Double Your Bookings with Katie & Stephanie’s Cleaning Funnel Fixes

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Introduction

Stephanie: Hello everyone, welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I’m your host, Stephanie from Serene Clean. And in today’s episode, we have the lovely Katie Jenks, who is my customer relations manager that started as a cleaning tech many moons ago. Katie, thank you for joining me. When did you start at Serene Clean?

Katie: In February of 2021.

Stephanie: And where did we meet Katie originally?

Katie: At the gym talking about bodybuilding competitions, but then quickly found out that we actually went to the same high school. I just went there much earlier than you.

Stephanie: Two years prior. Exactly. We’re all 30 years old forever. So yes, I don’t even remember when it came to applying, if that was just a word of mouth thing, or did you actually apply? Or did you just reach out to me? Do you remember?

Katie: I sent a message through Facebook that I was interested in applying and you told me to come in. Previous to this, I did a short stint working for a scheduling company for veterans appointments and had been substitute teaching and then also teaching English to kids in China online.

Stephanie: And what were you doing before?

Katie: Stay-at-home mom before that, previously worked in medical stuff, medical secretary transcription stuff before that.

The Journey from Cleaning Tech to Manager

Stephanie: And why did you want to change? Obviously, you started as a cleaning tech. What drew you to that? What made you want to do this?

Katie: Doing the scheduling stuff at home, it was a work from home position. And that wasn’t for me just sitting in my bedroom office all day long. I wanted to get out and be around people and having met in the gym, I was very into being active at that time and felt like that would be a good fit. And just from meeting you was like, yeah, this is something I want to be a part of. Then as I got into it, it was something I really wanted to be a part of. And that’s when I had said, I think I could probably do more than just help with the cleaning here and kind of rolled into helping in the office and doing scheduling. And that’s morphed into customer relations manager.

Stephanie: I think you just touched on something that really all three of the managers did. I don’t think I brought it up to any of you. It was you guys came to me and said, “Hey, I really see myself being able to be utilized in a bigger capacity.” And it was very much also right time of it all. Obviously that’s true for all of you, but also there was a clear demand. And I remember, right when you started and as soon as you started cleaning, I’m like, Katie is meant for more here. It was just very clear. I just love your brain, Katie. I know I tell you that all the time, but God, you got sexy brain. Sometimes it overthinks too much.

Katie: Mostly it’s helpful, but every good thing has a bad side too, right?

Stephanie: Exactly. And you had a really solid base of clients that really loved you. I think that, again, looking at all the managers, it just makes sense that all of our management team have come from the physical work of it all. And I know that that’s not how every company does it, but I think at Serene Clean, that just makes sense. Don’t you agree?

Katie: I think it definitely helps with understanding the full process of the business versus just getting so tunnel visioned on my job is customer relations. And it’s like, but I know why the clients are saying they’re not happy with something, or could we do this thing differently? And I kind of understand that from having been in the cleaning technician role. I think that’s April and Crystal too. That helps us do better in the spot we’re in now.

Understanding the Balance Between All Stakeholders

Stephanie: Yeah, and also knowing what is realistic, whether that be are the cleaners full of shit or is this actually legitimate when it comes to is there enough time? Are we being unreasonable? Is the client being unreasonable? Because it really is, I think once you start introducing that layer of we got management, we got techs and we got clients and trying to balance the needs of each is quite the challenge. And you definitely see that while all of you guys, but for you specifically being customer relations, you see that a ton where we can kind of be protected from it of, you’re the one dealing most likely with a client and hitting that line, that boundary, and they’re constantly butting up against it. Maybe not even intentionally, but I’m sure you could give a thousand examples of where you’ve kind of had to check clients and you do it so gracefully.

If you could describe what your daily responsibilities are and how that has evolved over time and then we can kind of dig into examples and things like that.

Daily Responsibilities and Evolution

Katie: When I started, it was really more so just the actual sending estimates and then offering those first cleaning dates, kind of doing some scheduling. It’s really kind of changed into where I’m doing the majority of that now. Crystal definitely does a lot, April helps out with it too. But really kind of getting them started up and then if things change down the road with tech availability or something, Crystal handles most of that and kind of moving things around. But that initial contact comes from me. And then doing bidding for commercial accounts, following up with complaints when we get them, which hasn’t happened for a really long time. So that and just trying to recognize the clients for their loyalty to us too. We’ve been doing more of that. And then some of the marketing stuff. It’s a lot that we do every day, but it’s when you start out, you’re what do I actually do? I come here and I do things.

Stephanie: I know it’s funny because whenever people ask me that well what’s your typical day and I’m just don’t ask me that I couldn’t even tell you I can’t tell you what I ate for breakfast today.

Katie: We do a lot of things and it’s all different, but sometimes it’s the same.

From Reactive to Proactive Operations

Stephanie: And it really feels like it ebbs and flows with the chaos. And I think that that’s something that we’ve just really learned to take in stride a lot better of this is just the nature of the business. And I think before it felt a lot more chaotic. And now it feels more like controlled chaos. Even when something goes awry, I feel like our reactions are much more stunted than they used to be, and that definitely starts from me too.

Katie: It’s not such high highs and such lows like that roller coaster feeling. It’s more of we’re kind of just floating along. But I think we’re a lot better at being more proactive now than we were when I first came in. It was very reactive and that’s been a huge change. You’re never going to know everything that could happen. But it starts to show patterns. And I think we’ve been really good at figuring out what those patterns are and then figuring out what can we do to try to mitigate that before it becomes an issue.

Stephanie: That’s one of my favorite words, mitigate, as well as proactive. And I think it reflects on what, really, I feel like this past year as a management team, I feel like we have really started to laser focus in on what are the overarching problems that we keep seeing again and again, and actually doing something about it instead of being “yeah, training’s a mess, or we don’t have orientation.” Whatever the thing is. Or just quality control. But we just weren’t in the place that we could really create the bandwidth or create the space to focus on solving the core root of the problem. It felt like we were fixing symptoms a lot.

