Your Profit Is Leaking — And It’s Coming From One of These 3 Pillars

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This article was written in collaboration with WootRecruit.

Most maid service owners don’t realize they have a profit leak until they’re up to their neck in fire drills, missed calls, and one more last-minute hiring emergency. Revenue looks fine on paper, but the bank account says otherwise.

You hustle. You post ads. You answer emails at 10 p.m. But for some reason, it always feels like you’re running uphill just to stay even. And every time you try to scale, something breaks. Someone quits. Someone forgets to invoice. Or your ad budget goes into the void.

If your business feels unstable, it’s probably not your fault. But it is your problem.

I know you’re hustling. You’re spending money on marketing, software, and staff. You’re learning and growing. But here’s what most business owners won’t admit out loud:

We’re spending more time chasing symptoms than we are fixing the root issues.

That chaos in your business? It’s not the economy. It’s not bad luck. It’s not even your staff. It’s bad structure. The kind that’s invisible until something breaks.

Let’s fix that right now.

There are three critical structures that hold your business up. I call them the 3 Pillars of Profit:

1. Lead generation – Getting the right customers in the door
2. Systems – Keeping everything running without chaos
3. Applicant generation – Hiring and keeping the people who do the work

If even one of these pillars is weak, your business starts leaking money, time, and energy. That’s why this blog isn’t fluff — it’s your first real audit.

This isn’t about trying harder. It’s not even about putting in more hours (I know what you were thinking). It’s about fixing the core foundation your business is built on — the 3 Pillars of Profit. If one of them is cracked, the whole thing suffers.

You can’t outwork broken pillars. But you can build them up once you know where the cracks are.

1. Lead Generation: Your Leads Are Costing You Profit — Not Creating It

Marketing should generate cash. Fast. Yet most owners keep dumping money into ads with no clear ROI. You hire a marketer or post a few Facebook ads, hoping magic will happen. Then it doesn’t.

I’ve made this mistake. I hired a full-time in-house marketer to write fresh content from scratch. We spent weeks building new assets, but the return was delayed. Slow. Dangerous. We were burning cash, waiting for marketing to “work,” and it almost cost us the business.

If you don’t know your “time to realized revenue,” you’re already in trouble.

The gap between spend and earn is where profits bleed. And if you’re not tracking it, you’re playing a dangerous game with your cash flow.

💡 Insight: Start measuring your time to realized revenue. For low-ticket offers, anything longer than two weeks is a red flag. You can’t build sustainable profit when the money trickles in too slowly.

Don’t outsource what you don’t understand.

Learn the basics first, then delegate. I nearly broke my own business with a marketing hire who was brilliant—but slow. Beautiful stuff, but it took weeks to produce. It didn’t matter because the revenue couldn’t keep up.

That’s how fast a weak leg can throw your table off balance.

2. Systems: Chaos Is the Enemy of Profit

Systems are not sexy. Until your team forgets to bill a client for three weeks. Until your customers leave because of “miscommunication.” Until you walk into a Monday morning full of confused texts, late arrivals, and no idea who’s actually cleaning what.

If that feels familiar, your Systems and Processes pillar is broken.

Early in my business, we once forgot to charge an entire batch of clients. For a whole month. Everyone assumed someone else had done it. We didn’t have a billing system. We just had “good intentions.” That mistake cost us thousands.

If your business can’t run without you, it’s not a business — it’s a dependency.

You’ve got leads coming in. Maybe even staff. But if you’re the one still answering every question, solving every fire, and rewriting the same texts over and over…

Then you don’t have a company. You have a hostage situation. And you’re the hostage.

Here’s what most cleaning business owners get wrong: they think systems mean huge SOP manuals or project management software. No. That stuff collects dust. What works is clear, visual, repeatable steps. As simple as a basketball coach’s X’s and O’s.

💡 Insight: Start with one high-friction task. Write the steps. Hand it to a team member. Let them follow it. Fix the gaps. Rinse, repeat.

Keep your systems so simple that a fifth grader could follow them. Use AI or hire someone to extract your processes from your head and put them on paper.

This is the pillar that keeps your five-star reviews consistent and your team retention high.
It’s also the only way I run two 7-figure companies without losing my mind or my weekends.

3. Applicant Generation: Hiring Isn’t a Side Project — It’s a Profit Engine

If you’re always “just one good hire away” from catching up… you’re already behind. Most owners treat recruiting like it’s something they do after everything else. It’s not. It’s a core pillar of profit.

When you don’t have the right people, you:

• Turn down work you could’ve billed for
• Burn out your A-players by stretching them thin
• Get stuck doing the work yourself again

Your next best hire is worth more than your next best client. Start treating it that way.

