Bidding 170,000 Sq Ft and Beating Imposter Syndrome, with Amanda Stovall

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Introduction

Stephanie: Hello everyone and welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. My name is Stephanie and I am from Serene Clean, and I’m your host here on the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I have a repeat guest here backed by popular demand, Miss Amanda with Stovall’s Cleaning Service in Missouri. And for those of you that did not listen to Amanda’s first episode, highly recommend. The vibes are killer. They are through the roof. And that’s why I wanted Amanda back because she has such good questions and she is going through so much growth personally and professionally that I think that it’s a wonderful learning mechanism for us also. Welcome back, Amanda. Happy Monday.

Amanda: Hey, happy Monday. Thank you so much for having me back. I’m super excited.

Stephanie: So am I. So currently you are really having some pretty spectacular commercial opportunities come towards you, and I’d love to kind of talk through those and we can discuss some of the questions have related to those specifically before we jump into other areas of conversation. So I’d love to, one, talk about what are these commercial opportunities that are coming your way and how are they finding you?

Landing a Major Church Contract

Amanda: We’ve advertised that we are commercial, but we’ve never had a huge percentage. And by I mean, we’ve done two to three max commercial small offices that we can just fill a gap in. A few weeks or so ago, I got a bid request through our booking form for commercial cleaning and they maxed out on the square footage on my form, which is 10,000 square feet. And I was like, oh my gosh, how am I going to do 10,000 square feet? The highest one we’ve ever done was around 8,000 square feet. So we’re doing pretty small commercial. And I was like, oh, 10,000, I don’t know if that’s going to really fit into our gap, how I like to do the commercial. So I look into it and I get on the phone with the lady and I’m like, can we schedule a walkthrough? She’s like, yeah, but actually it’s 170,000 square feet. When I tell you, I almost shit my pants. I’m like, okay, 170,000, 10,000 sounds cool right now. And so I’m like, I don’t even know in my brain I’m trying to figure out what 170,000 square feet even looks like. I just couldn’t comprehend it. It was so far out of anything I’ve ever been presented with. But I showed up for a walkthrough and pretended like I knew what the hell I was doing. No idea. It’s a church, and it is three separate buildings and they have a staff of between 40 and 50 year round. And it’s insane. If you picture a hospital lobby where there’s a coffee shop, bakery, cafeteria area, that’s in their church lobby in the main building. And then they have a separate building that’s a middle school building and a separate building that’s high school and college buildings. And they host all kinds of events. And it was a lot. It took us a little over two hours to do the full walkthrough. And I did not measure anything. I wasn’t out there with a little laser thing. That probably would have taken 10 hours to do. So yeah, I asked how they found me because I was like, I don’t understand. This definitely wasn’t a word of mouth situation. What is going on? And she was like, well, I Googled and you had the best reviews, and I really liked the vibe of your Google profile. And I was like, thank you, Stephanie. First of all, we’re telling you to do that.

The Power of Google Reviews

Stephanie: So what Anna just said, because that is exactly how I got my big giant commercial accounts. That’s how I got a million dollar job at Fort McCoy a couple of years ago. They filled out and it was accurate. It’s the reason I just you guys have got to get so sick of me saying get Google reviews, but it’s like that’s why commercial accounts absolutely search and that’s it’s fantastic. And, you know, it’s going to work for you for years. The Google reviews you’re getting right now are culminating for years and years and years, you know, they don’t go away. So it just is such a core tenant of a successful cleaning business.

Amanda: Yes, I agree to 100 percent. And I’m so thankful that I learned earlier this year, making a Google business profile and really delving into getting those reviews. We don’t have a ton. I think we have 33, 35-ish right now, but they’re all five-star. One of them is from a commercial client, but I don’t even think she stated in the review that it was a commercial cleaning. So they all appear to be residential and a 170,000 square foot commercial facility reached out to us. So extremely important. And I have my social media manager post on our Google business page or profile three times a week. So there’s constantly pictures or updates or something going on there. And we’ve seen a huge spike in views on the Google business profile as well. So yeah, I was like, wow, well, that’s fantastic, you know, I’m super excited that you found us on Google. So when she first reached out, she said that their pain point was the company they had currently wasn’t paying attention to detail. And so when I started asking questions through the walkthrough, what is that detail? The only detail they could give me was water buildup on the water fountains, calcium buildup, because it’s out in the county, in the country, out of city limits. And we have really hard water out here. And she actually used to staff five full-time staff for cleaning, and they decided to outsource it. And they had a chemical that worked great. You just let it sit on there, wipe it off. They told the current cleaning company about it. They ignored that, and now they’re having a lot of buildup. Okay, so your pain point is your current people don’t listen to you and take your concern seriously.

Understanding Client Pain Points

Stephanie: That pausing of okay, that tells you that one commercial is very sticky. But right there, if you don’t listen directly to what they’re requesting and ignoring something, that’s a very easy fix, right? Use this product to fix this problem for them, they wouldn’t have been even shopping around, most likely, if they hadn’t been ignored like that. So it’s just like, if a customer is blatantly telling you a need, and then you choose to ignore it, it’s like, that’s on you, you know, that’s totally on them, they shouldn’t even be this shit, you shouldn’t even be having this conversation with this client. But that cleaning company is, you know, not listening.

Amanda: Yeah, that’s exactly. And so I was like, okay, this isn’t even a detail issue. This is they’re not hearing my, they don’t feel heard and clients have to feel heard. That wins them over 10 out of 10 times if they feel heard. And so then throughout the walkthrough, we started talking and then she started telling me stories about how the current cleaning crew, they’ve never met the supervisor or manager of the company. It’s only been the technicians and they go through a lot. About every three weeks there’s two new people coming in. So that’s pretty high turnover. And she said that she is having to manage that staff. They will come to her and tell her, hey, I’m going to be 30 minutes late tomorrow. Hey, I have to leave an hour early or hey, my kid just called. I have to leave sick. That’s ridiculous because that is not the job of the customer to manage your employees.

Stephanie: Oh my gosh, how unprofessional.

Amanda: And so when I was talking to her at the walkthrough her tone, I could feel her heart rate getting high when she started talking about that. And I was like, she’s not even that upset about the details. She’s upset that she’s having to manage people and that’s not her job and it’s consistently happening. And so, you know, I went through the walkthrough completely, not even prepared to sit down and have a meeting with her. She kind of cornered me at the end of the hallway where her office was and there was a guy walking behind me and they cornered me at the end of this hallway. And they were like, hey, so do you mind if we sit down and talk about some things? And I was like, oh shit, I was not prepared to talk. I wasn’t, I didn’t have any questions prepared. And I think it was the best thing that’s ever happened to me because I didn’t have time to overthink what I was going to say. You know what I mean? I was put on the spot and I sat down and I just started nailing out questions like, tell me about what’s happening right now. Let me hear. And I could tell in their tone what was really frustrating for them. And I’m like, OK, I can fix this. So I start talking about the software we use. Hello, ZenMaid. Thank you for making my life easy because I basically sold my company to this client because of software. She was like, wow, everything seems really streamlined. It seems like you guys have things, very easy communication throughout the team. I use team very loosely. Okay, we are, I have to find humans to take this job. They don’t know nothing and they don’t need you.

Stephanie: That’s what I’m saying.

Amanda: I said, my staff is trained to do X, Y, Z. And as we walked through, you know, we went through different scenarios and I was like, well, our staff is trained. Okay, for example, there was a room that some painting had been done and the painting crew left paint cans and stuff out. And I said, my staff is trained to take a picture of that, upload it to our ZenMaid notes or software notes, and then managers would contact me like, heads up, this room got missed this day because of paint cans out, you know, and she was like, wow, that’s really impressive.

Stephanie: Yeah, my team that I’m gonna find in a month and hire for this, because they don’t exist right now.

Amanda: There’s multiple of me.

Stephanie: I am the team, me, she, her.

Amanda: Yes, absolutely. And I’ve started switching to my verbiage to people. And if they message me personally on Facebook, I say, hey, here’s our email, here’s our phone number, or here’s our booking form, whichever. So because I want everybody to be funneling to the same place instead of chasing down my Instagram DMs, my Facebook DMs, my personal text messages. So I get them all funneled to the same place. And then I just say, my admin team will be reaching out to you. And I sign the emails in the text, SCS admin team. It’s me. I am admin team. But when I do have somebody else or whatever happens, it just, I don’t know, it kind of sets them up to not feel like it’s just me doing everything. And there is a whole operation so that in the future, when there is a whole operation and a whole team, they’re not shocked and confused as to why Amanda isn’t answering everything.