Katie: That whole putting a bandaid on it and now we’re what is the actual root cause? What’s really going on? Not what is the reaction from that thing?

Moving Beyond Survival Mode

Stephanie: And I think honestly, it had a lot to do with me getting, unfortunately, having to dig the heels in on pushing for growth because it really never felt like I was really pushing for it, but it was we just had this huge demand. And so that was always the focus of just fix this week. Just make this week happen and never having long-term vision. I feel like we… It makes sense. We were a young company and now we’re kind of getting into our teenage years of maybe that’s the wrong phrase, but maybe we’re now a young adult of a company and we’re thinking about long-term consequences more than do we make this week work.

Katie: Isn’t the statistic most new businesses, it’s if you make it to five years, then it’s that. And I think we felt that and even just having that all in our heads, if we make it to five, we’re good then. So it’s that internal pressure too, that probably was kind of playing into it. And just, yeah, always, I think the long-term vision’s there, but it’s figuring out the action to make it happen. And now I think we’re better at looking at what data do we have? What kind of results are we actually looking for? And how do we marry those together to actually have some sort of action to take to do it?

Stephanie: I totally agree. And it’s this constant kind of push and pull of at the end of the day, what’s good for the cleaners or cleaning techs is what’s good for the bottom line. But sometimes knowing how to marry those two can be very challenging because a lot of the decisions we make wouldn’t appear to be good for the bottom line, pumping the brakes we cannot grow until we fix this problem. And in the week, or the month or the six month term, that seems stupid. But now that we have the hindsight of we have the discipline and we actually said, no, we cannot grow because we’re gonna grow these problems and it’s gonna collapse. And I feel like you always use the phrase of if we had 50 cleaners, what’s gonna fall apart? And they’d be well, everything would fall apart. Well, therefore we need to fix these.

Katie: Right? Yeah.

Creating a Real Company Structure

Stephanie: Over the past year, I feel like we’ve made such huge leaps and bounds from an organization standpoint of it actually feels like a real company now, which I don’t even know what I mean by that. But do you know what I mean?

Katie: I do. It’s, unfortunately, there’s ways that it has to be more corporate feeling, I think, for it to work. There’s a reason that big corporations are big corporations, but we still want to feel like a family. So it’s figuring out how do we do that? And I think probably the medical background that most of us in, I think all three of us in the management worked in the medical field. I was a medical secretary transcriptionist, April did insurance billing, Crystal did patient care kind of stuff. We’ve had that background of the whole bedside manner and the be prepared, all of that. And I think that that kind of carries through that, yeah, we might have to do something that feels more corporate, but we’re going to explain why and try to keep it so that people understand what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. So we can still kind of have that family feel and still feel like a small business, but cut out some of those issues that create all the problems and just make it really hard for us to function day to day, which makes it, that carries back over to the techs that they’re well, we can tell that you guys feel stressed out. Why are you stressed? Well, because this stuff keeps happening. So we have to say no, or we have to change how we do this.

Learning to Set Boundaries

Stephanie: I really feel like having a finger on the pulse of our internal resentment because one tech does not understand that when they do something unreasonable, it’s not just them. You guys are dealing with an onslaught of unreasonableness. And I think it really has been a learning curve of we went too far. You don’t even think this is possible. We went too nice. We went too lenient. Too empathetic.

Katie: Too empathetic. And we all kind of tend to have, I think that way, that mindset too of but we understand, we understand where they’re coming from. And we want it to be that we can take care of them. And then we have to do the hard thing of saying no. And that’s harder. And we’ve had to learn how to do that and still feel okay with ourselves of having to do that.

Stephanie: Just figuring out where that point is. For the listeners, to give examples of that, I don’t know, just allowing our cleaning techs to really almost rule the roost of if they’re feeling, and it’s not like we don’t still feel this way, it’s more just with limits of if they’re feeling overwhelmed or they don’t wanna do something. “Nah, I don’t feel like it.” I feel like we allowed that a little too much because we wanted to be known for our empathy and caring and you’re not just a number. That’s really important to us. And family first and all of our core values, but that can absolutely be taken advantage of. And I don’t even think necessarily on purpose, but of course they’re gonna take as much as we give.

Katie: Right. If you hold somebody’s hand for the whole time, they get used to that. And that’s a lot of what we did. And it’s just not something that’s sustainable long term. So we had to learn how to say, I’m still here. We need you to take the responsibility and let us know what you need. Somebody calls out, “well, can I call out today?” Well, yes. You’ve from the get go, you’ve known what our policy is, you know how to do this, but I can’t tell you if you’re sick enough to not work today, I’m not in your shoes, I’m not in your house. So then it’s the, if you need to, you can, well, or now we’re you have to tell us what you need. We don’t need to know why or where or what’s going on, but yes or no, are you gonna be at work? And then that allows us to do the rest of it. And we don’t leave it that cold feeling, but it really is. There’s some things that has to just be the responsibility of the other person.

Stephanie: And I think I mean that literally happened this week and you guys handled it so well with one of the techs and saying you need to make this call. We’re not making this call for you and that can be said very lovingly but also very clearly and I think boundaries can be a really loving thing and I think people think that that means you’re gonna be cold or a bitch or not care about somebody. It’s no not at all this can be lovingly done and I think we’re really finding our stride in that behavior.

Transparency and Communication

Even, we did a good job too last year. We did a mandatory education. The whole team was there and we put out hey, and we literally named it. We’re things are gonna feel a little bit different because these are the things that we’re experiencing. The business cannot continue to grow successfully and for everybody to feel good unless some new things are in place instead of just laying down the law. I feel like, as you said, we explained why the law was necessary.

