More Than A Side Hustle
Millions off Cleaning Business & Getting Out of Debt (Digital Social Hour Podcast)
We went on the Digital Social Hour Show to talk about our journey of escaping debt, how we have made millions off a home cleaning business and what we are working on next.
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---Resources----
Learn how to start and scale a cleaning business without cleaning ANY Houses
Cleaning Business University Course
Follow us on Social Media:
Instagram | Youtube | Facebook | Twitter
Podcast Sponsor:
If you are interested in a spot shoot us an email at info@thehartrimony.com
We went on the Digital Social Hour Show to talk about our journey of escaping debt, how we have made millions off a home cleaning business and what we are working on next.
๐ Don't forget to drop us a review to support us!
Leave us A Review
---Resources----
Learn how to start and scale a cleaning business without cleaning ANY Houses
Cleaning Business University Course
Follow us on Social Media:
Instagram | Youtube | Facebook | Twitter
Podcast Sponsor:
If you are interested in a spot shoot us an email at info@thehartrimony.com
So we said we could take a outdated mom and pop industry and add some technology to it. We could beat the competition from day one. So instead of us going out and doing the cleanings, we were working with mom and pop shops who were independent contractors.
Speaker 3:We would send them to do the cleaning and having our nine to five allowed us to do certain things right. It allowed us to the clean the business, to be supplemental and not just relying on it, so I can operate differently. If it's a business, that's helping me and that's just the only thing I need.
Speaker 2:Thanks for supporting. And here's the episode.
Speaker 1:We moved to Dallas almost eight years ago now and from Brooklyn, new York, I got a promotion at my job. I was doing IT for 15 years as an IT director and it was like you should move to Dallas because we had an office out there. I was traveling a lot for my job and it was like you should move out to Dallas. I'm like I don't feel like it, I don't want to do that. And then we had a few visits and we decided let's make that move. Family, I promise her dog and concept kitchen and stuff like that, so we decided to make that move.
Speaker 2:What breed.
Speaker 3:He's an Australian cattle dog, Mr Chow.
Speaker 2:Love that I have an Australian shepherd.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, so they probably look just like that. I didn't know what size he was going to be, but yeah, okay, yeah, mine's a mini, so it's like 35.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, damn.
Speaker 3:Just go to 70 or maybe he'll see where he's at. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I filled up the apartment.
Speaker 3:Okay, we'll see.
Speaker 2:So I want to talk about from IT. You guys went into cleaning, right, and why did you decide to go into the cleaning industry? Because that's such a random industry, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we had 114,000 dollars of debt, and I'll let you tell that story.
Speaker 3:No, yeah, we had 114,000 dollars of debt and we were paying it off. We were side hustling, raising our income, and the cleaning business was something else to raise our income. Essentially, he had brought the business to me and I'm like that doesn't make sense, never heard of it, never spoke about having a business. Why would we do that?
Speaker 3:All those questions and so once he got more information, that's when we got started about six years ago. Now, or November, will be seven years, so we got started while paying off that while working on nine to fives with the cleaners.
Speaker 2:Wow, so 114,000 dollars in debt. How did that happen? How long did it take to compile that much debt?
Speaker 3:Oh, to compile, I don't know, to pay off to 23 months.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:What it consisted of was I went to graduate school, so I had a private student loan. So, he had undergrad loans. We had a new car, we moved to Dallas, and then some credit card.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:So that's what it consisted of. So I guess how long it took if you start counting from undergrad.
Speaker 1:But when we got married, we combined our finances. A lot of people talk about. You know? Oh, I want to have separate finances, separate bank accounts. When we got married, we believed that we should combine everything. So, her debt and my debt. We just combined it and we realized that we had 114,000 dollars of debt as a family, as a newlywed couple, and we were like, let's try to figure this out, how are we?
Speaker 2:going to proceed from here. Yeah, and honestly, that's probably a common issue if you're going to college.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and the fact that you paid off in two years. That's the uncommon part. I feel like most people have debt for 10, 20 years if they're going to college. You know what I?
