Building a Cleaning Business That Serves Your Life with Ken Carfagno

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Introduction

Stephanie: Hello everyone. Welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast, I am your host, Stephanie Pipkin from Serene Clean, and today’s guest is Ken Carfagno from C3. I’m so excited to have Ken on the podcast today. Ken, thank you for joining us!

Ken: Thank you! I’m excited to be here. Even when people mispronounce my name, which happens often. I’ve gotten many different pronunciations over the years. Just recently at a ski lodge, they had me under “Parfagno with a P” and gave us a free dinner for the error. I’ll go by Parfagno all weekend if I get free food!

Stephanie: That is a good one! I get mine all the time too. My last name is Pipkin, and especially on the phone, they can’t understand it. I’m like, “P as in Pam.”

Ken: Yeah, I have to go five consonants deep to help someone. It’s just part of my life. But if any Italians are out there, it’s “Carfanio.”

From Engineering to Cleaning

Stephanie: Well, Ken Carfagno is our guest today! I want to talk about your pivot from engineering to cleaning. Why that choice? Why did you leave? I know you’ve talked about it before, but I would love to hear it because it is such a huge pivot.

Ken: It was the number one question I got. It was interesting when I went into houses to do estimates, they would say, “You’re an engineer, and you’re here in my house to do a cleaning quote?” They gave me this look like, “Why? What happened?”

I would tell them it just wasn’t the right fit for me. I’m good at math and science, so it was an obvious fit, but it wasn’t right for my personal goals, values, and mission in life.

The short version is I was in a very aggressive engineering culture at General Electric in a leadership program. They were grooming people like me in our early 20s to be the next managers, executives, and possibly CEO. It was a dream company for me. I met the board of directors and CEO Jack Welch in my first year. I met multiple CEOs of different GE companies and had a lot of visibility at just 23-24 years old.

That visibility was both good and bad. I got to see the inner workings of the company, which I was excited about until I wasn’t. At 24, my now-wife and I were still dating and wanted to start a family. I was living in South Carolina, far from our families in Philadelphia, feeling homesick.

The Pivotal Moment

Ken: I was in a small, private meeting with people my age in this executive training program. A very important executive was there, and everyone was intimidated by him. He was talking about the future of power generation – solar panels and wind turbines. This was about 25 years ago.

Everyone was excited about the great future ahead at this company. Then one brave guy asked, “Mr. E, what’s your personal life like?” It was like a pin drop in the room because you don’t ask that kind of question to an executive.

I’m grateful I was there to hear the answer because this strong, confident man just deflated right in front of us. He said, “Well, I live here in South Carolina in Greenville, and my wife lives in Atlanta.” Then he bluntly said, “If you want to have a personal life, you can’t do what I do.”

He was honest about what it looks like to be in the job I wanted, and it ripped my heart out. I thought, “Why am I doing this?” Once this came to my attention, I started seeing all around me in the company: divorces, people cheating, pictures of kids on desks who they never saw. I questioned pursuing this dream.

Finding a New Path

Ken: I wanted to get out and start my own company. I wanted to be the boss. I didn’t plan to be cleaning – that wasn’t my plan. As a Christian, I knew God has a larger plan for our lives.

I basically checked out of the company after that conversation, and within three years, I was fired. Along the way, my wife started a cleaning company on the side for extra income. When I lost my engineering job, I couldn’t find another one, so when your back’s against the wall, you either fold or move forward. That’s character – that’s grit.

The Industry Problem

Ken: What I see in this industry is a lack of entrepreneurial mindedness. The cleaning industry is so easy to get into that it attracts everyone. That’s good, but many people don’t have the fundamentals of running a company.

They think, “I’m a good cleaner, I’ll be a good cleaning business owner.” Those are two completely different skill sets, and that’s a huge problem. Every one of us will hit a wall at some point. What will you do when you hit that wall?

When I was at that point after being fired, I thought, “I better take this cleaning business and run with it.” We were five hours from home with almost $200,000 in debt nearly 20 years ago. I had a wife with a 10-month-old at home and real responsibilities. I couldn’t just sit around.

The entrepreneur inside me started coming out. It was difficult, scary, exciting, fun, nerve-wracking, anxious – every emotion you can have. I thoroughly enjoyed it and had good mentorship.

If you like cleaning, we welcome you to the industry! But let’s get a couple things straight: Don’t charge $15 an hour and make the rest of us look bad. Be a real business. Learn how to be a business owner – it’s a completely different skill set.

The Importance of Grit

Stephanie: I’m so happy you laid out your story. Thank you for that. I love your focus on grit – Angela Duckworth has that excellent book on the science of having grit. And the concept from the E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber – just because you’re great at baking cakes doesn’t mean you should open a bakery.