Katie: I mean, I’ve worked in places where policy changes happened and you’re what the heck? That’s not what I signed up for. And I think that we just do a really good job of that, too. It’s some things have to change and it’s going to change no matter how anybody feels about it. But even that, it’s even just saying that, we understand, this is so different from what we did before, but it has to happen. And we’ll talk with you about it if you have questions or feel a certain way or whatever. But there’s a lot of it that I think just saying it ahead of time or this is going to be happening. At that meeting, it was a lot of we’re seeing these things, this is what’s going to change. We’re working on it. We’ll let you know when it’s happening or even just changing using Slack for communication. How much time that we spent before we even rolled it out to try to think of all the things that were going to be the pitfalls and what might make them not want to do it and find out how it’s going be similar to what we were using and how it’s going to be better. Just giving them all that information, just being very transparent.

Proactive Problem-Solving Framework

Stephanie: Well, and I think even just the way we the framework that we use now oftentimes when implementing a new change, I come at it. I just did that yesterday when I’m about to do this marketing email, I’m “poke holes in this logic. Does this make sense?” And so I feel like we’re doing that with every change. Because if we internally poke the holes, that means we can prevent it from affecting the outside user, whether that be the client or that be the cleaner, it really is that proactive thinking. And you’re not going to be able to know all of the things, right? Sometimes it’s why don’t we think of that? But by doing this, we catch a lot, and same with Hannah’s role, the quality control, we are catching 90% of problems before they ever get to the client. And then the techs are learning, and it doesn’t happen again. And that’s we’re seeing the fruits of the labor when it comes to that quality control and just proactive. Not waiting for a complaint to happen. So yeah, it’s been really cool to see and I think I know for myself, I certainly take for granted because it’s I’m not seeing it necessarily in the bottom line, but we are seeing it in everybody’s happiness as well as quality of work. You guys are having to deal with so much less.

Katie: Right. And I mean, that does carry over, eventually it does get back to the bottom line if we’re not having to train six new technicians because the ones that we had were unhappy with the things that we changed or the way that what it was, which that’s always going to happen too. If you can keep the staff you have, it’s going to be a lot cheaper than finding new ones.

Retention Through Growth Opportunities

Stephanie: Really focusing on retention. And I think also looking at that training of new policies, we typically marry those with a new benefit as well. We’re doing it. We’re cracking down on these ways, but also wages are going to go up or have the ability to go up. We kind of married those two things so that it felt like, and we don’t have to do that every time, but I feel like that helps them have buy-in of I have this added responsibility or higher expectations of excellence, but I can now earn way more than I ever could before. I have that potential. So yeah, there’s just been a lot of cool changes, I feel like recently.

Katie: There’s so much respect in this workplace too. And yes, we’re on the management team, but we’ll go out and clean. I mean, I don’t really go clean because I’m not good at it anymore. But if I had to, I would. And the techs know that and they realize that and there’s, it’s just such a different environment that if the person that is here gets it, they get it and they stay. And there’s going to always be people that don’t get it and that’s okay. Then it’s not the place for them. So I think we’re realizing that too. There’s just, we can bend over backwards and they might not appreciate it, but that doesn’t mean that what we did wasn’t still a good thing and isn’t in line with our values as a company and as individuals, because I think that’s another big thing for myself. When I saw that that’s what the core values were of the company, yep, I’m in. That’s how I want to live my life too. And not that it’s the right way all the time, but we all do our best. And if you can recognize that, I think it goes a long way to make everybody feel better about showing up every day.

Finding the Right Cultural Fit

Stephanie: I think it’s just so much easier, the whole boat analogy of this is the boat that I built and you guys all got on the boat and we’re all “yep, we’re rowing north,” right? And it’s just so much easier to find people who want to also row north, then get somebody who wants to row south and try to change them and be like, “no, no, do it this way.” Where it’s just the longest standing staff members, the one who’s really all of it. Yeah. Just our team is so strong because it’s just all full of people who want to row in that direction and we don’t have to try to force them to row in a way that’s not natural to them. I often, obviously positive and grateful attitude, I use this one all the time as an example, but it’s if you just have a very glass half empty perspective on the world, it’s probably not going to work out for you here. And that probably gives a lot of people the ick because they think it’s toxic positivity, but I would say it’s absolutely not. It’s just, it’s so hard to change somebody’s disposition. Why do we just not even try? You’re not gonna fit in here, and they stand out pretty quickly.

Katie: Really. Right. And we’ve had people that maybe are a little bit that way that have stuck around and they’re “this is kind of changed my life,” which is awesome to be a part of that too. It’s hard to change your mindset. So if that’s something that we can do here too, on top of the actual work that we do, that’s extra icing on the cake for me.

Building Confidence Through High Expectations

Stephanie: I’ve definitely seen, I can think of several staff, current staff members, I would say confidence, especially, because, and I will say, in my opinion, that is directly correlated to having very loving but high expectations. I know you’re capable of excellence, and that’s why we’re going to hold you to it. And then they have all of this history of really excellent behavior. And yeah, you’re right, it changes who they are, and even for us as a management team. Honestly, I just feel like I’ve never had to manage you guys. And it’s hard for me to give advice to other owners when they’re looking for a manager. It’s have somebody who kind of self-polices. You guys beat yourself up if you make a mistake. Well, this morning I had to call up Crystal’s mistake because she never makes one ever, so I had to document it.

Katie: That’s I think the part where you’re really good at stepping in with that because you know that we’re going to show up and do what we do and we’re going to do it the best we can every day that we’re here. And that looks different every day. But the part of it that I think we probably need more help with is when we are “I really messed that up.” Now my confidence is tanking, which then spreads through everybody else. So that’s when you’re really great at being “but wait, maybe that’s the lesson we need to learn. Look at all this other stuff that we figured out from that,” especially with me recently, underbidding a really huge account. And I really beat myself up for it. And it’s a conversation with you turn that around to say “but what about this other stuff that has been really good?”