Speaker 3:mean, yeah, I mean that was. I mean, that's the standard. It's kind of like what's the reason? Why are we rushing to pay this off? That's what it was, but then after we started, it became like a game. It's like, okay, we can do this, we can pay it off. Right so the goal was to pay it off on my 30th birthday, and we did that.
Speaker 2:Nice yeah, Because the interest is probably high on those right Student loans.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Absolutely. At this point. We've paid it off in 2018, 2017. So it's far gone out of our heads. Now what?
Speaker 2:do you guys do to celebrate?
Speaker 3:that we press the button together. Yeah, we literally press the button together on the computer. Pop champagne.
Speaker 2:Let's go.
Speaker 3:Went to Houston to celebrate my 30th birthday with family and friends, and then in May we went to Maldives, in Dubai Like a debt payoff and celebrating our wedding anniversary in one.
Speaker 1:Wow, you would think that once you pay, it off, it's like going to be this. We went, we obviously traveled, but once you hit that button, you hit submit. There's no confetti that comes out.
Speaker 1:There's no like, oh my God, like the debt freedom. People don't come and help you out. They're like no, you press the button and it says submit. Then it takes a few days of process and you wait and you're trying to anticipate it and the next thing you know it says you got the email saying you know you have paid off your student loans and you press that button and that's pretty much it. But we didn't really celebrate until we went to Houston and did our own thing.
Speaker 4:Shout out to the science of scaling podcast hosted by Mark Roberge. It's brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals, each week. Mark, founding CRO at HubSpot CRO and senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, interviewed some of the most successful sales leaders in tech to learn the secrets, strategies and tactics to scaling company growth. He recently had on the head of sales from open AI and that was a very interesting episode on the future of AI. Listen to the science of scaling wherever you get your podcast today.
Speaker 2:Nice, and you guys haven't been in debt since, so congrats. Yeah, and the business has grown tremendously. I want to talk about the first year, what that was like, because you were still working your nine to fives the first year, right.
Speaker 3:And I'm still working mine oh you still are, yeah. Wow, we got to get into that. Yeah, he's gone, but I'm still there, okay.
Speaker 2:So yeah, first year, walk me through that. You're learning a bunch. You probably made a ton of mistakes. What was that like?
Speaker 3:So revenue first year I think, was about 75,000. Our first year it was a learning curve. I think at month eight we were like should we do this? Is it worth it? You know, we don't need it, we have our jobs, we are high income earners just two of us, no kids. So those are the things that we were discussing during that time. But it was just a learning about what marketing really is and what the business really entails, how you know they say that customer's always right and are they really and how do you handle that. And then learning our strengths and weaknesses. Right, it's for the business. So he was in IT, so he would handle the back end. I'm a mental therapist so I would handle the clients that aren't so happy and the people that we were working with. So that was another thing that we had to learn during that time, because this was our first business ever. We didn't have any business schooling or anything. So that was part of the learning process.
Speaker 2:So was it profitable the first year? Pretty much yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was profitable. We weren't tracking it as well as we should have been. It was profitable.
Speaker 1:We didn't get an account in to really look over the P&L. It was probably till like a year or two.
Speaker 2:That's what I did. I mean, they don't teach you that, to be honest, so you're just doing it, and then you're like, oh, what are taxes?
Speaker 3:That's for sure you know what I mean. Oh, that was a big one that got a sales tax.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, we had to charge that Sales tax is high.
Speaker 1:But what we did was we were following the profit first model by Mike McAlewitch as a book and it just literally tells you how to manage your business finances as a first time business owner, essentially. So we were just taking out a small percentage for taxes about 15% for taxes, about 10% for owners drawing stuff like that so that by the time taxing came around we already had some of this stuff saved. And that's how we were managing our finances at the very beginning of our business. We didn't really know what to do, but this book kind of helped us out.
Speaker 2:Right, 75K first year is pretty impressive. Was that all word of mouth or were you running paid ads?
Speaker 1:We were doing paid ads. We were doing it from the very beginning, from the very beginning.