Building Perception and Professional Image

Stephanie: I’m really happy you brought that up because it really brings up the psychology of how people perceive us and optics in our businesses. Because I did the same thing when it was just me. I would always use phrases like we, us, our teams, admin, that type of stuff, even if it was just me because I was trying to peacock and look bigger than I was, which gives them confidence. And this is exactly going back to Mark’s conversation. That was a great podcast. I really like that one. He was, you know, commercial king. And he talked about it like, we need to look big and impressive. But still, and you know, in my opinion, the other side of that is still having that human touch. And we need to have professionalism, but balancing that with the humanity of it. And then you’re showing them that you’re going to hear them, you’re going to meet the managers, you’re going to do all of these things, because that’s your role as the management and the owner. But it is not to necessarily handle all of this other stuff. And so I think it’s a really delicate balance because, you know, and another example of this is when we first started getting big commercial accounts, I just was like, hey, we’re a small business. Can we invoice twice a month so that we can keep up with cash flow? And so I didn’t use that as a way of requesting something and it worked. We invoice multiple of our big accounts twice a month, which is fantastic. But always keeping in mind, I do think sometimes people, they try to pull at the heartstrings too much of like, well, I’m a small business. And it’s like, they don’t care if the results are not like, there’s only so much empathy and flexibility the client’s going to give if you’re not meeting their needs, right? If you’re not able to do what they need to do. It’s like, yeah, I can empathize with that, but the job’s not getting done, right? So it’s, I think it’s really critical that we pull the we’re a small business lever very judiciously, you know?

Amanda: Yes, I agree. And actually at the walkthrough, I was very upfront and honest with them. I said, this is way larger of a project than we’ve ever taken on. It will take me some time to get some foundations put in place, some systems in place to be able to do this efficiently and to our standard. I let them know. I mean, I was just very transparent about it all at the walkthrough and followed up with my email and let them know. And actually, I sat on it for a few days and I emailed them and I was like, I forgot to ask what their timeline was at the walkthrough because in residential, when somebody messages you, they’re ready to pay, they’re ready to get it done right then. Commercial, not so much. I found out that a lot of commercial places who already have cleaners in place do like a 30 day, what’s it called? Like breakup? What is it called?

Stephanie: Yeah, exactly. End of service, end of contract thing.

Amanda: Yeah. And so I completely forgot to ask that. And so in my email, I said, this fall, I’m not able to do that. I think realistically for my company to take this on, we’re looking at January. And I totally understand that timeline does not work for you. I would like to keep the relationship open. If you ever need anything in the future, this type of project or something else, because they do all kinds of stuff, and it’s local to me. So why not keep that relationship open, even if I can’t take it on at this moment? So that was very nerve wracking. And in my brain, I was like, yeah, they’re not going to wait till January. She emailed me back and said, we could possibly wait until January. Can you get me an estimate? And I was like, oh, shit. Oh, I don’t know. I don’t even know a number. This is so massive. And so it’s funny that you brought up Mark because I reached out to him and I was like, I need help, and I don’t know if you’re interested in trying to help me. But we messaged back and forth and ironed out some things and I was able to get a number over to them.

Getting Expert Help on Bidding

Stephanie: Oh, I’m so happy you reached out to him because he is so good at churches. That is his bread and butter. So if you mind sharing, how did he help you come to numbers?

Amanda: Yeah. So we kind of walked through everything. And this specific job is very odd because they have two full-time staff at the church who do open spaces. So they handle all the hallways. So we’re not cleaning the whole 170,000 square feet.

Stephanie: Oh, also the 170,000 square feet has to be done twice a week.

Amanda: So it’s 340,000 square feet, five days a week. It’s a five day a week account. And so there were a few things that were kind of red flaggy to me. Like they said, we like invoicing to be done weekly. I told them at the walkthrough, I invoice monthly. And I was like, okay, he said the reason they like to do that is because if time is missed or cleaning day is missed, they can deduct it from the following week and they don’t have to try to keep track of missed cleaning dates all throughout the month. In my head, I’m thinking there shouldn’t be a cleaning day missed, but I guess that’s something they’ve gone through.

Stephanie: Interesting. What you’re pointing out right now is the customer basically coming up with a solution in subpar conditions. It’s like well this is what they think that that’s what is best because that’s what they’ve had to do, right? You know, this prior company where it’s like well if that’s not happening that’s irrelevant. Though I’m curious, do they pay them weekly?

Amanda: Yeah, so they get invoices. Yeah, I know and that kind of ties into one of the questions I wanted to talk about today but yeah, so they, and they get the invoice on Monday, they review. So they also require the cleaning company to clock in on site through their time clock system so that they can compare their timesheet to the company’s timesheet that gets submitted every week with the invoice. So in my brain, I’m thinking, holy shit, this is going to be a lot of admin work to manage. And also, is it legal to require somebody to clock in?

Stephanie: Yeah, so that’s how they’re saying. And they asked if I charge hourly and I said no, we charge flat rate private job. And I won’t lie, over the past couple of weeks that this has been an opportunity I’ve been digging and trying to figure out should I be charging hourly?

Amanda: That’s not how my business operates, so that’s completely new to me and I have no idea how to even do that aside from the basics, you know.

Stephanie: That would be very unusual for that large of an account to be charging hourly. I mean, that’s not saying it’s unheard of, but that is most commercial accounts don’t want that because they want a steady budgetary line. This is a janitorial cost, this is what it is every month. You can’t fluctuate then. I think, again, this is coming, the reason they’re even requesting that is most likely they have been dealing with a subpar company that hasn’t been able to show up. So they don’t want to get charged for a time, for cleanings that weren’t actually completed, which for us, if we miss a cleaning for commercial and they’re like, hey, we deduct that from the bill. But again, at a flat rate, flat rate deduction, not per the hours that were missed actually because it is we’re charging for the job, right? So that’s a bit unusual. That would bother me. I think I wouldn’t want to do that.

Amanda: It was one of those things that just kind of felt like a red flag but I didn’t feel knowledgeable enough to call it out in the email, so I was like we’ll just put that on the back burner for now and get people’s opinions, talk to people in the industry and kind of figure it out. But also I did find out that they currently pay for 80 hours of cleaning a week through their company. So they are getting an hourly rate from their current cleaning company.

Stephanie: Okay, I see. So it kind of makes sense for their current predicament, but I don’t think it’s going to fit well or work with us taking over the contract.

Amanda: Well, and I wonder if they can get as much as they can get done in the 80 hours? Does that mean they’re not expected to get it done? Or no, there’s a whole scope list.

Stephanie: And each

Amanda: So every day by a certain time, certain tasks have to be completed for events, classes, counseling. They have a whole counseling wing. There’s a whole indoor kid play area that literally looks like when you would go to a city to a kid entertainment facility. That’s what it looks like. It’s intense. And so certain things, they gave me a printout, by Tuesday at 5 p.m. these 30 areas in the property need to be completed, whatever. So it’s very much not.

Stephanie: That’s what I mean. Not this is conducive to charging hourly. So that is very strange. I think that is what the other company worked off of, so that’s what they did. So I think this is a perfect example of sometimes we have to basically say this is how we do it in our company, especially when it comes to this type of thing of charging. If a customer is insisting upon hourly or is insisting upon flat rate, and that’s not how you do things in your business, especially for commercial, highly unusual. This is where it’s like, well, no, this is how we’re going to do this. And I would put my foot down. I would not allow for hourly in this situation. I would not, you know?

Amanda: Yeah, OK. So and I mean, she seemed totally fine with me telling her that I charged flat rate. And that’s how when I sent the email, I sent a rate. I broke it down to weekly since they invoice weekly so that the numbers matched well in their head when they first seen it. I think it’s going to be one of those things where I have to train the client, you know?

Stephanie: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I love that you brought up too, it’s like, you know, you’re not cleaning all the space. I think a lot of times with commercial people and why it’s so important to do these walkthroughs, especially a place like this, it’s like, just because that is the square footage, that doesn’t mean that’s the cleanable space necessarily. And even if it was, this is why I’m such a proponent, do not charge by square foot. You can’t, you cannot charge by square foot because every space is different. What, you know, all the tasks are different, so we cannot come up with a by square footage that works everywhere. It just doesn’t work.

Amanda: Yeah, it just didn’t, it didn’t make sense to me either when I first started looking to it and it just didn’t set right with me. So they have a riding floor machine and they use leaf blowers. Oh, they also have a whole crew of volunteers that clean the what’s the big room, the worship room or the sanctuary?

Stephanie: Sanctuary, yep, that’s what they call it.

Amanda: Okay, so they have volunteers who clean that. So we don’t have to move all 7,000 chairs in that place, however many there is. I don’t know. They have a congregation of 4,000 and they’re expecting it to be around 4,500 by spring of 2026. This is freaking massive.

Stephanie: Oh, my gosh.

Amanda: They’re actually known in our area as the coffee church because they have the coffee shop inside it and the little bakery. And on weeknights, they sell pizza, a drink and a dessert for like three dollars or I don’t even know how much. But they have it so that parents don’t have to worry about going to church and then eating dinner at 8:30 or whatever, you know, it’s just very crazy. So there are multiple kitchens that need to be cleaned, but not the coffee shop. The volunteers who run that clean it. We just take out the trash from there.

Stephanie: Yeah, the technicality of kitchens, you’re dealing with grease. And a lot of times, the things that they want in kitchens, a lot of times it’s disassembling the different machinery or whatever. And it’s a whole can of worms I’m not interested in ever opening.