Learning from Mistakes

Stephanie: You have learned so much from that. It’s again, every time I look at what we all would consider our biggest screw ups in the business, it’s “holy crap, thank goodness that that happened, because we learned so much.” And we were able to just propel so much progress from that because when everything’s going smoothly, you can’t learn anything, at all. And so I think that that’s kind of one that’s natural to me, but also from a leadership perspective, you guys I think do a really good job of that, taking that kind of mindset and running it with it with the techs, because obviously I’m not interacting with the cleaning techs at all. And I’m here for vibes and making everybody feel good. From I don’t actually manage the techs right, you guys do. And so, or the clients. Sometimes they try to jump over you guys and get to me and I have to beat them back with a broom and say, “no, no, no, that’s not okay.” Especially clients who they’ve been with us for a long time. And that I would say, it’s really interesting to see when people are “I’d like to talk to Stephanie directly.” And it’s I don’t know anything, go talk to Katie. Why are you trying to talk to me? But so yeah, it’s really interesting as time evolves how people behave with the evolutions. And yeah, so I feel that just having a really strong growth mindset has allowed us to overcome a lot of challenges and not I know that you were beating yourself up about that account, but it’s okay, we can’t change what happened, but we can change how we evolve from here. And yeah, we’ve taken away a lot from that of, okay, we’re not going to do any evening Lacrosse work right now. That’s one of our service areas guys, if that you’re not aware with Western Wisconsin’s geography. But one of our locations is in a place that we’re struggling with hiring and keeping people in evening positions. That’s just what we’re currently dealing with. So we’re why do we keep trying to force ourselves to make this work when it’s not working well, where we could just make that same money easy, lower hanging fruit daytime in the areas that we can staff and really having that revelation. And I was definitely I think I was the one who was digging my heels in the most of “no, we’re going to make this work. I don’t care.” And then, two hour conversation later with you guys, I’m “all right.”

The Power of Team Decision-Making

Katie: That’s what it takes sometimes too. And just we get so blinded by the dollar amount or the place that it is or the timeframe that it has to happen that you forget about but what if we took that and we ended up saying we were trying to do all this math with it. And it’s “well, now it’s four hours a day. So we need to replace four hours a day.” We don’t have to do any math. It’s just where can we find four hours a day? Well, that’s even way more achievable than trying to say, we need to replace this per month. And that’s where the team of the management team comes in. It’s we bounce all these ideas off and then it’s eventually somebody’s “but wait, what about this?” And it’s never the same person. That’s the really cool part of being here is we all contribute.

Stephanie: And that’s what I really appreciate all of our very different strengths, I feel. And it can be frustrating at times. I’ve said this many times of your guys’ personalities or the way you think directly goes against how my brain works. But that’s exactly what’s needed because I have blind spots and we’d be doing a bunch of stupid shit if it was full rein on Stephanie. And at the end of the day, I am the owner, I never, I feel like every time I’ve just been a bull in a china shop and said, “this is what we’re doing, no argument,” I deeply regret it. And I should have considered your, not that you guys would ever, I mean, at this point, I think you’re all pretty emboldened to be “Stephanie, you’re wrong.” I think at this point, you’re all very comfortable with that.

Katie: I mean, I do it through funny memes usually, but in a way.

Stephanie: Usually it’s the only way that I can handle my fragile emotions being affected in that way. It’s when April, I’m “April, you need to stop using periods at the end of your sentence and use more emojis. I think you’re mad at me.”

Katie: Maybe more explanation points in here. But I think that’s maybe, look at as an owner, look at the things that you do, tend to always say yes to. Who’s the person that’s going to tell you, “wait a minute, this might be a no, this might be better to be a no,” or “I’ve got all this cash that I could just start throwing around” and you need the April to be “but wait, if you keep doing that, what’s going to happen?” And also maybe it’s more finding those people that their strength is one of your weaknesses. So you get this full rounded picture of what the team becomes because of all of those different mindsets and ways that they think.

Respecting Team Input

Stephanie: Absolutely. And not just from a management perspective, but a tech perspective. And I know that that is something that they really appreciate because they told us, they feel like we respect their opinion. So you mentioned the word respect, but it’s a perfect example of if your cleaning techs or making suggestions, it doesn’t mean you need to always listen, but think about them. They might, they’re the ones in the field and they’re the ones seeing everything. If they’re saying “this tool does not work or this is really frustrating XYZ,” if we can make it easier and that makes it every little micro improvement we can make on the tech’s days means they’re more likely to stay. If we can make it less difficult, it’s a challenging job. It’s very physical and it’s demanding.

Katie: And acknowledging them for that stuff. That’s something we do a lot of. Just today, Jamie’s at a post construction clean. And she sent pictures and she’s “Hey, these bathrooms aren’t even done yet.” And I remember this other time I was at somebody’s house. And they had a note that said not to use any water because it could cause the tile to set wrong. And I was “I don’t know if I would have thought of that.” She, can you contact the homeowner today to make sure? He was super appreciative of that, that she thought to think, they just spent thousands of dollars remodeling their bathrooms and us going in to clean it and make it better could have ruined it. That’s a really huge thing that she could have just been “well, I guess I’m just gonna do whatever.”

Recognizing Critical Thinking

Stephanie: Thinking and right there, Jamie is a master of her craft. She is so good at what she does. And now I hadn’t seen that interaction yet. So I’m “oh, it does happen.” And so that’s a perfect example of what Katie just said, we are going to talk about it Monday’s meeting. You don’t just highlight the bad things right there, that thought process, we want to commend Jamie’s thought process there, right? She’s thinking she’s not just blindly following rules because we don’t want an army of robots, no matter how many times I joke about it. We don’t actually want that. We want a bunch of people who think critically and can problem solve of “wait a minute, this is different. This is not typical. Let me take a pause and double check” and really commending them when they behave in ways that are really just incredible like that. So we’ll talk about that Monday at the team meeting and highlight her publicly, give her some warm fuzzies as we call them and then introduce that concept to other cleaners so that they can learn from it as well. I think over-archingly, we’ve just really gotten a lot better. I mean, it’s always been there, but learning from, don’t just let something happen and let it go away. It’s very easy, especially when you’re in the field a lot as an owner or as managers, you’re so sucked into just surviving the day-to-day. It’s really hard to lift your head up and say right there, that’s something, we need to pull that string, positive or negative, if something needs to change or whatever, and even looking at the multiple iterations to the cleaning checklist that has happened over six years. I mean, we have altered our cleaning checklist a hundred times, just of “okay, people just keep not understanding what window tracks versus window panes versus sills.” Nobody knows what these words mean. And instead we keep having complaints because the client expectation.