Speaker 2:Got it.
Speaker 1:Because the way we run our business is not like the typical mom and pop shop. So we realized that if we could take an outdated industry I know everyone's talking about the Cody Sanchezes and stuff like that, but 2017, this really wasn't a thing owning a residential cleaning business, a remote cleaning business so we said we could take an outdated mom and pop industry and add some technology to it. We could beat the competition from day one. So instead of us going out and doing the cleanings, we were working with mom and pop shops who were independent contractors. We would send them to do the cleanings.
Speaker 1:We would manage the back end, the marketing, the advertisement, the customer service, the emails, everything like that. In the workflow and they would just guard and clean. We would do the other percentage of the job.
Speaker 2:Interesting. So you were like drop shipping cleaning almost yeah, that was somebody calling it that and I was like that's pretty interesting.
Speaker 1:Now a lot of people are doing it where they're like you have the Uber, the Airbnb, the Lyft. They run the same business model where they're just sending people out to do the work and you're managing the actual business side of it.
Speaker 2:So it is kind of drop shipping cleaning. Yeah, when I pictured this I thought it was you two on the floor scrubbing, but you're literally outsourcing. So when he brought it.
Speaker 3:I thought that too, and that's why I said no. I was like no way, that's how I bought it. She was like hell, no, we're not doing that Like we have a job.
Speaker 1:We have high paying jobs, why would we go out and clean homes? And once I explained the business model which is the same reaction you had she's like oh OK, we don't have to clean, we'll work in mom and pop shops, who have none of that, and they just and to some of the people that we work with there, they already been cleaning for 15 years. They don't have a website, they don't have any digital marketing, advertising, customer service and all they really do is just cleaning and that's what they enjoy. So we said if we could find people like that, who don't want to do anything else but clean, we could run our business that way.
Speaker 2:And that's what we've been doing for seven years now. That's sick. So are you doing this just in Dallas or everywhere?
Speaker 3:We are just in Dallas. We have students in 42 states, but our business because we still own our cleaning business is just in Dallas.
Speaker 2:Wow, 42 states. You guys are f***ing with the teaching side too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we didn't recognize that we didn't start teaching until a couple of years ago. We were already three, four years in the business until we realized that people wanted this information. And then we saw other people talking about it. I was like, wait, no, we've been doing this already for four years. How about we talk about this too? So the more we talked about it, the more people who got interested in it. And he said OK, there is a component of this where people do want to know about it. We just weren't explaining it the way I thought we were.
Speaker 3:Because we were talking about the debt freedom story online. On social media. That's what we were known for initially, until he was like I think people want to know about the clean. I'm like why would they want to know about the clean? Once again, I'm questioning him why would they want to know about it? But he was completely right and so now most people know us for that. They don't even know we have a debt-free story or anything like that, but just the cleaning part.
Speaker 2:Wow, my man's a visionary out here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely is, absolutely is, I'll give it a take.
Speaker 1:Good morning America. It was like the whole story was three minutes but the last 15 seconds they said oh yeah, they own this cleaning business and it was the whole stories about the debt freedom journey and they was like wait, wait, wait, what's that 15 seconds? People want to know more about that. And that's the part of the story that kind of took off. People started asking questions about yeah.
Speaker 2:Nice and from there you got into the teaching side right, Because at that point the business has done hundreds of thousands, so you were able to go out there and teach. It was such a specific thing that there's not many people that could teach it, Because you guys did it for four years. I feel like anyone else teaching it doesn't have the experience you guys did.
Speaker 3:You sound like him. He says that and I'm like people. In this day and age, people don't feel they need experience, they just jump in.
Speaker 2:I hate when I see courses about people that don't actually do it. That pisses me off actually.
Speaker 1:That was the first thing that I was worried about, too is, once we start telling this stuff, everyone is teaching something, but it was like we felt like we had the experience, because we were doing it for four years before we even started teaching it and we had our own experience teaching people what they've been able to accomplish. Now our students have gone on and done what $13 million over in the businesses in 42 plus states and they've done like 50,000 cleanings Wow, and we recognized that. We said, OK, there is something here. Let's focus on this part of the story. Let's help create a great impact.