Amanda: Yeah, exactly. It kind of feels like above our pay grade. That’s somebody who needs certain knowledge, training, certificates, something that is not residential commercial cleaning. You need a kitchen cleaning crew. But the other one has five microwaves, two giant refrigerators. There’s a communion room that always has juice all over it that’s going to need cleaned. Anyways, but then there’s another wing that has 20 classrooms and it’s a super quick, just make sure that there’s not food crumbs on the couches because they do Bible study, counseling, adult classes, parenting classes, yada, yada, yada there. And so it’s just spot cleaning that room to make it presentable for the next class. So yeah, sure, we can go through those super fast, but a kitchen with five microwaves, two or three refrigerators, a commercial grade stovetop, that’s going to take longer. And then there’s also cafe areas with tables and chairs that we’re going to have to wipe down the tables and chairs, lift the chairs up, sweep them off the floor, because they only do the floors that their riding machine can get on. So, I mean, doing the walkthrough, that made it easy for me to see, okay, the riding machine can’t fit there. That’s ours. Unfortunately, fun fact, I backed up all of my photos three days ago, and somehow all of my videos from this walkthrough are gone.

Stephanie: Oh, no.

Amanda: Yeah, yeah. I backed them up to my Google Photos and my iCloud both, and somehow there was a glitch happening, and I’m missing all of them.

Stephanie: Go to church service and just wander around sneaky.

Amanda: I know.

Stephanie: I’m like, I’m not actually here for service, okay, I’m just going to wander around.

Amanda: No, they have a whole security team. It’s intense. They have a security room with walkie talkies and safety vest, and there’s an electronic check-in checkout area for the kids. And you have to have your identification card to be able to pick a kid up from the kid thing.

Stephanie: It’s pretty impressive. Very impressive organization and incredibly so. Well, you know, they can just drag you out and you’ll be screaming, I just want to clean.

Amanda: I just want to clean this place. I’m just trying to see how many toilets are in this wing.

Stephanie: Yeah, right, they’re not going to say no. I’m just trying to clean the toilet. You’re not crazy, I’m just counting the toilets.

Amanda: Yeah, for real. So yeah, that’s kind of how that went. Anyway, so back to Mark. I messaged him and asked, I was like, this is crazy. I feel insane for even considering taking this because it’s absolutely nothing I’ve ever done. It’s humongous. I don’t even know where to begin on pricing this thing, how many hours it’s actually going to take, because to me, it seems like two full time in there for 80 hours. I seen the cleaning crew when I did the walkthrough. Let’s be honest, I did not hide from them, and they did not know that they were getting quotes from other people. So it was very interesting encounter in the hallway. And they just weren’t moving very fast. I don’t know, maybe that’s normal for commercial cleaners to just kind of go at their own pace. I mean, if they’re there for 40 weeks, I guess they just kind of. This is a perfect example of one.

Understanding Commercial Cleaning Pace

Stephanie: Those staff members are paid hourly, which, I mean, I pay my cleaners hourly too, but point being, if you do not give them parameters and tight ones, they will take the full time, you know? And so this reminds me of my first large commercial account, which was a manufacturing facility that made motors. I think it was 120,000 square foot and I’m doing the walkthrough and they were going to replace their on-staff janitors. They were looking to outsource to a contracting company like me, and or contractor I should say, you know what I mean. And they told me because I asked, I was like, how long does it take your cleaners? And they’re like, we have two full-time cleaners that do this and it takes them their full, you know, their full job. So I took that at face value of this job takes 80 hours a week to get done. So I bid it as what would take me 80 hours. And of course they’re like, fuck no, that is way too high, they, you know, laugh in my face basically. But that’s because when you have a janitor on staff or somebody like that, they’re going to walk at a glacial pace and they’re going to take, there’s no, there’s no fire under their ass. Why? That information and just be like, oh, okay, because yeah, we need, we are going to be moving a lot faster. And I’m sure that’s what Mark told you is that commercial needs to be hop and hop and hop.

Amanda: Exactly. And so when he and I were talking, he actually mentioned that the timing of that they’re paying for, for that size is pretty tight, which makes sense since we’re not actually cleaning at all, which is another thing he brought up. He was like, please remember you’re not cleaning at all. Don’t take all of the 170,000 square feet. You know, he got my wheels turning and I, I typically don’t compare myself to other cleaners. I stay in my lane. My competition is me yesterday, me last week, me September of 2024, constantly just trying to improve myself and my company. Something about this damn bid has me in such imposter syndrome. No, not even really that, just very much like, who the hell do I think I am to even try to take this on? Who do I think I am to even consider creating a bid for this? I’ve never done this before. And it was a big mindset thing. And I’ll be honest, I delayed and procrastinated emailing them back. And I might lose the job or the bid because it took me five days to finally get back with them with some detailed information. But I really had to pause and get my mindset back right before I emailed them because I knew that I couldn’t send them an email if my mindset was already in defeat mode or in that comparison mode. And when Mark, I was voice messaging him and he messaged me back and was like, first of all, don’t compare yourself to anybody else. And he told me some advice that somebody gave him recently for a marathon that he ran. And he was like, you need to run your own race. You’re not running anybody else’s race. You don’t need to compare yourself to somebody who’s been running their entire life. Run your race. And I was like, oh, that’s so good. I know that. Mindset is my jam, okay? That’s how I’m where I am. And something about this bid just allowed me to slip. And I think it’s really important for anybody listening, if you do get opportunities like this, make sure your mindset’s in the right place before you make any hard decisions, because I could have really just said, this is too big, I can’t do this job. And there was a couple of days where I really thought that. I was like, I’m stupid, I’m crazy for even considering this. And then there were some other days where I was like, okay, let’s think about the facts. Do I have money to cover payroll? Do I have a list of applicants who are pre-qualified? They’ve already gone through the info session. Okay, yes, yes. Okay, I might be able to actually make this work? Oh, they invoice weekly and pay weekly. Cool. That means I need to cover one week of stuff instead of a full month of stuff. You know what I mean? And had I just shot that down immediately and been like, cause it was overwhelming to do the walkthrough, very much culture shock, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, but I need to pretend like I do in front of these people because their issue is not the cleaning quality. It’s the company that they have right now, you know, the pain points that they have. And I know I can fix that. I’m freaking out because I don’t have the staff. I might not have the money to cover payroll for said staff that I need to go find. And they might need this next month. And I’m about to take a 10 day vacation to go reset my brain. I don’t know what the hell, I don’t know how I’m going to do this. So I took a while to email back. And like I said, I might lose that because of that. And looking back, I should have emailed and said, please give me a few days to figure out the and just communicate with them and let them know. So that would be my advice to anybody who might be in this situation, just communicate with them because I just kept putting it on the back burner. And I do regret that, but we’ll see if I get the bid or not.

Overcoming Self-Doubt and Fear

Stephanie: I’m really happy that you just shared all of that. Thank you for being vulnerable and talking about those things because those are the emotions that we all feel when we do have an opportunity that presents themselves to us. So it’s funny, I was just talking yesterday about the different opportunities that have been overwhelming to me when they came to me, right? And I’m having those same exact thoughts of don’t have the staff, okay, this is so big, we’ve never done anything like this before, all of these doubts just coming into my mind. And it’s like what I really want to implore you is if you haven’t read David Goggins’ book, it’s awesome. If you don’t know who he is, he’s a very inspirational man. And he has a concept of having a cookie jar and having your mental cookie jar, which is basically the collection of wins and things that you have accomplished in your life that when you’re doubting yourself, you can pull out a cookie from your cookie jar and basically being like, okay, Amanda, you haven’t done this before, but look at all of these other situations where you walked into it, you never did that thing, and you did it. So it’s like, this isn’t a you can’t do this, you just haven’t done this yet, you know? And every large opportunity that’s came my way, that Fort McCoy job, our largest commercial account, you know, it is 120,000 square foot, and when we got, I bid it, thinking we’re not going to get this, we got it. And literally, I was near tears after we got it, because my management team is also like, they’re like, how are we going to do this? How are we going to staff it? It’s got all of these background check, what the fuck are we going to do? And I’m just sitting there like I should have never bid it, I should have never bid it. I can’t tell you how that feeling in my throat of I shouldn’t have ever bid this thing. But now we’re two years into the account and it, you know, it runs and it’s fine. You figure it out. And then I talked about this a couple solo episodes back of I have absolute confidence in my ability to figure shit out. And so should you, look at all this shit you figured out, you know? And just every, every single one of us. So it’s just like, just because you haven’t done this before, and I’m not trying to dissuade the fact that this is a huge account that’s bigger than any facility I’ve done. However, there is nothing special about it. There’s literally nothing special about it at all. You’ve described the cleaning. It’s very light cleaning duties. It’s a church. There is no specialty, anything. It’s literally easier than a house, right? And you can do house cleaning, no problem. What you’re scared of is the staffing. And I will implore you that every large account, you’re not going to have the staffing for because that doesn’t make sense. We don’t have staffing for accounts that don’t exist yet. So it’s like you get the account and get the staff for it, you know? So that’s always order when it comes to these big boys. And so it’s never like you just have a full time cleaner with no clients that you could, you know, that doesn’t work that way. It has to go this order. And that’s why, you know, it is nice that they said that they’re okay with that longer timeline. That’s exactly what we do with big accounts. We’re like, we can start you in two months, we can start you, that we dictate that. Sometimes they’re like, but we really want you in. Well, I know you want me, but you can’t have me for two months, okay? That’s how it is. And again, if that doesn’t work for them, then it is what it is. It’s just not the right opportunity. Or you might, you go clean yourself. Those are the two options kind of thing if you don’t want to lose it. And so all of that being said, it’s the scale of it that’s nerve-wracking, but once you start breaking it down and the beauty, unheard of that they’re okay with weekly invoice and actually are encouraging that, that solves that problem because that was one of the first things I said to you when you described this a few weeks ago. I was like, girl, can you cover this payroll? Because if you can’t cover the payroll, don’t even, you’re gonna have a whole problem. So that problem,