Katie: One thing it’s all managing expectations. Yeah, and I can say tomato and your tomato and we think it’s two different things, but it’s the same thing or sometimes it’s completely different things. So with that we’ve got a diagram now. This is the parts of a window or and even just customer relations side of it telling the client this is what we’re going to do unless you tell us something different instead of leaving it open ended. That’s been a huge change in the last year or two, I think of instead of “we’ll say what do you want?” And then we still don’t understand it. So it’s this back and forth. So it’s “Nope, this is what we do. If that’s not what you want, now you need to tell us what it is.” And that’s made a big difference for just back and forth communication is so much quicker.

Streamlining Client Communication

Stephanie: I think in your role specifically kind of going in more detail on that. I think what I’ve been really just amazed by, in the past, I just feel like so much has happened in the past year. I don’t know why, I’m not sure. Yeah, we hit that five year mark, I guess, and we got our shit together. But I think in your role specifically, it has been really focused on efficiency. How can we take five interactions with a client and whittle that down to it only needs one? And I mean that in the best way possible because that’s great for the client. It’s great for you, great for everybody, right? And so how can we make sure that we answer their questions before they even have them, right? So, okay, we keep having this thing happen. Well, let’s educate them in the estimate, once they book the questions, can you give some examples of changes that we have made in the booking process that has made us more successful and more efficient?

Katie: I think from the very first email that goes to them after they fill out the ZenMaid form and they want us to come and clean for them or find out more about it. We spell it out very clearly. This is everything we’re going to need from the beginning of what we’re going to do. We send them the checklist right away and there’s, we added a line that says, if you want any of the add on services, you need to let us know when you reply to the email so that it doesn’t come to, we’ve taken this time, we’ve picked today that fits the amount we estimated and now they want to add on three more hours worth of work. Well, now we have to redo all of that. We might have to move it to a different day. They’re already expecting us to come and now we’ve got to schedule it two more weeks out. That doesn’t feel good on their end. That even though it wasn’t us that didn’t know what they wanted, it’s us not being able to give them what we just told them they could have. And now, as the client that’s “well, do you really have your stuff together or do you not?” So building trust from the get go. We changed our follow up email. So once they say yes, now we send something and it asks “are there any surfaces that you don’t want cleaned? Anything that’s gonna be new or replaced if it’s a move out clean or move in clean.” Don’t have us clean your oven if you’re going to put a new one in, but you didn’t realize that we were going to clean your oven, even though it’s on the checklist, because you knew you were going to get a new one, but you didn’t tell us that. And we’ve just realized that people maybe haven’t used a cleaning service before or ever had somebody else clean their house or they’re in the process of buying a home the first time. It’s all that outside stress. So it’s pulling all these things that we’ve seen, again, those patterns, and what can we tell them so they understand it more and maybe or just make some think of another question to ask us if they don’t know what a cleaning service does. Just doing a lot more follow up, I think after their first cleaning their second cleaning, reminding them “this is how it works if you want to have recurring services.” That’s a different email we send now that has, it spells it out. “This is what you can book. This is what we expect from you if something’s going to change,” we explain all of that. So it’s just something they can reference back to and have that information. And it helps us to then when they’re “well, I didn’t know that.” And it’s “well, actually, we did send you this email.” And I think that’s what I’ve seen from watching the other podcasts you’ve done, some other owners are “how do you hold a client accountable to something?” Well, you had to tell them in the first place and you have to be able to show them that you told them that. Not that it makes it go away, but it’s at least something for you to stand on to be able to say, “but I did tell you that. So maybe you still don’t want to work with us going forward, but we do what we say and this is what we told you. So this is what’s next.”

Building Trust Through Education

Stephanie: And I think all of the things that you’re highlighting, it may seem like, “my gosh, that’s so much to ask of the client,” but all it’s doing is helping us not have to ask them later because all of these things have to be asked at some point in the relationship with the client. And if you’re putting that on the tech, you may not even know as the owner, because you haven’t even thought about these things, that you’re putting it on the tech, but you are. And then the tech doesn’t answer, they guess, they get it wrong, clients unhappy. Again, what you said, it’s the expectations being mismatched and really coming from it of just assume that this client has never ever cleaned anything or used a cleaning service before. We need to assume nothing. And so that really puts us in kind of we feel like we are the educator to them of this. And, but all of this makes us seem so competent and so professional because all of a sudden we’re taking this thing that’s kind of stressful, getting a house cleaner. It’s so nerve wracking and trusting and what your hopes and dreams are and is it going to be matched, not to mention the financial costs of it all, not to mention the potential shame of having somebody in your house. We’re taking all of those feelings and giving them a pat on the shoulder. “We got this, right? We got this. We know exactly what we’re doing. This is the path. We’re outlining it to you and all every single question showcases that we know what we’re doing.” “Well, where are the garbage is going to go? Do you have a toilet brush in every room? How do we enter the home? Do you want us to lock out” all of the showcases that we know we’re talking about and that gives them a sense of reassurance that they’re about to be taken care of. And I actually just recorded a solo about consistency and branding and I feel like this is our brand is consistent excellence and they know exactly what they’re going to get. And anytime we’ve had a complaint on something related to, yeah, expectations being mismatched, reflecting on it and saying “well, there’s been inconsistency here somewhere.” There’s something inconsistent.

Katie: Yeah. And that’s what I think we’re doing really well at, collecting that data and actually looking at it to see what, what is the action? Is there something that is actionable that we can do to prevent it from happening again, whether it’s just for that client or does it carry over as a whole business practice? And how do we actually implement that? What could it look like three months from now or a year from now if we do this thing? And I think just that whole 10X kind of mindset is such a positive thing because we get so stuck or used to and I think maybe a new business owner might have that survival mode still, but it’s if you want this to grow long-term, you’ve got to take the time to look at those things now and handle them when there’s fewer of them happening versus 10 more times this or 50 times this.