You mentioned how it’s such a low barrier to entry industry, which is wonderful but can hurt the industry as a whole. I was just talking to Erica at ZenMaid about the pain points of our industry. We serve three different categories: clients, employees, and our community. If you’re unable to differentiate yourself on anything but cleaning, that’s just the bare minimum. We should all be good cleaners – it’s everything else that makes us stand out.

What do you consider the fundamentals that our listeners need? Many are still in the field or just a couple years out and struggling with entrepreneurial concepts. What are those building blocks and foundations?

The Four Fundamentals

Ken: I’ll start with some basics. You should be a good cleaner or have the propensity to learn. Believe it or not, there aren’t a lot of good cleaners out there.

I’ve moved to commercial cleaning now. When I go into an office for an estimate, I use a scale where my standard is an 8 out of 10. An 8 is good enough – that’s an 80/20 thing. When I evaluate most offices, I grade them between 3 and 5. So if we just do an 8 out of 10, that’s twice as good as what’s already there.

The next basic is to be professional, reliable, and responsive. You wouldn’t believe how many times in 20 years I’ve called someone back and they’ve said, “Thank you for calling me back – you’re the fifth one I called, no one returned my message.”

I used to be shocked, but now I apologize for the lack of professionals in our industry. Being professional includes how you present yourself – people judge you based on first impressions, just like they judge your cleaning ability by what they see first when they walk in.

The Four Fundamentals:

1. Know your numbers
2. Mindset
3. Strategy
4. People skills

1. Know Your Numbers

Ken: Most people don’t know their numbers. It’s embarrassing. I know my numbers, and there’s a great story about Debbie Sardone calling me out of the blue years ago. She called to see if I was “the real deal” because I was leaving feedback in her groups.

She grilled me with question after question about my business, and I answered every one because I know my numbers. At the end, she said, “All right, you’re the real deal.” I respected her for checking up on people, because there are a lot of people giving advice who aren’t qualified.

There’s general advice and specific advice. Watch out for people who don’t have a leg to stand on. Then there are people with good advice, but it’s general advice. If you’re running out of time, you should scale – that’s general advice, but not great for everybody. Everyone has a specific situation requiring specific advice.

2. Business Owner Mindset

Ken: The average cleaning business owner actually has a job mindset rather than a business mindset. These are night and day different. The job person sees money going out as spending money, while a business owner might see it as investing for future benefit. You need to acquire a business owner’s mindset to be successful.

3. Strategy

Ken: You need a strategy or business plan. I’m not big on formal business plans, but you need a process to follow. Find a coaching program that relates to your goals and follow it. In cleaning, you don’t need to recreate the wheel – it’s been around a while. Just copy a proven system.

4. People Skills

Ken: This is where people pleasers, introverts, and those who have trouble looking people in the eyes struggle. You need to become good with people. This is where I had to grow most as an engineer – I couldn’t look people in the eye or hold a conversation.

The best book I recommend is “The Go-Giver” by Bob Burg. I don’t mean becoming a salesperson – become genuinely interested in others. Be generous, curious, and humble. Ask questions. When you’re interested in others, you’ll be interesting to others.

When you mix these four fundamentals together – working well with people, having a business owner’s mindset with a solid strategy, and knowing your numbers – you can stay on track. Usually, people are lacking at least one of these, and just one lacking is enough to hold you back for years.

Skills Can Be Learned

Stephanie: What I love about these four things is they’re all skills that can be learned, practiced, and mastered. We often label ourselves: “I’m an introvert,” “I’m not a people person,” “I’m not a math person,” “I hate sales.” But these are all just skills you can learn.

I consider myself naturally curious, so the people part comes easily to me. I’ve been detailed about numbers since day one, and I love systems. But I can relate to how these areas develop over time.

Even with professionalism – I remember my first walk-throughs at houses when I was 22, shaking in my tennis shoes, but I had my shirt on, my checklist, and acted confident even though I didn’t feel it. Acting professionally served me well because if you seem nervous, it makes clients nervous too.

The Mirroring Technique

Ken: Here’s a tip: When you walk into someone’s house, use the mirroring technique to identify their personality type. If they give one or two-word answers, they’re a get-to-business person, so mirror that with bullet points. If someone is very talkative, you can share some stories with them.

This people skill helps you build trust. Everything we do as owners is creating trust in every aspect of the business – with employees, customers, vendors, community. You want people to know you, like you, and trust you. When you have that firmly established in your community, you’ll never have to find a client again – they’ll find you.

Maintaining Trust

Stephanie: That’s so true! We don’t have to pay for advertising anymore because clients just come to us. If someone has broken trust or is struggling with this, the direct answer is “do what you say you’re going to do.” But if you do screw up, how would you earnestly fix that and hopefully turn that person into a raving fan?