A great employee can bring in $70K–$90K in delivered services per year. And yet, most owners spend more money tracking ad clicks than they do tracking hiring metrics.

• What’s your applicant acquisition cost?
• How many interviews do you need to get one person to show up?
• How many hires do you need to keep up with turnover plus growth?

If you can’t answer these questions, you’re flying blind. I see it every day. A business owner complains that nobody shows up to interviews. I ask how many applied. “Five.” Then, of course, only one shows up. You don’t have a hiring problem. You have a volume problem.

💡 Insight: Treat recruiting like marketing. Track impressions, starts, applies, and shows. Then fix the bottlenecks.

I once helped a client hire 42 cleaners in two weeks. That’s not magic. That’s math. You need volume. You need follow-through. And you need to stop pretending recruiting is HR’s problem. It’s a growth strategy — not a box-checkers paperwork chore.

Recruiting isn’t about filling seats. It’s about finding profit generators.

Know your industry: house cleaning (mostly women) has a low show rate. Landscaping (mostly men) has a high one. Your apply rate needs to reflect that.

Most owners underestimate how much broken hiring systems are costing them. But this year’s Maid Summit is lifting the curtain. These are real owners walking you through how they built their recruiting engines from the ground up without burnout or overthinking it. Pay attention to these sessions. They’re dropping the kind of insights you never get for free. And if there’s one session you can’t miss, it’s mine…I mean, of course, I have to make a plug here, but my goodness, is it going to blow your mind!

I’m revealing the CT Fingerprint™, a repeatable blueprint to spot red flags before and during the interview, so you stop wasting money onboarding the wrong people, just to have them leave a week later— or worse, destroy your company from the inside out.

For the first time, I’m walking through exactly how to hand off hiring so someone on your team can hire as well — or better — than you with full confidence. It’s the part no one in our industry has ever been able to nail down (until now). The Profit Pillar Map will help you anchor everything you learn here into a system you can actually scale.

You Don’t Need to Be Great at All 3, But You Better Know Which One’s Cracked

Look at your business with clear eyes. Which of these pillars is the strongest? Which one is failing you?

You don’t need more effort. You need better balance.

Let’s get honest:

• You’re good at marketing, but your backend’s a mess.
• You’ve got systems, but no staff to run them.
• Or you’re hiring nonstop, but your pipeline is dry.

Pick the strongest pillar. Double down on it. That’s your momentum. Find the weakest. That’s your leak. Delegate or get help. And build a rhythm that keeps them all growing at the same pace.

The businesses that scale are the ones that stop being reactive and start being intentional.

Not with fluff. Not with gimmicks — with structure. With clarity. With a table that doesn’t wobble.

This is what I’ve taught across every coaching session, podcast, team training, and inside my own businesses.

It’s not sexy. But it works.

If this made something click for you, then good. That was the point. Sometimes, it’s not about learning something new. Sometimes, it’s about finally seeing the cracks you’ve been working around for too long.

And now it’s time to fix them.

You don’t need to rebuild your entire business overnight. But you do need a plan. That’s why we’re teaming up with ZenMaid to drop something big: the Profit Pillar Map — a tactical guide to lock in every win:

To make a copy that you can edit, go to File > Make a copy.

What to Watch for at the Maid Summit (If You’re Serious About Profit)

LEAD GEN: Shorten the time to cash

The most dangerous number in your business is how long it takes to turn a lead into revenue. If you’re burning cash on ads or waiting weeks for money to show up, don’t miss the lead gen tracks. They’re tactical, not fluffy — and they’ll show you how to close that gap before your business bleeds out.

SYSTEMS: Simplicity that scales

No more dusty SOPs. This year’s systems sessions are real-deal walkthroughs from owners who ditched chaos and took back control. If you’re still putting out fires daily, these are the talks you can’t afford to miss.

HIRING: Finally fix the profit killer

This is the year we stop pretending recruiting is an HR checkbox. In my most anticipated talk in the cleaning industry, I’m unveiling the CT Fingerprint™, a repeatable blueprint to spot red flags before the interview even ends, so you stop wasting money onboarding the wrong people, just to have them leave a week later – or worse, destroy your company from the inside out. I’ll even show you how to train someone to hire as well—or better—than you. It’s never been done. Until now.

The Profit Pillar Map is your cheat code for this year’s Maid Summit. Print it. Bookmark it. Use it to track the sessions that matter most.

And here’s the kicker: we’re unlocking eight free tools across the three days — each designed to support one of the pillars. The map shows you exactly when and where to tune in to unlock them. This year, don’t just attend another summit. Show up with a plan. Leave with a map.

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