Addressing Root Causes

Stephanie: And really knowing what the root causes because when I look at a lot of the problems we were having, it was because of the training process. And that’s why we’re not experiencing it of we had great cleaners and we had great people coming to us. And so they were doing well for everything, but the detriment was us, meaning we did not have a consistent training program. So we were experiencing six months down the line, a new staff member, they made it through training, and then they’d get a complaint on something where “whoa, cleaner, what the heck’s your problem? Why are you getting a complaint?” they’re “I don’t know.”

Katie: “We don’t do it that way.” “But well, nobody ever told me not to do it that way. Or nobody told me how to do it, or showed me how to do it or explain why we do it.” So doing all that stuff now and then also explaining that to the clients. “I want my windows washed. Can you do that too?” “Yep, we can clean your windows that we can reach from one foot off the floor and that don’t have screens on the insides because we won’t remove the screens. If you want to do that for us and put them back on when we’re done, we can do it. But my windows tip in.” “Nope, we don’t do that either.” And just being very much “we don’t do that, but we’re happy to do the insides of them for you. And here’s somebody we recommend to do the exterior.” Just kind of stuff like that, I think, has been really big too in managing the expectations.

Setting Clear Standards

Stephanie: Being really specific and then because when people understand then, yeah, again, it’s that relaxing into “I know” it’s same with for the techs. They know exactly what’s expected of them and we’ve just given them a lot more clarity on very specifically what the expectation is even when we were revamping the wage guidelines and we’re “okay, well, what… What if it’s arguable if the complaint is legitimate or not, or the quality of work is not up to par when we haven’t established what is up to par?” We all know what it is visually. I could point it out, blindfolded, but if you do not actually put it out on paper, “this is what passing standard is and this is not.” It was, we’re “well, how are they supposed to know?” We can’t just say “well, it’s clearly not” because it’s not clear. And so just…

Katie: Idiot proof it. Yeah, as much as possible. We’ve done that, the checklist, we’ve gone through it and said, “what does it mean if you’ve done a quality clean of a ceiling fan?” This is what it what it means. And then even as far as the commercial checklist where we’ve added, we’re adding at the top, “if it says clean and sanitize, this is what it means use this product use this tool, if it says dust or it says wipe” and making sure that everything’s again uniform everything needs to be the same across the board to hold everybody to those same standards which they need to know what the standards are so that they can be held accountable and then they can be successful at it which makes everybody feel good and come to work so it’s just this full circle.

Creating Systematic Success

Stephanie: Exactly. And it is kind of overwhelming when you say it all like that, but it actually makes everything so much simpler because everybody can just show up and perform. They don’t have to think so hard, and we’re just helping them take out a lot of “I don’t knows.” And again, I’ve kind of said since the beginning of Serene, I don’t want anybody to ever be able to actually legitimately say, “I didn’t know I was supposed to do that.” And, or “I just didn’t understand.” Now broadening that to the customers, I want the customers never to be able to say, “I didn’t know” because that’s on us then. Even if it’s something that we’re “well, of course we’re not going to do that.” Or anytime we think it’s obvious again, throw that out the window, because we would ask all sorts of stuff, right? And just having that really clear in the client guidelines on the checklist. And then yeah, internally for even the commercial stuff that we’re changing. What does it mean to damp mop? What do these things mean? And not assuming that anybody knows what that exactly means and just really clearing up any potential confusion down the road. And so, yeah, I think that that has been a massive improvement and we’re really seeing that result of that, putting in that work and that effort on the backend. We’re seeing that now of “okay, the techs are not coming to us with all of this stuff anymore.” I remember last year, it got bad there for a minute where it’s every week it’s “holy shit, why is this still happening?”

Katie: Right? It’s we all forgot. It was. We were all wearing the “I’m New Here” sticker even though we’ve been here for forever. I really did that at one of my jobs before. I just wore that thing. I was a year in. I was still new and everybody I worked with knew I wasn’t. But…

Stephanie: I’d do that waitressing. Anytime I made a mistake waitressing, even if it was three years, then I’d be “sorry guys, it’s my first week.” We’re an all tip. That’s funny.

Katie: “My first day. My first day here.” But I mean, I think too, we take away the stuff that they don’t have to they don’t have to think about it, which allows people to actually use the critical thinking skills for the rest of it. And that’s worth so much because yes, I know I can just show up and I do the things every day. But it’s never the same. We joke it’s not we don’t know what we do every day I’m sure the techs feel that way too even though they’re still going to clean the house with the same checklist, but every house is different every homeowner’s different or all of that stuff is a different yes, it comes down to it a toilet toilet we clean it the same way but everything else that plays into it is different. So giving them this really good base of “this is how we do everything, now, if you run into something that’s different, hey, that’s different. That’s not what I usually do. I’m gonna ask a question. I’m gonna,” like, I can think about that thing Jamie did today, had she had to go in and make all the decisions about what she was gonna do at this cleaning, she maybe wouldn’t have thought of that because she was too busy trying to figure out and just survive and get through it versus “here’s everything you need to be successful. As long as you follow what we’ve taught you, you’re going to be successful. And now she encountered something that was not expected and she did exactly what she should have done.” So it gives people that space, I think, to use their brain in a way that it needs to be used in that moment.