Ken: You need to own it. It’s about accountability. I just made a mistake last week and owned it today. I got a complaint email with a scroll bar I didn’t notice, so I only saw two-thirds of the message and responded poorly. After some back-and-forth, I realized my error.

I went back to them and said, “I’m going to own this. This is all me. I totally screwed up. Here’s what I did wrong. Here’s the lesson I just learned from you, and I’m not going to do this again. I appreciate you teaching me this and treating me with respect.”

I’ve done this multiple times, and when I’ve owned my mistakes, clients have said, “If something falls through with our cleaner, we’ll definitely bring you back. I really appreciate how much you owned your mistake.”

It’s like with my children – you can treat someone nicely three times, but one bad moment can erase all that goodwill. You have to realize you will screw up and break trust at some point. How you respond is what matters – own it and build back up. As long as you’re honest and take ownership, they’ll respect you more, and you’ll actually end up with more trust than before.

Commercial vs. Residential Cleaning

Stephanie: That’s excellent advice on establishing trust and fixing it when broken. We’ve had instances where we’ve made mistakes, and by owning up to them, we’ve received five-star reviews saying, “They messed up but fixed it so well!”

Let’s talk about commercial cleaning. We have about 64 active commercial accounts of varying sizes, and many seemed to stumble into my lap. How do you approach commercial cleaning?

Ken: First, Mark Lineberry is a genius and a good friend of mine. His blogs are outstanding and you can immediately implement things from them.

Comparing commercial to residential: residential is hard to do and easy to get; commercial is easy to do and hard to get. You could have 10 residential clients within three months if you’re any good. With commercial, the same goal might take three years because the sales cycle is much longer.

The obvious difference is that residential cleaning happens during the day, while commercial is nights and weekends (with exceptions like barber shops, churches, chiropractors, dentists, manufacturing facilities).

In commercial, you’re competing with large janitorial firms doing business across entire regions – $10-50 million companies. I recommend that house cleaners stay within “small commercial” – buildings up to 10,000 square feet. Mid-size would be 10,000-30,000 square feet, and large is 30,000+ square feet.

Advantages of Commercial Cleaning

Ken: A 5,000-6,000 square foot building can be cleaned by one person, even if it takes two nights. This fits nicely into a house cleaner’s schedule and doesn’t compete with giant janitorial companies who don’t want to mess with accounts worth only $7-8,000 a year.

One of the best benefits of commercial is it’s so much easier because it’s not personal space. When you’re in someone’s house, that’s their personal space – they’re very specific about how they want things. An office is where they work – they care about it, but not as much as where they live. Their desk is less important than their master bedroom.

Another huge advantage for residential people moving to commercial: you’ll already be better at cleaning than many commercial cleaners because you’re used to higher standards. You just need to learn a couple of new skills and a slightly different quoting approach.

During COVID, commercial business owners stayed the same or improved, while residential owners lost 50-90% of their business. This suggests commercial is more stable during economic disruptions.

Commercial vs. Residential Stability

Stephanie: Commercial is definitely stickier. During slow seasons, our bigger accounts might reduce from five nights to three times a week, but they don’t cancel outright. With houses, as soon as clients feel a financial pinch, the cleaner is gone. Having a house cleaner is a luxury, while office cleaning is a necessity.

You really have to screw up badly for commercial clients to change because the sales cycle is so long and there are multiple decision-makers.

Ken: Exactly! If you lose commercial, you must really have failed. It’s a luxury to have a house cleaner but a necessity to have an office cleaner.

People ask, “Does that mean you can’t charge as much in commercial?” As long as you’re staying within houses to small commercial (law firms, small banks, insurance companies, chiropractors, dentists, professional spaces, small manufacturing), the profitability and pricing are about the same.

Once you get into larger buildings with more frequent cleaning, you need to be more competitive with volume-based discounts. My pricing model as a solo cleaner was different than now with employees – my prices went down 20-30% with the new model, but profitability is still good.

Commission vs. Hourly Pay

Stephanie: Do you pay your employees W2 or use ICs?

Ken: I have W2 employees.

Stephanie: Me too! I’m a fan of W2. Do you pay them percentage, flat rate, or hourly?

Ken: I pay commission, which is a flat rate. I made that choice because one of our core values is ownership. I want to attract professionals who have full-time careers but work for us part-time nights and weekends.

I tell them, “I’m looking for people with an ownership mindset. Here’s your job – own it, do it with excellence. I don’t want to babysit you. Put your earbuds on, do a great job, and if you get it done in three hours or two hours, as long as the job is done well, you’ll get the same pay.” Our team members average about $22 an hour on commission.