Amanda: Yeah, and so I think it’s interesting that that gets brought up because, so when I did the walkthrough and I was like, I don’t think this is for me. I’m a very spiritual, woo woo person. I believe that the universe has my back and I’m also a firm believer that I have to be open to opportunities. And so not even a week prior to that, I told my team, I really want to focus on and grow commercial. I want to get some more small offices to fill in these gaps, not really the revenue side of it, but to fill in our gaps and be able to stay working more hours, you know? And of course they do bring in some revenue, but small offices just don’t bring in big bucks, you know? And then this opportunity shows up in my inbox. I’m like, are you shitting me right now? Is this real life? And then I go to the walkthrough and I’m like, oh my God, I can’t do this. This is insane, 170,000 square feet. And so then it was like, okay, I sent the email, told them my timeline, and I was like, they’re probably not going to wait that long. And then the universe is like, oh, hey, actually they can wait that long. So here you go. You need to be uncomfortable. And so my lead tech, Micaiah, she said, she listens to your podcast, the podcast too. And she said, oh my God, is this like Stephanie’s military experience? Like her big federal contract, is this that for us? And I was like, well, I don’t think it’s going to bring in that revenue, but it very well could be the thing to kickstart our growth because we are in a growth season. And we’re trying to expand the team and transfer from 1099s to W-2s and do all of this scaling. And I’m like, well, the thing that’s held me back is revenue. I feel like I need to have higher revenue to be able to cover the payroll before I just start bringing on five, six, seven cleaners and not have jobs for them, not have revenue to pay them. And so I’m like, well, this would provide jobs for people, which is another thing that’s important to me. I want to employ people and give them a sense of security, I guess. That’s the only way I can really explain it. I want to be able to provide work for people that they enjoy and they don’t dread. And so I’m like, well, this would do that. And it would bring in revenue if they can match the number and make it work for their end. So I don’t know. It just feels like I was trying to say no, and the universe was like, actually, you need to stick this through. And if anything, I think it’s a learning opportunity, even if I don’t get the bid. I think it opened a door for me to talk to you about it, to talk to Mark, who never a day in my life did I think would ever reply to me. And he did that same day. I was like, shout out, Mark. Thank you.

Stephanie: Yeah, you rock. So number one is, I love what you just said of breaking things down of what is actually the hang up? Because I think a lot of times, well, it’s just like Layla Hormozi, she says, you know, fear is a mile wide and an inch deep. And it’s like, that’s exactly what you’re experiencing of this is huge. But it’s like, well, let’s actually break this down, shall we? What are the actual problems that we’re going to run into? And those are all solvable problems, obviously. And the nice thing is, you know, thinking back on that big project that was for six months, you get in a contract like this, and you can give them what they need, which is proper communication, easy to do, you know, consistency, and just showing up and doing the work. You can do all of those things. And so they don’t, accounts don’t like shopping around, they don’t like changing vendors. The only reason that they do that is because their pain with that vendor is high enough that it’s like, I’m ready to go through the pain of finding a new one and transitioning. So if you can get this account and you can keep them and have that, that, you know, there, and just, I think the biggest thing is that communication at once you get in there and like, okay, this is what we’re, you know, growing pains, if you will. But there isn’t anything that is necessarily complicated or complex. It’s more so just the timing of everything and whatnot. And as for hiring people, it’s like this job starts in January. You know what I mean? Or whatever. But we’re going to train you ahead of that. And so, you know, because that is something that I know you mentioned of how do I hire people, but I don’t have work for them? Well, remember, we don’t have to pay them if they’re not working. And so that’s why our part-timers do come in of like, hey, your hours are gonna be between 20 and 30 hours a week. Does that work for you? And if you can’t fill that 20 hour a week, then you’re not ready to hire, right? There’s going to be a gap there. Or you say in a month, I’ll be able to fill this because of current demand or whatever. And so the biggest thing is not hiring full-timers at all because you do not have the consistency of work to do that outside of this large job, right? Let’s throw this big job out the window and say just in your normal side of the business of how do you get out of the field and still afford to live? Because right now I’m assuming what is happening is you are paying yourself as the owner and as a cleaner, right? Like whatever, okay, I’m assuming that’ll make an ass out of you and me. What are you, how are you paying yourself?

Financial Management and Self-Payment

Amanda: So let’s just air it all out there. I have not always paid myself, and I currently do not routinely pay myself. Okay. So that was part of the second half of 2025’s Amanda gets her shit together plan was to get the finances straightened out. It’s chaos, pure chaos. So get that straightened out, start paying myself consistently. And I mean, I wasn’t even bidding jobs and taking into account how much I needed to pay me as a cleaner. Yeah, I was like, oh, one cleaner, pay them this much for this job, this much in chemicals, this much in insurance, this much in wear and tear on the equipment. Here’s a total.

Stephanie: So no extra profit to actually pay you, like the owner’s pay.

Amanda: I got, so the business has been paying for me to live basically up until what is it, September, August, last month.

Stephanie: So when you say that, let me just pause right there because it is not paying you, but it is paying you if you are using it to pay your personal expenses. That is your paycheck. You’re just not, it’s not proper.

Amanda: Yes, exactly. So I don’t write myself a check, but my vehicle, my vehicle insurance, my phone, my internet, all of the things that are used for our team meetings, or if I bring clients in, those are all work expenses. So, I mean, all of those are paid from the business account. And so then my personal bills, if there’s not enough money there, which we kind of stack money there, so if there’s not enough, I’ll just transfer, you know, $200 over to cover whatever, groceries or whatever from the business account. And so then when I do my bookkeeping, I’m like, oh, look, I transferred myself money. I guess that was my payday. It’s just very chaotic and messy. And I would love to hire a professional to sit down and be like, fix this shit show, because that’s another thing that I’m like, I don’t feel like I can actually scale when this is a shit show.

Stephanie: So I will definitely acknowledge that the bookkeeping has to get in order. It has to. So that is something I think it would be worthwhile to sit down with an accountant. Do you have an accountant or any bookkeepers that you have interacted with?

Amanda: Yeah, so my tax person’s also a bookkeeper and a, is it CPA, is that the initials? I don’t know. But I just go to her yearly for my tax appointment, you know, so I’m like, so she’s, she’s the only person I’ve used since I started and she was actually our tax person when I was still an employee, a W-2 employee elsewhere. So she’s very familiar with us. And I run all of my bookkeeping through QuickBooks. I do stay up with categorizing that every month. It’s not as chaotic as you are describing,

Stephanie: because the conversations I’ve had are like, it’s all one account, right? And so that’s, that’s not the case. One, you are bookkeeping, you are tracking expenses. So you have a profit and loss, you can actually see that, right? So it’s not, this isn’t bad, okay?

Amanda: You’re like so far away from chaos that it just feels chaotic, okay. It stresses me out because I feel like it’s a mess that I’m like, I don’t even know.

Stephanie: So right there, it feels like a mess. Can we dig into that? What specifically do you mean? Because you are bookkeeping, you’re tracking your expenses. You are, is it I’m not paying myself regularly? Is it all of the rates are all over the place? Like what exactly specifically is it?

Amanda: It’s definitely that I don’t pay myself regularly. So I just have any business expense, I just have it set up to auto come out of the business checking account. So I’m like car payment, yeah, that needs to come out of the business account. Phones, yeah, that needs to come out of the business account. And I just have it all auto taken out, you know? And we don’t have an office. So we have a storage unit that we store everything in and we go to to get before. And so that’s on there. It’s all just on auto. And so I’m just like, it’s paying for everything. And there’s, it doesn’t go negative, so that’s great, but it just feels like to be a business owner the number in there should be much larger than what it is and it just doesn’t feel like there’s cushion to be yes, okay, everything’s paid and there’s this much in there. I could easily cover XYZ if ABC happened, you know?