Defining Standard Operating Procedures

Stephanie: And I think thinking back to, we introduced a weekly operations meeting for us management team over the past year, yeah, it’s a weekly meeting on Wednesdays. And some of those conversations would make me want to beat my head into a wall, because it was us blinking at each other saying, “wait, how do we handle sheets? How do we make a bed?” And just, it was so annoying to have to define these things. I hate that. I don’t wanna talk about those things because it’s I’m very much I’m a big picture kind of gal. And so even when we’re trying to establish, when there is no established standard, and that’s the hardest part I think is making the decision. I mean, I can think of several examples of us going back and forth of “well, should we keep washing? How do we make beds? How do we handle washing linens? What about duvet covers? What about this? What about this? What about this?” And it’s just so freaking annoying. And then finally coming to “okay, an hour later,” coming to the decision of “we’re not washing laundry at people’s houses anymore.” Because from day one, I made the decision that we’re gonna do that. “We can do up to two loads at an appointment.” I set that six years ago and I forgot it when you just are working off of “this is how we do things” and never taking a step back and saying, “should we be doing this at all?” And I think we’ve really just been analyzing, take a huge step back. “Do we need to throw this whole thing out and start over?” Not the business. Well, sometimes it feels like it, but this whole policy, really just take away all conceived notions about this thing and coming at it with fresh eyes and making the decision. Dropping vacation rentals. We are beating ourselves against a wall, trying to make it work with vacation rentals. And we can make it work. We can force it to work. And, but we’re just “well, why don’t we just not do these anymore? Why not?” And, maybe we do.

Overcoming the Fear of Saying No

Katie: I think, yeah, think we just in general human nature, we hold ourselves back from that too, because everything seems so final. “If I say we’re not going to do laundry anymore, the business is going to go under,” absolutely, it’s so easy to get into that, or, “if we don’t do, if we don’t do all the vacation rentals we used to have,” it’s over, but no, we can always add them back if we want and be very selective about who we take and how we do it. Same thing with laundry. Maybe we decide in the future, we will offer it as an extra service, but it’s going to maybe be in a different way that works better for us and our techs and however we might decide to do it or whatever the task is. It’s I think getting past that fear of “if I say no right now, it’s no forever.” And it’s really not. I think you get more stuck with when you say yes all the time of “now I’m stuck, I have to do this thing and I don’t really want to do it or it doesn’t make sense to do it. And now eventually we’re going to have to have the hard conversation to say we can’t do that.”

Focus and Discipline

Stephanie: And really focusing on we are really, really good at very specific things and just doing those things. And I think having the discipline to say no to the other things or yeah, making a change and kind of being, I feel like we’ve been pretty ruthless of just slashing things recently. Cancel all of the accounts. I mean, it just feels like that when we cancel two of them, but it, but honestly, every time we do that, it’s scary in the moment, but it’s really empowering. At least that’s how I’ve felt recently. When we do make these decisions, it feels really good to make that decision.

Katie: That’s we’re trusting ourselves, and that’s something that’s really hard to do too. So taking that and realizing that last time when I trusted myself, it worked out really well and likely caused us to even go further forward than we had been while we were trying to limp along with this thing that we thought we had to hold on to. So now it’s okay. it’s a… It’s a muscle. I feel like trust is a muscle. You work it and it grows and it gets better and bigger and just gets easier. It makes you more confident. That’s a skill. It’s not something that people are born with. You’re not born confident. You learn to be confident.

Confidence Through Experience

Stephanie: And I think it was interesting. I was talking to Jim yesterday from ZenMaid, who’s the designer there, you’ve talked to him. We’re having a conversation about kind of traits that we have in ourselves and whatnot. And I kind of reflected on it. And for me, I’ve always had pure confidence that I’m going to figure it out. And looking at every giant opportunity that has came to Serene Clean. A lot of times it’s not even been a question in my mind. And I know that I’ve literally dumped that on you guys of “we’re bidding this, we got,” and so I know I said what I said about bulldozing before, but looking at our biggest commercial account, right? When we bid that, I didn’t really think we were gonna get it one, and then we got it.

Katie: “And we’re all why did we let you do this?”

Stephanie: I was so salty to you guys. I know I was so mad. I was “if you guys are so upset, why’d you let me bid it in the first place?”

Katie: “We can’t do this, what the heck?”

Stephanie: “We had no choice. We had to figure it out and we did.” And that doesn’t always, translate necessarily, we obviously we make mistakes, but I’m just confident because I’ve seen us figure out every problem that has came our way. And it may mean literally breaking up with the problem. That’s the solution is “we’re not doing this.”

Katie: Yeah, right. Sometimes the way to figure it out is that you have to say no, or you don’t do the thing. Or you say, “I tried and it didn’t work out. But at least what you learned from it is what you figured out.” So I totally agree with that mindset of not easy for everybody, but it is possible.

Optimism and Practical Problem-Solving

Stephanie: I think it’s kind of my role as the owner to have kind of that eternal optimism while also being practical and reasonable or realistic, I guess. But I just know we can figure anything out. This isn’t rocket science. Successful business has been happening and especially with the internet. At this point, ChatGPT is like the other manager, right? Look at what we have. We can figure anything out. And as new challenges come our way or new fears kind of get uncovered, it’s “okay, we can figure this out. We always have” it not allowing fear of the unknown or failure really take over. And even looking at the Fort McCoy project, I didn’t even ask you guys, I was just, “we’re doing this, this is happening.”

Katie: Right. You just took off that day and while you were there, they were calling us and were “now they want three times is what she was going for.” “What are we doing?” And I don’t at some point too, it’s you just have to be “all right, hold on, let’s do it.” And I think we’re maybe getting a little bit more that way because we’re seeing to sometimes when it seems like it’s one of Stephanie’s crazy yes ideas that we’re “okay, just buckle in and yeah, it’s it. It will happen how it’s supposed to and I think we just said that this morning again, everything always works out for us you have to believe that and I think especially somebody just starting out and you and I have talked about that too. I’m really interested in how you run the business, but I don’t ever want to run the business I don’t want to be the business owner, that’s not something I aspire to be, but I want to help grow the business as much as I can and be part of it. But thinking of if somebody that’s watching is at that point of “I don’t know if I can do this.” You got to just keep pushing through that part of it because getting through the tough stuff, what we’ve seen and continue to see, yeah, you figure it out and then it’s just amazing.