Commission Structure

Stephanie: Do you have a commission tier based on performance? I’ve seen systems where companies incentivize good behavior with tiered pay for no complaints, great attendance, etc.

Ken: The model I’m running is a little different. I have part-time people cleaning, and I don’t expect them to stay with me for five years. Most people get a part-time job with us for about 10 months. So for us, it’s case-by-case. For people who stay longer and do a great job, I’ll give bonuses, drop off gift cards, and bump up their commission as they earn it.

I’ve seen residential companies with percentage systems that start at 35% and go up to 40% if you perform well, dropping back down if you mess up. That must be difficult to track as a system.

The reason I chose commission is to attract people with an ownership mindset who want to work faster to make more money per hour. I don’t want the hourly thinker who’ll stretch the job to get paid for more hours. I want someone thinking, “How can I get this done efficiently while maintaining quality?”

I tell new hires, “Your first time will take four hours, but you’ll get faster. Eventually, you’ll get down to under three hours. You can make the same money and get home faster to your family.” People who love that model are who we want.

Transitioning to Commission

Stephanie: I want some free advice! I pay hourly for both residential and commercial, with approved hours per job. The downside is employees aren’t incentivized to work faster because they make less if they finish early. I have about 30 staff members, many doing hybrid shifts. How would I transition to a commission model?

Ken: This is specific advice versus general advice. I haven’t personally built a large residential company, so I’d defer to more qualified people for that part.

There is difficulty implementing commission with a large team. My mentor Josh Melton (you should interview him) used commission until he reached about 100 employees, then switched to hourly because it became too much work to maintain.

I’d suggest talking to other coaches for their feedback, and maybe finding your top team members who have been with you longest to try a split test. Offer them a trial of the commission system for three months, set up so they can’t make less than they currently do – they can only gain. You’ll get real evidence from your own team about whether it works.

One benefit to the company: if employees finish three-hour jobs in two hours, they might ask for another job that day, increasing your average number of houses per employee. On paper, it looks really good.

Advice for Solo Cleaners

Stephanie: That’s a great idea! I love testing it with a few people first. Well, any other advice or things on your mind about this industry?

Ken: I want to speak to all my solo cleaner friends out there. There are two pain points I’ve seen solo cleaners deal with, and I’ve seen well-wishers giving them horrible advice for too long.

The first pain point is for brand new cleaners: “I don’t know how to get customers. I can’t get customers. I’m pricing too low.” My advice: Work on your people skills, get a better mindset, read books (especially “The Go-Giver”), and learn to create trust in your community.

Stop thinking short-term. Everything you do has long-term implications. This is one of the best business opportunities on the planet. Change your statements from “I can’t” to “How can I?” or “What can I do differently?” Get out of a complaining mindset and into a humble, grateful, and opportunistic one. Just go get the problem and figure it out as you go.

You don’t need everything perfect before your first customer, but you do want insurance, a legitimate business entity, a separate business account, and separated finances.

Optimizing Before Scaling

Ken: The second pain point comes after you’re good at getting customers. Now you work seven days a week, make $30,000 a year, have no time, your body’s getting beat up, and you’re freaking out. Then all the well-wishers say, “You need to scale! Hire people! Get subs!”

Stop telling people that when they have no margin emotionally, financially, or physically! Starting a team requires a lot of emotional and financial margin and time. What they need first is more time.

Learn some basic optimizing skills and know your numbers. If you’re working seven days a week making $25,000, bring that down to three days a week making $25,000. Then go to five days a week making $50,000. Now you have more margin and are in a much better place to scale.

These two pain points hit every solo cleaner. The first one relates to the E-Myth – they’re wrapped up as the technician and can’t get their head around being a manager and entrepreneur. For the second pain point, they still aren’t good managers or entrepreneurs and don’t know what to do because they’ve never experienced it.

Closing Thoughts

Stephanie: That was excellent, very motivating and very practical. Where can our listeners find you if they enjoyed this conversation?

Ken: You can check out my podcast at Smart Cleaning School – I’ve been hosting it for six years and interviewed many top industry professionals, including the ZenMaid leader. Go to smartcleaningschool.com for information. I offer some free strategy calls, and there are opportunities for coaching and memberships as well.

Stephanie: Well, thank you for your time, Ken. We’ll link all those resources below, and I’d love to have another conversation with you in the future if you’re ever open to it.

Everyone else, hit that like, hit that subscribe, and we’ll see you on the next episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners. Bye, guys!

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

• Smart Cleaning School Podcast
• The Go-Giver by Bob Burg
• E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber
• My Clean Pivot by Mark Lineberry
• ZenMaid
• Six Figure Cleaner by Josh Melton

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