Stephanie: A rainy day fund, okay. So I guess, or basically what I would, if I was in your place and that’s what you’re talking about is that that anxiety of you don’t have an emergency fund for the business. And so what I would do, and this is kind of taking off of, yeah, the profit first kind of mentality is if you don’t have a business savings account, do that. And every single month or week or whatever you’re doing the finances, transfer 1% of the revenue that you brought in, put it in there. And you just slowly build that bitch up. And this is exactly how you pay yourself too on a regular basis is if you’re not comfortable with whatever, start with 1% of the revenue that you brought in, that’s Amanda’s paycheck. And it goes, you know, you allocate that, you know? And again, that’s a profit first concept. And that way, 1%, you’re not going to feel that, you’re not going to feel it, but it’s actually making progress to the thing that’s giving you great anxiety. For us, I put 2% of revenue into the business savings account every single week. I don’t feel that, you know, we don’t feel that 2%, right? But it’s doing, it’s building my, because I know what you mean. I am the same way. I like to have a nice fat buffer. It soothes me. It soothes me that if something goes wrong. And so if that’s what’s really holding you back from feeling confident, that’s a really, it feels like you’re not making progress, but you actually are. And you’re actually, because it’s consistent. There’s no consistency right now. Just like you’re not getting consistently paid and that sucks. And so if you are physically doing the cleaning, that means you have money to pay a cleaner on that job because you’ve priced it as if somebody else is doing it. I would suggest if you need, this is just, again, my two cents, you don’t have to do this, but I would suggest if you are physically doing the cleaning, pay yourself as if you were a cleaner. Pay yourself exactly what you would have paid a cleaner because the margin should be there if you’re pricing correctly. So somebody has to get paid for that. So that’s gonna help you feel better. And or if you don’t want to do that, take what you would have paid a cleaner and stick that into that business savings. If that’s much more of a higher priority of getting that buffer and you don’t need to take that personally. But and think of that as saving for future Amanda of when she needs it for whatever reason. So every single job that gets done, the money that would have paid a cleaner if there was not a cleaner needs to go somewhere. Don’t just leave that as the business checking or whatever, because it’s like that, I think that gets us into bad habits of not paying ourselves, of not building savings, all of the things. So it’s the money’s there. And if you, if the business cannot survive without paying, if if you’re doing these cleanings and you’re not paying anybody to do these cleanings and the business can’t, without, with the business cannot exist or make enough money to survive without you not taking a paycheck, well then something’s broken here. We need to look at every job, we need to look at every job and every single margin and all of your expenses. Something’s not, there’s not enough money here that means to go around. So I would start analyzing that of what, what does this look like? I love that you don’t have an office yet. Don’t need it. Doesn’t make sense for you to, you know, so the overhead is low. And I know that you’re really nervous because you have been running 1099s, transitioning to W-2s and the expenses related to that. Well, number one, liability expense, liability insurance at your size, not going to be that expensive.

Amanda: I actually already have liability. Okay, great. My insurance guy, yeah. He allows me to cover liability on myself and the one 1099 that I have right now. So I have that and I have workers comp on the two of us.

Stephanie: See, this is what I don’t get because you have workers comp, but they’re an IC. You’re already paying all of the expenses related to W-2s. And so it’s really not benefiting you that much. And as for paying payroll taxes and stuff, that’s the one category that’s not happening because they’re technically the independent contractor is supposed to be doing that. So in the future of going towards W-2s and transitioning to hiring W-2s in the future, it’s actually the only thing we’re talking about for expense that’s not happening right now is payroll taxes. And it’s not, again, if you’re paying, because we’ve ran through your numbers before, I know, but what is your plan for how much to pay a staff remind me?

Amanda: Between 16 and 20.

Stephanie: Okay. I know you don’t charge hourly, but on average, how much are you making per hour?

Amanada: Around 70 to 75?

Stephanie: Okay. There’s enough fucking money, girl. There’s enough fucking money. You can immediately transition to W-2. Trust me. Can I just pay you to do this part for me? It’s not complicated. You just, you know, get your payroll software or whatever, you hire them as a W-2, you, you know, file the new hire reports in the state. And then when you run your payroll with whatever you use, I said, we use Gusto, you can do this through QuickBooks and everything. It’s going to calculate how much to withhold because it’s going to withhold some of it from the paycheck of the employee. So obviously, you know, what somebody makes hourly and what they take home, as we all know, gross versus net. And so that portion is taken out of theirs. And then we have our portion as the employer, but it scales as you add more employees. It’s not going to be thousands of dollars. It’s based on the payroll of that employee. So it’s not that much. Yeah, I promise it’s not that much. And with the margins that you have, there’s plenty of money. I mean, we charge way less than you, and we pay higher in some cases, and the money’s still there, right? And so there’s plenty of money to go around. But yeah, as for actually doing the thing of this is now a W-2, it’s pretty simple. It’s just, you know, you file the new hire report with the state, which Gusto does that for you automatically, plug for Gusto, not that I’m sponsoring it. But Gusto does all of the new hire reporting, it reminds you to do all your paperwork, to do your I-9, to do the things that you need to do. You have your new hire policies that you decide upon, they sign that. And other than that, they just fill out their bank information, it withholds from their paycheck and they can adjust what that looks like when they fill out their W-4, that’s kind of on them to do. And other than that, Gusto actually pays all of our payroll taxes automatically for us every single week when we run payroll. So it’s so easy, it’s super duper easy. And then of course you have your quarterly taxes that you need to, but that’s your accountant. You know what I mean? That’s not really related to payroll. That is profit, taxes on profit, right? So it’s not, I think, I think you’re making this a mountain. It’s actually more like a hill, not I won’t say a molehill, but a little mountain.

Amanda: Yeah, it just feels like I haven’t had the greatest money habits up into this summer, and so now I’m just I feel like I’m constantly backtracking. Okay, here are the expenses that are coming out, is there enough money there to pay that and pay your contractors for next week? Because they get paid, so the one that I have on right now she requests pay the following week after the week of jobs that she’s done, and the reason we do 1099 for, I charge her a supply fee and she just goes to the unit and uses all of our supplies, so I charge her monthly supply fee. She cleans for other people as well, you know, she’s an independent contractor. Yep. And so I don’t, I don’t know. It just feels so overwhelming. And I feel like I need to have, I don’t know, a certain amount of thousands of dollars in this bank account to make sure that all the business expenses can be paid and payroll, automatically coming out. I’m terrified of a bank account going negative. I mean,

Stephanie: I’m definitely one to watch the accounts or at least for years, every day I was checking the accounts and seeing what’s coming out and making sure everything was timed right and stuff like that. But remember, if you’re bringing in, every single job pays for every single staff member that is on that job. So it’s not like there is any overhead related to somebody physically doing the work. The overhead is from all of the extras, right? So the job itself is paying for that staff member. You’re worried about is there enough to cover all of the overhead related. And that comes down to, we need to figure out, you know, how much is the overhead and when are these things pulling? Yeah, I hope you get this big church job, cause then you won’t be worried about any of this shit.

Amanda: Literally. That’s what I said. I was like, this could, because this has been my, my issue. And I’ve been so terrified to talk. This is the first conversation I’ve had out loud about this whole situation. But it’s the thing that has been keeping me small and I’m so fucking tired of playing small. I want to be big. I want to be paying $30 to $40,000 a month, and that used to be my yearly money. And then I’m like, I know, I know I have the systems in place. I know I have the software in place. I know it can be streamlined. I just have to stop playing small. And then I looked at my bank account and I’m like, oh, but that, that needs, something has to give there. There has to be something. And every month it’s like, we just signed on a federal deal for a one-time clean and they’re going to go with us for quarterly cleans, which is amazing for us. And it’s a pretty good cushion that’s going to push me through the next four weeks. And then I’m like, okay, but it just feels like I’m constantly, okay, the next set of invoices will definitely cover this amount of expenses and this amount of payroll, so I need to go find, you know, four more post-construction jobs to bring in a couple more thousand dollars or whatever it is. It feels like I’m constantly just in that chase mode and I can’t just be, okay, there’s enough, everything’s fine, just let things flow. It does not feel like that and that’s what I’m craving. I want it to just flow without me panicking and trying to find jobs because nothing ever works well when I panic and try to chase down jobs.

Building Recurring Revenue Streams

Stephanie: Yeah, no, 100%. And I love that you’re, again, thank you for voicing these anxieties because they’re very real. And at the end of the day, the money side of things can be incredibly stressful. And obviously that’s why people fail is the financial side of not managing that correctly. That is a reality. Most small businesses fail and almost always has to do with improper money management, right? And so number one is the beautiful thing is this is simply math and math doesn’t lie. Math is math. So we’re speaking all of this anxiety and emotions and volatility, and it feels like a lot of unknowns. Am I going to have enough? At the end of the day, your fixed operational costs, taking out, take out paying, we’re talking about overhead, right? So not paying staff members, not paying independent contractors, not paying for the labor. Everything on top of that is a fixed cost. We know what your car payment is. We know what your phone is. We know what storage unit is. What is that number? Okay. So once we figure out that is whatever, $3,000 a month, I don’t know, $5,000 a month, okay, we need $5,000 a month profit to pay for these things on top of then paying the staff member. So, but we know that for every job that we do that covers the staff member. So then it’s just simply a volume thing. And I know we’ve talked about this before about how, you know, you’re doing a lot of one-offs or it feels like you get a lot of one-offs as opposed to the reoccurring. And I think a lot of this anxiety can be solved by really pushing and hammering into getting reoccurring. That should be the main focus because it’s like, once you get that base of reoccurring, then we know that that’s there. We’re not chasing the next dollar of a one-off, right, or a move out, cause that is volatile, very stressful, and the opposite of what we want to be doing with this type of industry, right? And so I know that for you, though, then, okay, the next hang up related, this is simply math, how much money do we need to make every month to pay these fixed costs, right? And so we can figure that out. That’s a math problem, right? However, for you, I know that it’s like, but then I’m cleaning, I’m cleaning a lot, because I don’t have, you know, so you’re in that weird in between. I’m getting pulled in the field now and now that’s really overwhelming and I can’t actually focus on what I need to focus on. And I think that the solution again is a hire that is flexible on their hours because then it doesn’t matter. They can be doing that. You can focus on building the business and you’re always going to, this is how it, this is how it always feels chicken and egg. That is the plight of what we do of too many clients, not enough cleaners or too many cleaners, not enough clients, right? We’re always chasing our tails with that. And that’s why part-timers are so attractive. You have to always be hiring, always be hiring, ABC, ABH, ABC, always be coding. That has got in my head. Alex, if you’re watching this, ABC, he’s the lead developer. But, you know, we always need to be hiring ahead of the actual jobs that we have, because we have to be in preparation and proactive. So it is uncomfortable, but all we need to do is communicate and not promise. I can’t give you full time or whatever, unless you’re hiring for a specific job. If you get this church, for example, our big accounts, we have, those are, okay, I’ll give you an example. Our biggest account, which is a federal research facility, we have two gentlemen who are the cleaners there. They are both part-time. They work four hours a day. And they only go to that job. That is all they do for serene clean. That’s all they do. And that’s all they want. They don’t want any other jobs. And they are tickled pink to get that. And so it’s like, there are plenty of people who are, that’s what they want. They don’t want 40 hours, and, you know, or they only want to do one account or whatever that looks like if it’s big enough. So I think that you have to get comfortable with this uncomfortable feeling of oh, but hire, oh, but jobs, it’s like, yeah, this is what we do.

