did cycling, and then I came in and everybody else is working now.

And so it’s like, I took care of me and I moved the needle on my projects that I care about before body else came at me because once the day started and my meetings went long and everybody needed things, like all of a sudden, where was the time? It was gone. You know, I can sometimes I can barely even eat and that sounds like well, Stephanie, isn’t that the opposite? It’s like because I’m doing what I want, but that doesn’t mean it’s not hectic.

Entrepreneurial Dedication

Cheryl: Yeah, I mean, I think like you’re going to have to, you know, entrepreneurs have to work a long time really hard to get to the good stuff be able to like like we we went to beach house in the summer. It’s 30 minutes from our office. We run the business from there because it’s closed just in case right. There’s any disasters and stuff has been doing the power washing.

But you know sometimes and you’re going to know what I mean people will say oh it must be nice. And so whenever whenever someone says that to me because I’ve been working seven days a week and actually it really is nice to be able to afford that because I deserve it.

Stephanie: Oh, yeah. Yep. Absolutely. And you know, I’ve definitely heard, you know, my parents would always say like, Stephanie, you have a horseshoe up your ass. Like I’m really lucky. And I hate being, and I’m not saying that there’s not privilege and that we all start out at different places and different advantages.

However, yes, we worked our asses off. And there’s a reason that other cleaning companies do not make it to this level. It’s because we outworked and we were smarter, not harder, but we also worked really, really hard.

And I did go through probably a year or so where I backed off. I was probably only working in the business maybe 10 hours a week. And I almost tested out like a mini retirement. I did that about, you know, like six months to a year ago, and I was going to the beach during the week and it was fabulous.

But like my sense of purpose and like, I just, I wasn’t as happy. I’m so happy now with with the level of intensity I’m at now because I’m just like I’ve got yeah the fire in your belly you know it’s back so you may think like you don’t want to work but it’s like truly you need purpose and the cleaning business absolutely like is our purpose and helping others is our purpose.

Business Purpose and Passion

Cheryl: Totally and it’s it’s you know it’s not going to be easy but it’s a hundred percent worth it. I think I mean I work made you know I do the in the marketing and stuff like that, probably, I don’t know, 15, 15 hours a week. I mean, I’m always on, right? So always on the phone is on. If my girls need me, I’m there. If something disastrous is going on in the house or they have questions or a lockout or, you know, whatever it is, they can always reach out to me.

But like my days knock on wood, my days are quiet because I’ve trained my team leaders to replace me. So usually no one ever calls recalls me. So that’s, you know, a few years back, I decided, you know, I always knew that I wanted to consult and help people once I got to a certain point. I knew that would be it.

So when my days were quiet, I’m like, wow, I’m a little bored. You know what I do? And so that’s when I started consulting. So I, you know, I do my coaching in the afternoon and at night, I do a Wednesday live at five every week in Facebook. But that, honestly, that fulfills me helping other people, especially for some reason, women are drawn to me, I do coach men, but mostly women, helping them get over their fears in their belief system, seeing them thrive and add 100,000, 200,000 to their business is so fulfilling to me in a way I never thought was going to be.

Stephanie: Yeah. And I relate to that 100% of like this, this, you know, even the creating content and, and sharing, you know, my vulnerabilities and struggles with our industry as a whole and like encouraging people to start out in this, but, and, and, and being honest about the challenges and struggles because authenticity is something people can absolutely sense.

And I think that’s why, yeah, people, people like to listen to us occasionally is because they can sense one. We’re also the real deal. You and I are both working in our business. And we may be doing different things of like, I don’t, you know, I don’t even meet my employee. Like I don’t do hiring, firing. I live 20 hours away from my business. It really does. From a daily operation standpoint, it runs without me, but all the high level like stuff and, and like projects and, and kind of handling or helping my managers reach their goals with their projects. Like that’s where my role is at.

And then, yeah, all of the, I like adding the consulting and talking to aspiring cleaning owners or cleaning owners and just being able to like see the stress melt away because they’ve got a plan because nothing gets rid of anxiety like action and like a plan, like that’s what you need. If you’re feeling stressful, you need to take action.

Connecting with Other Business Owners

Stephanie: And so yeah, I know that analysis paralysis hits us all but you’d need to do something. And that could include listening to more YouTube videos, it could be talking to one of us, you know, and even like, sure, I’d love for you to share, where can people find you if they do want to talk to you? Where do they go? What kind of things do you offer as we’re wrapping up our conversation?

Consulting and Resources

Cheryl: Sure. So I have a Facebook group is called Sisters Who Scale. I think if you just put Sisters Who Scale in the search bar, it’s going to come up. It’s for cleaning business owners. And I have a six-month program called Drop Them Up and Scale. Drop them off for short. That seems to be the nickname that it’s taken on.

It’s a six-month course and we go 24 weeks every, you know, Thursday 5 p.m. East Louisiana time, which is my my time zone. We have that there’s homework and it’s basically from a to z. It’s everything: finding your target market, your sales, you’re hiring, building your brand organically. I’m a huge organic, you know, person not paying for ads.

Stephanie: Yeah, I totally get it. We’ve never paid for an ad I’m so proud of that. I have to say but I knew how to build it organically, you know on social media. I’m a huge social media fan.

Cheryl: So there’s that in there. There’s hiring. There’s contracts all kinds of stuff. I just launched a digital store because people have asked me for it. They’re like, “I document, blah, blah, blah.” So we have all these documents like that. And then we just started doing in-person retreats that are twice a year.