Speaker 3:And not many people look like us or just even have our story as well, so I think that helps. That puts the twist to it. We're a couple, we're from Brooklyn, new York, yeah, all those things.
Speaker 2:Plus, you came from not much debt, I mean that's a crazy story. It's like almost inspiring a lot of people. I feel like yeah. When it comes to finding the actual cleaners, are you just calling them, emailing them? Do you have a system for that?
Speaker 3:So multiple ways. The same place that you kind of look for a job is where we would look, so like Indeeds, yproproitor, even Craigslist is a place that we would look. We also like to do a lot of referrals when it comes to that. So if we hire someone, axing them, they have family and friends that would want to be part of the process and we do an extensive process of background check. We, you know, they have to have their own cleaners supplies, they have to have their own car, that type of stuff that they are a contractor so they operate as themselves. They also have their own assurance. So those type of things we have in place with the people that we work with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a good business because I feel like people always need cleanings, kind of recession proof.
Speaker 3:As long as there's a house or a building, it's always clean. People realize that during the pandemic a lot of business.
Speaker 1:That's when we started really focusing on the teaching side of it, because a lot of businesses went down during the pandemic. But we saw a huge spike during the pandemic. Everyone wanted their homes clean. They became germaphobes. They were f***ing cleaning, they f***ing cleaned.
Speaker 1:It was a brand new thing, and it was like OK, this industry is pandemic proof. Right, there's a pandemic that's happening. Cleaning was identified in Dallas as essential workers. We said, oh, we can still operate our cleaning business, they can still go out and clean, we can run our business from our home and we can still make money. And that's when we said, ok, this is really something that we need to be sharing, that we can share a lot more.
Speaker 2:Nice, a lot of people lost my darn f***ing. You guys were actually f***ing, yeah. Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 1:We went our revenue. The pandemic happened in Dallas in March. The first month no one knew what the hell was happening. In April we said, ok, we see the business going down. By May our revenue jumped back right back to normal. While other businesses were closed. We said, ok, we're essential, we were. And then the thing about in Dallas was they were like flagging people on the road. The cops are looking for people who were driving to find out why they were on the road. So we were essentially like we're essential workers, we have a cleaning business, here's our branding, here's our licensing and stuff like that, and we were able to continue operating our business.
Speaker 3:Wow, I remember that the good thing with the model is that we can always turn it on and off right Because we don't have employees, we have contractors.
Speaker 4:So with the marketing.
Speaker 3:during that time we're like, let's turn it down, you know, because no one's booking our services, so we can always just turn it down, so you're not like just losing money.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:As opposed to if it was a different model than you would be in that stuck place like OK, what do I do now?
Speaker 2:That makes sense.
Speaker 1:As you got employees, they got to get paid regardless if you make money or not? Yeah, Well, whatever you decide to do with them, that's why businesses were shutting down because employees still had to be paid, and they're not even working for lockdown as well, they don't work, they don't get paid.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 2:So you're a mental health therapist. You said yeah and you decided to keep that job. Yes, so you must really like it.
Speaker 3:So with my full-time job I kind of work on the insurance side of mental health. I don't do one-on-one therapy as much as I used to in the past Once we had our baby. I let that part go for a bit because it's taxing to hear everybody's, everyone's trauma. It's taxing, not to say I won't ever get back into that, but yeah, I still have my job. You can ask me why I don't have a straight answer. At first it was identity. Ok, I got my master's for this. I had tons of debt for this.
Speaker 3:This is part of my life. Now it's probably just being scared, which was the same thing for when he left as well. So, I'm not to say that I'm obsessed with it, that I must stay, or I'm not one that I need this as well, Because at some point I do want to let it go and just work if I want to.
Speaker 2:I feel that, yeah, it is a safety net right Having that insurance. You know money's coming in every two weeks or whatever.