Amanda: This is the reality of a cleaning business. The name is a game.

Stephanie: Exactly. Exactly. A hundred percent. I think it was so easy to get through.

Confronting Past Business Failures

Amanda: When I think back to first starting and it was really scary and uncomfortable to tell people my price. And then I worked through that and I’m like, okay, whatever, that’s fine. And so, but it was just me, you know, and I have that hustle mentality. That’s, I mean, I was raised to hustle. So I will always figure it out. But then when there’s other people, that is a whole other pressure. And I’m like, holy shit, I cannot allow somebody to go without food on their freaking table for their family. But then also, at some point, I have to realize that that’s not 100% my responsibility. That’s only partially my responsibility. And they also have to do what they have to do. But I never want to put somebody in that position where they have to, they stay because they feel bad or whatever, and then they’re starving. So I know this is really dramatic, but these are the thoughts that go through, and it’s a lot of pressure. So I have, I have a list of applicants and all of them want 20 hours a week, 15 to 20 hours. And I’m like, oh my gosh, you’re an angel. Where did you come from? I can make that happen. I work 15 hours a week in the field right now. You can take my spot. Yes. So we actually have somebody starting tomorrow with us, which is kind of an off day because we start that federal project. So it’s not our normal day. I’m like, well, also, it’s not our normal day. So sorry about that. But it’s going to be fine. But the vibes are very like minded, very much like me and very excited to see a local small business grow. And they mentioned they want to be a part of watching that. And I was like, done. Come on, let’s go, whether you stay a cleaner or you do something else, I want you on my team somehow. So hopefully that that little shimmer or glimmer, I guess, is a tiny step forward toward getting this scale thing figured out because that’s the struggle, you know, trying to figure out this week. So with them starting, I’ll be out in the field.

Stephanie: You’re going to be in the field, but then you’re going to move all of your clients onto her. And then think about that. You’re a couple of weeks away from basically not cleaning except as a backup capacity, right?

Amanda: Yes, exactly. And so then last week I was in the field. Oh my gosh, I think I worked 33 hours, 34 hours in the field. I haven’t done that in a long, long time. And I was destroyed. I am hurting. I’ve got an ice pack on a shoulder, a heating pad on a hip. I’m popping ibuprofen. I’m soaking in a bath and I’m trying to make a list of everybody I need to get back with because it’s freaking late. I haven’t eaten dinner and I can’t call somebody back at 7:30 at night. And so it’s just mentally so tapped out. So I took this weekend to just rest my body and reset. And then this week I’m like, okay, I feel like I can do this. But that area of transitioning to try to get out of the field, bring people on to take your place in the field so that you can focus on the CEO task is what I call it in my time blocking thing. I’m like, I need to be getting these quotes. The longer this quote sits in my inbox, the less chance I have of winning it. Somebody looking for a biweekly cleaning, that’s what I need. I need to be able to reach out to those biweekly cleaning people immediately. But yeah, right now we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 recurring clients. This past week, I reached out to all of them and upsold almost every person for a holiday clean. And so that’s the type of hustle. That’s what I call hustle that I do.

Stephanie: Yeah, well, you just need to do it. And that’s being in the field. It really just sucks all of that creative energy out of you because you’re just surviving and you are just getting the basic administrative tasks done. So I will say it’s like, you’re literally on the precipice right now. I think you’re feeling so overwhelmed because you just cleaned so much last week, and that’s got you, got you down, you know? But it’s like, you’re describing all these things, I got these perfect applicants and I have this big job and this and this and this, and I say this in the most, I love you way possible.

Amanda: You got to get out of your fucking head, girl. I have to get the fuck out of my own way because I know, I know I can solve this church’s problems. I know I can get more clients. We know what we’re doing. I have the systems and foundations in place. That’s what I’ve spent this entire damn year building, studying ZenMaid, listening to podcasts, listening to books, learning from people who are making millions, which is way above what I am anywhere even close to dreaming about. And I know I can do it. And all of our clients are happy. They’re so happy. I just did, I just did our follow up, reaching out to them and being like, hey, how are things going? Is there anything you’d like to see different in your routine cleanings? Everybody’s so happy. And I’m like, there’s nothing wrong. There’s nothing to fix. I just have to get the fuck out of my brain.

Stephanie: This feels like, I mean, class A imposter syndrome of you may be even self-sabotaging in some ways because you are terrified. And so it is all happening as it should. And meaning these opportunities are coming right now for a reason. We say this in Serene Clean, same thing, how you were like, oh, I really want commercial, we speak something out in the ether and it’s like it manifests in our lap. Sometimes in a way we did not expect at all.

Amanda: No, for real, I’m so big on manifesting and I know that really went viral a few years ago or whatever, but that’s a really big part of why I’m where I am and that’s why the money thing I’m like, oh well I know I need two thousand dollars in three days but I will manifest that, it’s fine. But then I’m like, what is, what is happening? Why isn’t there a cushion? Why can’t I get this figured out to where I can scale? And I think I’m also scared because previously, I don’t know if I told you this, but I used to run a team of about five and I didn’t ever up my rates the more team members I took on, so I was charging like $80 for a cleaning and me and five other people would be in their cleaning for about an hour and a half and I was paying them all around $15 an hour and providing all supplies, so I wasn’t making money. I was losing money. And I’m really scared to make mistakes again to get myself because I’m still trying to fix, fix the finances from that fuckery.

Stephanie: So right there, you just, you just spoke out, I think what the hang up is here of I am afraid of making the same mistake that I made before. I am terrified of when I start adding that particular number of cleaners or getting to that, it’s all going to fall apart just like it did. And I’ve inmy own personal life, I’ve been doing the same thing. I’m like, I’m so afraid of making the same mistakes again. And it’s like, but even just acknowledging that, and I think just saying that and being like, that helps us figure out, okay, what exactly was that mistake? Because right there, I’m talking about math, I’m talking about finances, that is the problem there. It wasn’t ever anything else. And you’ve done so much work this past year on implementing so much stuff. And now the finances are there. So that fear is actually, though I understand why you feel that, the evidence supports that’s not going to happen again, right? Because it’s not like you’re just, you know, hitting yourself with a hammer in the knee saying, ouch, and then doing it again. You learned from the first hammer hit, but you’re still afraid when you see the hammer sitting on the wall. You’re like, oh,

Amanda: That’s so real. Oh my God. I’m so glad you were able to just point that out because I mean, sometimes I think we just need somebody else to look at it and be like, yo, what the hell are you doing? This is exactly what’s happening right now. I’ve been in a lot of therapy this year. So it’s really helped me. Listen, I really think everybody needs a therapist. Just saying, therapy should be

Stephanie: We should come out of the womb with the therapist. Like here’s your therapist. Yeah, you’re assigned life therapist. And this is who, you know, go through life with. Oh, gosh,

Amanda: If only. I know. Yeah, no, for real. I hear people who have the same therapist since they were early teenagers. And I’m like, wow, they’ve really heard everything.