So we have one coming up in Destin, the 23rd to the 26th. And the plan right now, although things change is to run to two a year, but we’ll see. We had our first one in September up here in Seabrook Beach. And it was so cool. It was like, we all stayed in a house. It was like a sorority. And I trained for three days, and I pulled in my husband to train because he’s like, you know, a numbers guy, and a reports guy, he’s like the Excel Excel spreadsheets guy. That stuff gives me anxiety when I look at it. I’m just like, I mean, I can look at my track being your husband with the tracking, like, I’m secretly a super nerd about the numbers.

Stephanie: Yeah, yeah. I like the I like the numbers, but he breaks it down into like numbers, all kinds of stuff. So it was cool that we bonded.

Importance of Community

Cheryl: You know, I think, and the biggest takeaway that the girls, you know, the ladies came, they said that they always feel alone when they’re building their business. So coming together in a retreat was a way for them to meet other business owners.

Three of them had never flown on a plane by themselves, which was interesting to me. So, you know, a couple of them, three of them, Candace from Indiana, Kelly from Texas and Gloria from North Carolina, they had never flown by themselves. And I was like, wow, that’s a big thing for them.

And then they got to bond and meet new friends and realize that they go through the same exact struggles that every other cleaning business owner does. So I left that retreat exhausted because I talked for three days straight and completely fulfilled at the same time. So it was absolutely ever. So that that connection is just, yeah, that’s amazing.

Stephanie: I love that you’re doing the in-person retreats. It’s definitely something I, yeah, I think it is a, it’s a lonely path. And that’s where, you know, the internet is a beautiful thing. Obviously, we’re all in the ZenMaid mastermind community. And I love that.

So I like, I’m a big fan of Facebook groups for that connection and learning from each other and also like, you know, feeling the pain of each other and seeing, oh, we’re not alone of like, yeah, the struggles are universal. Like what I could guarantee we have identical problems we have hit time and time again. Like it’s not unique. We’re cleaning businesses. I made the people change, but the problems don’t.

And so, you know, we’re all going through it. And that’s where, you know, making those connections, don’t be afraid to reach out and make that connection and just absorb free content too. If you’re like, I’m not ready for that type of thing yet, just listening, absorbing, taking what you like, leaving what you don’t. And that’s just keeping that information flowing in.

Closing Conversation

Stephanie: So, well, we are coming to the end show. This has been a wonderful conversation. I could talk to you for like 10 more hours. Time are you similar?

Cheryl: We’re very similar. I didn’t realize we were that similar. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I’m a chatty Cathy too. So, I could definitely talk to you again. We’ll have to do another call because this was wonderful.

Stephanie: Oh yeah, this is cool. We can talk about, maybe we can talk about like bad employees or bad clients.

Cheryl: Oh yeah. Yeah. And just the hiring process too, I think would be great.

Stephanie: And yeah, talking about, uh, yeah, like I said, I love horror stories because I think those kind of lighten the mood of, you know, because sometimes it’s like, you’re going to laugh or you’re going to cry. So let’s laugh instead about this crazy thing that happened in the cleaning industry.

Industry Perceptions

Cheryl: I think, I think it is getting better. And I know Grace Reynolds from American house association. She does a lot more. I know she does a off for women and self-worth and raising prices and, you know, bringing, you know, trying to bring the cleaning industry almost as a trade, right?

And I think a lot of the stigma, some of the stigma has melted away in the last 20 years of the cleaner. But I still think some of it exists in the way that homeowners still sometime, every once in a while, they view the cleaners cleaners as the hired help, right? And so we still have to work towards fixing that. It’s still, it’s still a real thing, but it’s faded a little bit. Like, wouldn’t you say?

Stephanie: Absolutely. And I do think that, and I think that it is our responsibilities as owners to help that fade. And, and one of the, you know, actionable items that I do to do that is I highlight my staff as the amazing people that they are. And they are at the forefront of all of our content of our website. You can see them, you can learn about them, because they are intelligent, capable human beings who many of them have left, quote unquote, professional jobs and are much happier as serene.

So it’s like, because we’re actually, you know, respectful and care about their, their life balance and, and, you know, want them to feel appreciated. And we just shower them with appreciation. And so don’t I am just not a fan of like hiding your cleaners away as these like faceless cogs in the machine. No, they’re they’re the reason like we are able to do what we do.

So constantly making them feel like adored and respected, because they are they are working very hard for us. And that should be respected. And not everybody can do this. Like, yes, can you probably train cleaning adequately? Yes. But this takes a lot of intelligence to do this job well, because you have to problem solve. There’s so many things that happen in the field. And if you need all this handholding, you’re not going to be successful.

So yeah, my staff are incredibly impressive people. And I think it’s our job to constantly combat that of like, and also putting your foot down on inappropriate behavior or disrespectful behavior and being that that mom up there and you know side note with the exciting things coming down the line for for zen made they are definitely going to be helping combat that with their newest feature launch and I will just leave it at that because I don’t know when this episode is coming out but I’m very excited to be working with a company who cares about safety as much as we do so and and elevating our entire industry of professionals.

Final Remarks

Stephanie: So anyway, Cheryl, this was fantastic. We will cut it off.

Cheryl: You are.

Stephanie: Yes.

Cheryl: It’s a dirty job.

Stephanie: It is, it is, but somebody’s gotta do it. We will be the ones. (laughing)

Cheryl: This was great. This was really nice talking with you. Thank you for having me.

Stephanie: Absolutely, Cheryl. And everybody listening, definitely go give Cheryl a follow. Check out those links in the show notes. We will leave them there for you to look her off, and we’ll see you on the next episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners. Bye-bye!