Speaker 3:Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1:And a lot of first-time entrepreneurs if you go on our page. We never tell people to just quit their jobs.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:It took us. We had our business now almost eight years now. I just left my job in 2021.
Speaker 2:Oh so six years in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we were making $50,000 in our cleaning business a month. So we were like I was still afraid we were on Goodmore American. It was on in the office. The team was like why are you still here? We were seeing our stories on podcasts. They knew our numbers. My boss even came to me and was like do you still want to be here? And it's like we don't ever tell anyone just to jump ship. We want to make sure we have our ducks in a row. Like before I left, we had to make sure we had an emergency fund, we made sure we were ready to go, we made sure we did this, we did that. So I think it's just one of those things we don't ever tell people to just jump ship and we always want to follow our own advice as well.
Speaker 3:Right, and having our nine to five allowed us to do certain things right. It allowed us to the clean the business, to be supplemental and not just relying on it, so I can operate differently if it's a business that's helping me and not just the only thing I need.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Right, and so eventually that helps me to put marketing dollars in, that helps me to do other things until it's.
Speaker 2:Are you interested in coming on the digital social hour podcast as a guest? We'll click the application link below. In the description of this video, we are always looking for cool stories, cool entrepreneurs to talk to about business and life. Click the application link below and here's the episode, guys.
Speaker 3:Sustainable on its own, and now I feel comfortable for it to run on its own, and it's funny people ask that I'm like. Well, your comfortability in mind is different, right? You have different things going on, so I can't tell you what exactly you need.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But for us this is.
Speaker 2:this is what it looks like, so wow, it's so crazy that 50 K a month is possible in just one city to cleaning. Yeah, oh absolutely.
Speaker 3:I mean, we know competitors that are doing way more really.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Damn.
Speaker 2:Eฤer. That's insane. Just off cleaning, because I feel like the margins are pretty high with cleaning. Yeah, because it's just your time.
Speaker 1:And then exactly so when you're doing, when you're so, let's say, we were just out doing the jobs ourselves outside of the marketing, that would be, it would be our time, so we'd be able to keep all of that money. So when we're running our business and you see other people, like one of our competitors he's been doing this for like 20 years he hits us up. He's like I see you guys, and your name and branding is at the top of Google and stuff like that, and he was like I wish I would have focused on that day one. Those are the things that people have been in the industry 20 years and I focus on SEO.
Speaker 4:No, I'm not focusing on your ads, google ads.
Speaker 1:Google, local services, you know marketing emails, things like that, so we're able to come into the industry and provide that. So that's why we're able to focus on this, dallas, and if we said already, want to go on a market to other areas, we could absolutely do that. But I think with the teaching component, our time has just been so limited, yeah, the way that we want to run our business right.
Speaker 3:So, like you may ask, can you hit six figures business? Yeah, but what does that consist of? Like for my time, for people that I have to hire, for me having freedom of not speaking to you and my business running on my own? Like, what does that consist of? And so we've learned that as well, because at times we were comparing ourselves like why don't we have more?
Speaker 4:and it's like I don't really want more, because you don't know what that's going to look like.
Speaker 2:Are you ready for it? Yeah, handle it. When you're teaching this, how much money are you recommending people to start off with to start a business like this?
Speaker 3:We're telling them about 1500.
Speaker 2:That's it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and we're talking 1500 to get your LLC, get a bank account and you even have marketing spending money, because all of it doesn't happen at the same time as well. So you know LLC and stuff that can take a week or two Going on to market and your website, that type of stuff. It's a transition, so it may take a month to two months to spend that. It's not like you start and you just give 1500. The more the better, of course, because the way that this goes is the more marketing dollars you can put in, the more eyes, the more customers see you, the more people will book you, because we do everything online.
Speaker 3:So, if we don't do anything in the field, like we don't go door to door, we don't do any of that, because we were in Dallas and we didn't know anybody. So who are we going to?
Speaker 2:Yeah, door to door for cleaning. It's a bit weird. I mean it might work, I don't know, it might work.