Stephanie: That’s impressive. You can’t ever know that person. Yeah, the hard part about starting with a new therapist is you feel like, here’s the DVD Lord of the Rings set of my life to catch you

Amanda: Up. Exhausting. There’s too much. Yeah, I actually don’t want to retell all of this again. So if you could just somehow tap in and just watch it all happen, that’d be great. Yeah. So yeah, there’s a lot of fear around making those same mistakes. And I actually, my health took a very huge toll. And I actually got injured that same year that I was going through the team of five and extreme survival mode, extreme depression. I hurt my shoulder, I hurt my knee. I was down. The cleaners were calling in, calling out, not doing quality. So I was telling them to clean and then going behind them and cleaning because I just didn’t, I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, okay? I knew I wanted to be a good leader, but I didn’t know how to do it in the cleaning industry. And so after, you know, all of them left, I was solo again. And so there was a little bit of a balance of survival mode, make enough to pay your bills that you have and don’t take on any extra. Just survive and get this shit together because I don’t want to be cleaning the rest of my life. I love cleaning. I love that in residential I can just check out and clean, clean, clean, clean, clean. And it’s so soothing because I just know what I’m doing. There’s no thought process behind it for me. I can

Stephanie: Just check out, but I don’t want to do that forever, so it’s just scary. So scary. It’s scary and every, every time, but to me that just shows us, anytime we’re super afraid of something or feeling all this anxiety related to something, it’s like that means that this is a huge opportunity for me to grow and change and looking back at every really big jump, I was feeling all of those things and it’s just, yeah, having faith that, you know, and what is the worst that could happen and name it, you know? Because we took on a large commercial account at the beginning of the year and we could not keep the damn thing staffed. All of our cleaners were just super overwhelmed at it. We didn’t bid it high enough. All of these things, we fucked it up and we lost it. And well, meaning we dropped it. We are the ones who dropped it because we’re like, we can’t do this. And, you know, we look at that and we’ve learned so much from that. I’m really happy that happened. And so it’s like, okay, you try this church, two months in, you’re like, fuck this, I can’t do it, drop it. Just drop it. That’s it, right? Yeah, that really is the worst

Amanda: That happens. I think I also have a fear of if I’m growing residential, I know how to do residential. I don’t know the flow of this church or any church. I haven’t cleaned a church. I did the walkthrough. Sure, I know how to take out trash. I know how to clean a toilet. I know how to clean a water fountain. I know how to wipe down tables and sweep floors. I know how to do those things, but the flow. And so it feels scary for me to hire somebody and set the expectation when I haven’t done it myself. And so in the email to the church, I said, I will be on site for the first two weeks with the cleaning technicians to ensure that we have a good flow going. If they have any questions, they will come to me. So you’re not managing any of them. We’re gonna work together as Stovall’s Cleaning Services as a team to get this set up and flow properly for you guys.

Stephanie: Good job telling them what they’re looking for, which is not to manage people. And you bring up a point that one of the hardest parts about large facilities is in what order do we do the rooms, especially when we’re working with time related things they have of you can’t clean this till this time or we want this done by this time of the day. It does introduce a lot of complexity. But the nice thing is, yeah, you start writing stuff down and trying different orders and you get that down. And then once you have it, here you go, cleaner.

Amanda: This is the order that you do this. Yeah, exactly. And I think that’s the thing that scared me the most about it. And I was like, I don’t know that I can take this on because I’ve never done it. And I’m very much a person who’s like, I’m not going to ask somebody to do something I haven’t done myself. And so then before I sent the email, it just dawned on me, hey, you can actually go with them, learn, analyze, adjust, which analyze and adjust is my jam. That’s what I’ve done all six years of my business. Why can’t I apply it at this church? And, you know, she even said at the walkthrough, you know, once you get into a flow, it’s really easy, but it does take time. She’s been a cleaner. She cleaned the church herself. Bless her heart. So she understands. And I like that I did the walkthrough. And I think this is a really good testament to doing in-person walkthroughs for something like this. We were able to make that connection. I was able to hear her tone change and really pick up on what is actually the problem. And then on my email, yeah, you might have to wait until January for me, but I’m going to fix your problem.

Stephanie: Exactly. And the core issue. That same thing. Yeah, when we got that big federal facility, I flew up to Wisconsin. I was up there for a month and I went every single night to make sure because it was the same thing. I was like, I have no fucking idea how we’re going to move the place. It’s huge, there’s six levels and wings and all this stuff. And so but now it’s like, they do it, they know it like the back of their hand, right? And so I mean I was getting lost. I had a map. I’m like, where am I? Like Dora the Explorer. So it’s just a really big place and so it was the same thing of everything feels overwhelming until you actually get in it. And though it still does, but it’s almost like you’re chomping at the bit of I need to be in it, I need to clean the damn thing.

Amanda: I need to just do it. And you learn. Yes. I told my wife, I said, do you think the church would be down if I just took my lead tech Micaiah up there and just did a trial run and clean the classroom and timed it, cleaned the bathroom, timed it, cleaned the kitchen, timed it so that I have a fucking idea because I’m just so overwhelmed? And she was like, you’re going to do that for free? I’m like, I need data. I have no data.

Stephanie: That would soothe you a lot. And honestly, most likely, you know, in some situations, I wouldn’t suggest that. But in this particular one where you’ve made this connection with this woman and it’s like, listen, we’re just trying to get this down, that might actually make you feel a lot better by how fast it can go, because that shit goes faster than you think in commercial. And so, yeah, I think that that would probably, as I was like, yeah, let me do some cleaning for you for free. Why wouldn’t they, right? They’re not going to say no. And again, considering the scale and size of this job and that it is a private entity, it’s not a government building, they can do whatever they want, you know, and that’s a nice thing. So, I mean, not a bad idea. I think it’s a great idea because that would make you feel better before going into this. So, yeah, but it really is, I mean, whatever the outcome is, it’s going to be, it’s going to be fine. And if you do get it, which I truly feel, I mean, it’s pointing in all directions that they want you to the point that they will wait for you. You’ve already given them a number and they haven’t been like, fuck you, Amanda. So all of the, they pay weekly. It is just simple, old fashioned cleaning and easier than a house. It’s just the logistics of it. So all of these things are, this is a green flag. Everything about this is something that I would pursue. And so even though, you know, you haven’t done it before. So I just, I know it. Yeah, I know that these past couple of weeks have just been a lot for you, but I really zoom out and it’s like, you’re on the right path. You really are. And, you know, sometimes we’re just going to feel low. You know, right before we started recording, both of us are like, we’re kind of feeling shitty today. I’m kind of feeling shitty today. You are, you know, the Monday blues, man, and that’s okay. And that doesn’t change what needs to be done. You know what I mean?

Amanda: And I think it’s also been super hard for me because I am so action oriented. Zooming out and looking at this big picture of the finances, the scaling, the hiring, I’m like, I’ve done all the fucking actions. I don’t know what’s left for me to do aside from accept that I am worthy of doing this and I am capable of figuring it the fuck out as I go, which I’ve already proven to myself. I’ve already done that the past six years. I literally started cleaning and letting clients tell me how much they would pay me and I would just show up on my day off and clean. And now I have a whole ass business. I’ve already done this to some scale. And so, I mean, back to what you said, I just need to get the hell out of my own way.

Stephanie: Yeah, no, absolutely. And just, and the hard part too is if the thing’s not broken, don’t fix it. All right, you’re closing great. You’re upselling, all of these things you have clearly hiring capabilities because look at all these applicants. It’s now it’s just, we just need to execute, right? We need to just do the things that are working. And I think a lot of times we get really antsy to change shit because that soothes us of like, well, if I just keep tweaking with this thing, and it’s like, bitch, it works. Why do you keep doing this?

Amanda: That’s exactly where I’ve been for probably the past two weeks or so, because I’m like, action, take action, take action. Okay, tweak this, change that word. I’m like, why am I wasting time on this? I’m second guessing myself.

Stephanie: No, we do that. We do that. And we do that in Serene Clean. We’ve actually, you know, to the point of we’ve been tweaking our checklist. And finally, we’re like, okay, today in today’s team meeting, we just, I shared my screen. I was like, this is what we’re thinking, guys. Do you like it? What do you think? And they’re like, okay, good. We were overthinking it completely. We totally were. We were nervous to make a mistake. We were nervous that, you know, does this, does this even matter? You know, what even matters? And then we get relaxed.

Amanda: I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s very much, I mean, it’s just complicated to try to figure out the balance of, okay, I need to focus on growing, hiring, scaling. Okay, we need more reoccurring clients. That’s my big thing that I need because I need that consistent revenue so that I’m not consistently chasing cleans, right? One-off cleans, which we’re very well known for in our area, which is a great thing. We got a quote for a local builder who wants us to do all of their post construction, which is great. I love that they want to partner with us. Unfortunately, that’s not consistent revenue. So yeah, we might get these one jobs that are $2,200, $2,800. And then next month I’m like, oh shit, okay, we are like $1,300 down from what we need to be able to cover expenses. How do I do this? The answer is recurring clients. And so I’m trying to focus on finding recurrent clients. I’m trying to focus on finding applicants and getting them on a Zoom and getting them started and also finding jobs for them to do and also working quotes for the people who do come in. And I’m out in the field still. So I just feel like I’m being pulled in every direction possible. And I’m like, holy shit, I just need to breathe. But I feel like there’s not even time for me to breathe because the longer I breathe, the more these people can go find John Doe down the road to clean.

The Reality of Business Ownership

Stephanie: And you are bringing the reality of this isn’t fucking easy. This is not easy.

Amanda: I’m drowning, guys. I am literally drowning. Every day I’m like, okay, okay, okay. I’m above water for five minutes. And then I’m like, fuck, here we go.

Stephanie: This solution truly is to get you out of the field. And that solution is about to happen. And keep in mind, you know, we’re doing our best and shit can always happen. And we just have to let go of the control of, okay, you just hired this person next week, she might ghost you. She might. That doesn’t mean don’t do the thing because right now you can’t stay where you are. You can’t stay cleaning because of all of this shit that’s happening. And everybody listening, I know so many of you are in the exact same spot where you’re like, I’m dying because I’m cleaning and doing all this stuff. And it’s like, you have to get out of the fucking field. If you want this thing to grow, you can’t keep doing this because there’s just not enough of you to go around, especially with all of you that got kids. And I’m like, how the fuck do you do this with kids?