Speaker 3:I mean, there's other things that if you know people, that's a place to start right. Family and friends. But how long is that sustainable, Right? So marketing in places like Yelp, Google, those type of places? People are looking for cleaning services.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Google is great because it's so targeted.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I love Google. I just started running those actually.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we tell people like where are you going to look for a cleaner at? Where are you going to look for any local services? You're only going to be Google or Yelp for the most part.
Speaker 3:Maybe Thumbtack.
Speaker 1:Thumbtack, something like that. So why not put most of your energy into the places where you know your customers are already looking, versus trying to do these other platforms? So you could like some of our students they have experience doing like cold calling and stuff like that, which is totally fine. We don't have any experience doing cold calling.
Speaker 4:We're not going to tell you to do something we've never done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's how we teach. We tell you use your experiences. If you have a nine to five, you're a marketing or you're in sales, or use your experience that you already have, that you already doing and to expand your business even further.
Speaker 2:I want to hear that cold calling script for cleaning man. That's so funny. I mean what?
Speaker 3:is this so, for example?
Speaker 1:if I was doing cold calling I would probably call residential complexes in Dallas, texas. Yeah, I want to talk to their front desk with the front concierge whatever their front desk person is and ask them hey, are you in the market for a new cleaner? Okay, are you satisfied with your cleaning service? And maybe some people want to do a drop in. I know some people might bring some cookies to the front desk or something like that.
Speaker 4:Old school.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah Something like that and some restaurants have done that and it has worked.
Speaker 2:That makes sense, that's something that we've done. Yeah, On a commercial level that makes sense. I was thinking more residential.
Speaker 3:Oh no, the funny thing was we did try it when we go to the cold call.
Speaker 4:We tried not going to do it oh you did 95 degrees.
Speaker 3:He's like, he's like dressed in a button down and we're putting um flyers under doors we got nothing from it. After that hour of that we're like we're never doing this.
Speaker 4:We're never doing this.
Speaker 2:But, we're like let's try it.
Speaker 3:We're new in the business. We don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is seven years ago. Yeah, I've never been closed on a door or cells ever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, most people in this day and age, I don't think will be so it's a tough sell, I mean so right now, we just had, um, we just had storms in Texas and the roofers they were doing door and they're ****ing it because every single neighbor in our area is getting their roofs done by the same company, so something like that that makes sense.
Speaker 2:It creates FOMO.
Speaker 1:Why are they on their roof and their roof and they're now.
Speaker 2:You're thinking something wrong with your roof? Yeah, and that's also a good offer because the insurance is covering it, so they're not even spending any money.
Speaker 3:Exactly Right. Um, I want to talk about balancing dating and business.
Speaker 2:You guys are ****ing it. A lot of couples struggle, you know, balancing the two. Yeah, what's been your experience there?
Speaker 3:What's our experience there? Um, I don't think. My first thing I always say is I don't think every couple should be in business together.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:And that's not being rude. That's just like you have to know your strengths and weaknesses of how it works, because it can consume you. We are very vocal on you know this is too much. Shut it off, we're not doing it and being respectful of each other and not getting an attitude about that Right. So we're very vocal in that. We've also known each other for about 20 plus years.
Speaker 4:Oh, wow.
Speaker 3:We haven't said that. Probably we've known each other for a really long time, yeah, so that probably helps the situation, but I spoke about the strengths and weaknesses that we have, and so focusing on that has been very helpful for us. I know what you can handle, I know what you handle, and let's just focus on that. We can get back together, right? One last thing we do is we have family meetings, and that's important.
Speaker 3:That can go over everything from spirituality, to family, to business, to everything of checking the temperature to see how things are going, what's not working, what can we change? Who will we eliminate?
Speaker 2:whatever so those would be my few things. Family meetings how often are those? That sounds cool.
Speaker 3:So when we were paying off the debt they were like once a week Wow. And then they like fluctuated out. We brought it back again this year. We're like adamant about it to once a month, but we both work from home and we're like constantly talking to each other. So you can say things are happening day to day but when we actually like sit down, babies away, dogs. No TV on once a month at this point.
Speaker 2:That's great advice, because I've seen where couples get into business together. It ruins a relationship, yeah, honestly. So it's a balance, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just like when a kid come to come not comparing our business to a kid, but, but it is kind of the same thing because that dynamic can change the balance of the family. You got a brand new business or a brand new baby, brand new entity that entered the family that wasn't there before. Now I was like, how do you guys manage that relationship with that new individual, that new entity and yourselves, so, even outside of our daughters? Like, we still got to have our date nights. Right, we got to focus on ourselves. All right, we still got to have date nights outside of our business. Because if we don't and we go to the business meeting and we're just talking about business all the time, that creates a rift between us us too.
Speaker 1:Facts so if the business is going bad, the relationship is going bad.
Speaker 2:It was like you got to be able to separate this. Yep, that's how it used to happen to me, because even on date nights I would just talk business the whole time.
Speaker 1:I'm in the same way.
Speaker 3:Yes, so he will go for it. I'm the one stopping it. By the way, if anybody needs to know, it's me stopping it.
Speaker 1:She's like Tony, not tonight, no business, and it's like all right, I shut it off, we're done. I'm focused on a relationship again.
Speaker 2:Took me a while to get out of that. Yeah, my girl would give me a kick under the table. I just go on and on, man, I get so excited about business.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but it happens especially at the beginning with the business, when we were the only ones answering the phone doing things. If we got an angry customer it would ruin our night. It was one time we remember it was Valentine's Day and we're like piss because this person's like I'm going to leave a bad review. You know people just go on and we're like, listen, we got to go out, let's just go out. It's Valentine's Day, let's just go out. And that's what we did. So we're very intentional about it, really, of knowing when it's becoming too consuming, we need to stop it here. And he's like, well, business doesn't stop. I'm like, yes, it does, and this house is stopping.
Speaker 4:It's stopping.
Speaker 3:right now we're about to watch some housewives. Like it's stopping right now. So that's important, makes sense.
Speaker 2:I think it's being intentional about it as well. Yeah, reviews must be brutal, right, because people are strict, especially with restaurants and cleaning, probably even stricters. Oh, is he the worst.
Speaker 1:Because if you go to a restaurant, you're probably not going to leave a bad review. If things didn't go 100%, you're probably like all right, cool, I'll just never go back.
Speaker 2:Right, you're in my house.
Speaker 1:You're in my house. You're in my sanctuary. This is my private area and something didn't go to your liking. You're going to be pissed off.
Speaker 3:You paid a premium, and you paid a premium for that service.
Speaker 1:It's not like another service, right? You're paying a premium for this. You normally expect premium service. So some of the things we try to use to make sure we get in front of getting bad reviews is number one the review doesn't happen at the point of the cleaning. It happens, but when it gets to your website now they are on our website they see where a premium service. Now they're probably calling us Right, so making the experience the same amongst everyone. So now it's like all right, who am I speaking to? What can I provide? How can we help you? But then also setting expectations so we tell you what time we're going to be there.
Speaker 1:Another thing we do is we give you arrival windows. So it's like if we said we're going to be there between 8 to 10 am, we're going to make sure we're there between 8 to 10 am, just like you know, the cable guy gives you 8 to like noon. We said we're going to do a two hour arrival window. Our goal is to get that within that arrival window every single time and if we can't get there, we will give you a discount or we'll call you and let you know in advance. Setting expectations we let you know, after the cleaning we're going to call you to make sure you're satisfied. Our clean is going to do a walkthrough, make sure you're satisfied and then also, once you get them on the phone, we want to find out are you satisfied, were you good? Are you happy? We call every single client, every single client.
Speaker 4:Every client, our team does Our team does. Wow, our team.
Speaker 3:Our team called every single client Our team started every single client.
Speaker 1:So we want to find out if you were satisfied. If you were not satisfied, we have 100% satisfaction guaranteed. We'll send the team back out. We try to get them before they could go on any platforms to bash us. I need that, Nice. It doesn't work 100% at a time.