Amanda: Yeah, no, for real. I wear a wife hat, I wear a mom hat. Oh, I also homeschool my child and I’m trying to do all of this in the business. I am actually drowning right now. My friends, they got an hour of me this past weekend. I was like, I got to go. This is all I can give. And thankfully I have a very small circle and they all understand that. But holy shit, I just feel like I’m running a marathon and I can’t take a break. Can’t take a break. I’ve got to keep pushing, keep pushing. And then there’s days where the sun is really bright and it’s 93 degrees in September in Missouri and it pisses me off and I’m like, I actually don’t want to keep going anymore. I just want to run away to the forest where it’s cold and drizzly. And it’s really hard. It is really hard.

Stephanie: And this is the reality of, I don’t know, I’ve had some guests on that are very successful and they’ve said things along the lines of it doesn’t have to be this way, but I don’t know how it can’t be. And maybe it’s just my lack of wisdom because, meaning obviously we know you need to get out of the field, but these moments of complete overwhelm, especially considering the reality of your life and all of your responsibilities, anybody would be overwhelmed because this is overwhelming. This is not a fault of yours. This is not a failure of yours. It is factually overwhelming. So it’s like, okay, the one thing that we need, yes, get you out of the field. What needs to happen to make that happen? You need to hire somebody. That’s it. That is the focus. And just, yeah, keep everything else going. It is all possible, but just managing yourself and managing, you know, and also taking care of yourself. You know, it’s tough.

Amanda: I think maybe what they’re saying when they say it doesn’t have to be like this is it doesn’t have to be like that forever. Because when I did have a team of five, this is how I felt every single day for two and a half years in my business. And I’m telling you, I was like, I cannot quit. I don’t have a quitter’s mindset unless I just know it’s not for me. But I know I’m meant to fucking do this. So I could not quit. It took me losing all of those team members and going solo. My wife quit her job to come help me in the business. It was a whole family ordeal for me, for the pain to be enough. You know, we’ve talked about this. The pain pressure was enough to light a fire under my ass to be like, something’s got to change. And so I had to learn in the industry and it wasn’t, it’s so crazy. I was just talking, I used to learn from watching YouTube videos and social influencers who are cleaning business owners. And now I’m like, oh, that’s cool. Now I get to DM people who are making multiple millions from cleaning. And I’m nowhere near that. But that’s how I’m getting my information. Now it feels so much faster. And those connections, I mean, they just mean so much to me. That was the top of my gratitude list this week is the connections I’ve made so far through ZenMaid. 100%.

Stephanie: And the thing is, you know, talking to Sharon Cowan, her episode hasn’t gone live yet, but I mentioned her to you, and she built an empire before basically the internet even was really well used in businesses. They were writing letters to each location. That’s how they communicated. And I’m like, what? But so I’m just like, the fact that we have the internet and all of the resources, and we have direct access into the brains of the people who have done this before, it’s like, not saying it’s not hard, but it’s a lot easier today to do what we’re trying to do because of the knowledge base that we have access to. So yeah, it’s very encouraging because I’m like, oh, I can just message this person and ask.

Amanda: Yes, exactly. And I just want to encourage anybody who’s listening, if you are going through something and you’re following this podcast or whoever you’re following on whatever streaming or app it is, be brave and send the DM. That is literally how I’m here on this podcast. I was brave one day and I was like, Stephanie is never going to reply to me. She’s way up here. I’m down here. She doesn’t even know I exist. She replied and guys, we just be chatting it up on this podcast now. We message every day. We voice message. I’m walking my dog. Let me tell you about my day. Don’t underestimate the power of sending that DM and just being brave for a second. And it’s gonna feel scary. My heart rate was probably 150 when I messaged Mark the other day and I was pretty sure I wasn’t gonna get a reply because who the hell am I

Stephanie: To message Mark? And just really, you can only control your actions and maybe they’re too busy and they’re not gonna respond, but that’s why I’m here. I sent an email to Amar of like, hey, I’m thinking of starting a YouTube channel, but I don’t want to manage a YouTube channel. Can I make content for you? As Stephanie, when that’s all started, I just sent an email.

Amanda: I love that so much. That’s, yes, it just takes a second of being brave. And yeah, worst case scenario, you’re unread and they can’t get back to you. And maybe they get back to you in a few months. Maybe they never do, whatever. At least you were brave enough to ask. And I think it’s so important to ask for knowledge or ask to pick somebody’s brain from somebody who is sitting where you want to be.

Stephanie: It’s so true. And honestly, I know anybody that I’ve talked to that has made any level of success, they love when people want to know about knowledge, because we like talking about it. I was talking to somebody yesterday and they asked me, they’re like, so how did you get started with ZenMaid? And an hour later, I was like, oh, sorry. What were you saying? Because I obviously, I mean I love the podcast and I love, I love sharing knowledge and I love sharing what worked for me or mistakes or anything. And I find that most people who have made it to anything, we love, that makes us happy because our business is boring because it’s just running so smoothly, flex, but it gets boring, you know? I love that journey for you. So it’s just like, oh this is fun, this is fun and it’s exciting to help other people in this way. So sometimes, yeah, frankly, a well-running business is very boring because

Amanda: It’s well-running. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And that’s kind of, I feel like since I started using ZenMaid in February or March of this year, early on this year, and when I really dove in and created all of our foundations, create our systems, really got things integrated and understood the software, the things that took up so much of my freaking time are not taking up my time now. And that is why I’ve been able to be like, okay, so I’m going to be really honest. The goal of me being out of the field was my five-year goal at the beginning of this year, January of 2025. By December of 2025, I will be out of the field. I will be a backup cleaner. That was a five-year goal. And because I put all of these systems in place and now I had all of that time to be creative and really think, I was like, holy shit, no, I can do this this year. This doesn’t have to be five years. So now in five years, I don’t even want to live in Missouri. It just exploded so many things for me. And I’m like, I really needed to go through all those pain points to be able, you know, it led me to Carolyn Arellano’s YouTube videos. And that led me to ZenMaid, which led me to you, which led me to talking to Mark. And here we are today. It’s just everything happened and I don’t know, it sucked to go through the painful things, but I don’t think I would change any of it because it got me exactly where I am today. And even if I don’t get this huge commercial bid, I think it opened a door for me to stop being scared of big commercial. Just from this conversation today I feel less anxious about it. You’ll be able to do walkthroughs in the future

Stephanie: And be like, I’ve done this before. The next walkthrough you do at a big place, well you’ve already done it, even if you didn’t get that, you already had that experience. So it’s like, everything’s

Amanda: Just practice, you know? Exactly. And I’ll remember to ask when their expected start date is, because I forgot to have very important information on this one. Yeah, so I just feel like it needed to happen for me to, you know, feel confident. And this is an option for you, even though you’re mostly residential, you can do commercial. And you know, we live, I live right next to a city, in a small town but the next city over is like 10 minute drive and it’s like 56,000 population, so it’s not giant but it’s definitely big enough for me to do commercial cleaning in. Why not?

Stephanie: Absolutely. I mean, so many businesses and it’s, you know, Serene Clean started in Black River Falls. That’s 5,000 people. 5,000. And we made it to, let’s see, before we, I think we just opened our second location when we hit a million and that was, let’s see, Sparta has 10,000 people. So we’re talking about in the entire area that we were serving, we’re talking maybe 40,000 people, right? And we were hitting, it’s just, it can be done everywhere, literally everywhere. And especially with commercial, because every business needs to be cleaned in some capacity. Well, technically, all houses do too. So it’s

Amanda: There’s just so much business to go around. I mean, it’s a very interesting mindset, because residential is viewed as a luxury and commercial is a necessity. Commercial clients are like, oh my God, you didn’t have time to clean that window, it’s totally fine. Everything’s fine. It’s fine. Or residential, they’re like, there’s one fingerprint on the bottom of that window. I expect a full refund. Completely different. No, it is. It is. And there’s beautiful

Stephanie: Pros and cons to both sides of it. And, you know, chasing both, it is, it is complicated. You know, there adds, it adds complexity. And so I will, you know, caution all of you guys of if you’re going to be going after big commercial, yeah, there is challenges that you are not going to face in residential 100%. The stakes are, you know, higher. If you do lose the account, it really, really, if I lost my two biggest accounts, I don’t know, I’d be picking up a toilet brush, I guess. I don’t fucking know. But it would be really stressful.

Amanda: And that’s also a scary thing too in business. All it takes is fucking up one of your big accounts and everybody’s like, oh shit, what do we do? Well, we figured it out just like we figured everything else out. Absolutely. Well, on that note, Amanda, I know you got shit

Stephanie: To do this afternoon, but this was great. It almost feels like we’re just having this conversation and nobody’s going to watch it. But I forget that. I kind of forgot. But yeah, other people are watching this right now. Hey, guys, leave Amanda some love in the comments. Hit that like, hit that subscribe.

Amanda: If you are not subscribed, what are you doing? And we’ll see you on the next episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners, guys. Bye-bye.

Stephanie: If you enjoyed this episode of the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast, please be sure to leave us a five-star review so we can reach more cleaners like you. Until next time, keep your work clean and your business filthy rich.

Note: This transcript has been edited for clarity and readability.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• ZenMaid
• Gusto
• QuickBooks
• Carolyn Arellano
• Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins
• Profit First
• Episode with Mark Lineberry: Filthy Rich Cleaners – E21: Breaking into Commercial Cleaning: From Cold Calls to 7-Figures