Speaker 3:I'm not even allowed to In this. I mean, I'm a therapist, so I know that people can be people. But really in this field or in this business, it's like, ok, some people you just cannot reason with no matter what you can't avoid the review.
Speaker 3:It is what it is. You could have done everything right. You could have done one thing, one little thing, and it just it is what it is. So you just got to stand by your policies you have in place and kind of take the L and understand that you're going to get it happens.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've gone through like five clean ladies out here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's tough finding good ones. That's what people say yeah.
Speaker 2:I think they're so gassed because they're cleaning all day, so like they're not putting in 100% effort on your specific house because they got to clean four more after you know what I mean, and that's the thing.
Speaker 3:It's a difference when you hire a person versus a company. So we tell people all the time because they're like, oh, this is a bit pricier. We are pricier than if you're hiring a person, because then a person, if they don't show up, who are you going to you? Want to find another one, A person that they steal from you? Who are you going to Hopefully you find them?
Speaker 4:You don't know.
Speaker 3:But a company it can be a different person if this person didn't do well, and then we can keep the same person with you if you're available, those type of things. So it is different compared to an individual. That makes sense, so you can book in with a company.
Speaker 2:What are you guys currently working on now and what's next for this year and next year?
Speaker 3:Oh, just, we're always trying to do bigger. And also just with the cleaning business, we're like okay, how can we continue profit as well? Like, how do we make sure our profit margins are well? That's something that we focus on in team building, is something that we focused on Once we had our daughter. We finally put like a manager in place. Prior to that, it was just us for five years managing. We did have VAs, but it was just us managing. So growing our team is important Impacting more students different ways, figuring that out as well. That journey for our student is important for us this year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we've hired. When we first started it was just us, so now we have an operations manager. This is what we could do, say and do a podcast, because she's running the business for us full time. She has a customer service agent, she has a customer service manager, so she has a full team under her. So that's and we've also expanded to another area and a subsidy of Dallas as well. So thinking about if we wanna keep that expansion model going, what that looks like for us.
Speaker 1:We've also dove in 100% into the education model because it's a lot. You could impact a lot more people across the world than just in Dallas, texas, obviously. So when folks on that education model we've done we've bought some team members in-house from. We also also own a virtual assistant business for cleaning business owners, but we decided to take that business and bring it 100% into our education side. So now they're supporting our students on the emails, on the customer support. We have a community of over 250 students now in there. We've serviced over 2,000 students. So folks that own an education inside. That's my role, that's my job, that's my day to day Making sure they're seeing success, making sure they're seeing results and continuing to just grow our own cleaning business.
Speaker 2:I love that. Yeah, I think that's the right move, cause with education you could scale not even just country wide, but worldwide Exactly.
Speaker 1:We've got our first student, not our first. Our second student just launched in UK, nice. In two weeks he was like this is working in UK, was like well, not really sure, but I'm sure if they have cleaners there we can figure it out. And then two weeks later he said, hey, I got my first cleaner and we're waiting for the next update hey, I got my first client now.
Speaker 1:So we got a couple of UK students, we got some people in Canada. We was on Instagram live and him and his wife joined. It's like, hey, I'm looking into this model. And he came back and was like I got my first client, got my first cleaner, thank you guys. So definitely expanding worldwide at this point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, love it. Working people find you guys more about the course and business.
Speaker 3:So people can find us our course in business at cleaninbusinessuniversitycom. We also the heartchamoneycom is where you can find us on YouTube or on Instagram, and that's the H-A-R-T-R-I-M-O-N-Ycom. Anything else I missed.
Speaker 1:I would say we also have a podcast so we teach people how to start remote cleaning businesses, Also just about entrepreneurship in general. That's more than a side hustle podcast and that's just us sharing our story, what we've learned about business, entrepreneurship, relationships and life.
Speaker 2:Love it. We'll link it all in the video below. Thanks so much for coming on, guys.
Speaker 4:Thank you for having us. Yeah, thanks for watching as always See you tomorrow.