The Intrapreneur Mindset

Stephanie: I feel like really, I’ve heard the phrase “intrapreneur” before and that’s what I would describe you as you are an intrapreneur, you have a very entrepreneurial and business mindset, but you want to be part of the leadership team, I think is the perfect place for you as opposed to going and opening your own business. There was a certain level of stability and things that I don’t I mean, maybe you guys are up at night worrying about like me sometimes, probably and I totally agree of I mean, you guys have seen me have pretty bad freak outs and things and reflecting back. That’s been kind of a learning lesson and it’s been a never ending challenge for me of how much do I share with you guys versus hold out Stephanie, do not share that irrational thought or maybe it is rational, protecting you guys from my sheer terror sometimes because it’s I say all this, I put all this stuff out there of I’m confident and I am very confident. Doesn’t mean I don’t have wild fears.

Katie: I’m crying every night. Not at all.

Stephanie: Yeah. That’s the thing. It’s the two sides of every coin. I can be super confident and that’s a huge strength, which is also a weakness of mine that maybe I’m overconfident sometimes. But when you recognize it, that’s such a helpful thing to do. And if we didn’t have you saying “I think we can do this or I know we can do this.” And then the backside of it of you being “but I’m really concerned if, if we do this, what’s going to happen or what has happened.” All of it has to be there for the business to be what it is.

Balancing Confidence and Caution

Stephanie: And not using one data point to be “see,” because I know that’s my biggest struggle is “well, our big account worked out our biggest commercial account worked out, and that’s because I didn’t listen to you guys.” And so but not using that as “I guess I should never listen to you guys, or you guys are always…” And then I’m coming at you guys with something of “no, we need to do X, Y, Z.” I feel like you guys are all just poo-poo-pantsy sometimes and very negative towards my ideas. But that’s exactly why we need each other because some of my ideas are insane and shouldn’t even come out of my mouth, but they do. And so we kind of balance each other out. And just to get us to that central point of actual, sometimes you take risks, other times you pump the brakes and say, “no, no, no, this is not going to work. Don’t do that, stay the course.” Because for me, I can be super flighty and not focus and have a million, shiny objects.

Katie: So many things at one time and we’re “let’s just focus on this one thing or maybe two or three and get really good at that.” But then we need that push sometimes too of “well, we need to do five things at one time or we need, we need to set this aside, even though it’s not done and focus on this other thing. So this is a bigger issue right now or maybe it’s not even an issue, but it’s something that’s going to have a greater reward. So that makes more sense to do.” And that’s definitely without you having that kind of mindset, we would, I think, just get stuck in “okay, we’re doing really well. We feel really good on this, this road. So we’re going to stay right here.” there could be.

Managing Business Overwhelm

Stephanie: Well, and I think the overwhelming part is running a business. You can’t just do one thing at a time, unfortunately. And I think I know that for you guys, the overwhelm comes when we realize that of “gosh, can’t we just fix this one thing? Why does this keep happening?” And feeling like you’re pulled in many directions and it’s “well, we’re a small business.” That’s the reality of the situation. And me being cognizant of as Crystal’s “it’s always overwhelming.” And it is, and that’s just. That is the path we’ve chosen, and how do we balance that overwhelm and still make progress? And one of the tactical things that we’ve done is we literally sat down and said, “okay, what are all of the things that we are thinking of doing from a project’s perspective, from a revamp, things that we need discussed?” We’ve literally put it on paper and we broke them up into the quarters of the year. And we’re “okay, how much effort do we think that this is going to take? Okay, that means, okay, quarter two, this is all we’re doing.” Or we can only do these three things. And it’s so funny, because I know, and what you described of I’ll come in and drop an idea. And it’s I’ll completely kind of steal the show and be “well, it’s when do we think that we can get this done?” It’s “wait, wait, wait, we’ve got these four things we’re doing this quarter. No, that’s not we like, if we’re gonna start this, something else needs to stop.” And that has been really useful because it makes it you’re “gosh, I can only get these four things done,” but in the old way we’d get none of them done. We’d just start 10 and just it would keep happening.

Katie: Right. And then, yeah, so we did that and look at, we got everything for quarter one done ahead of time and all felt really good about it. And we’re “all right, let’s start on quarter two, even though we’re not there yet.” So it’s or “is there something else that we want to put in here in the in before the next stuff because we’re ahead of schedule?” But yeah, previous to that, we would have been “we’ve got nowhere worse.” It’s. We’re actually swimming now instead of just treading water.

The Impact of Systematic Improvements

Stephanie: Yeah, no, it feels really good. And to look back at the progress on all of these kind of large projects, even creating an orientation. I know that sounds super boring, but the feedback we’ve gotten from our techs, that impression of a new staff member is so crucial. That first couple of weeks, that’ll make or break if this is going to be successful or not. What could, if they’re a bad egg, they’re a bad egg. Or if they’re not the right fit, I get that. But by taking the time to really explain again. What is going to be the expectation placed on them? What they can expect from us as their leaders and as a company, culture, everything, how to do everything. The feedback has been amazing that they’re “we’ve met…”

Katie: Right? Yeah, people actually say they look that as the best orientation they’ve ever had to start a company or they actually enjoyed it. When they come in the office to do it, people laugh through parts of it. And it’s I never had an orientation that was anywhere that I’ve worked. And I listed off a lot of places that I’ve worked when we started this, and it doesn’t have to be something that takes forever. If you’re just starting out just something something though. Now, can, again, always add to it later, you can change it later, you can completely start over if you want, but just do the thing instead of sitting around waiting, I guess.

Stephanie: Something. Yeah. Yeah. We’re waiting until you feel like you can do it perfect, which is never. We literally were creating the orientation knowing full well things were gonna have to be changed about it. We were gonna change certain softwares or policies and things, but just, making sure it’s in a tool that is easy to change. Cause at first, yeah, it was just in Google, a Google slides presentation, right? And obviously we’ve added Trainual, which is much more robust. No way in hell I could have done that for the beginning years, cause it’s expensive and it’s got a lot of value, but we could not afford something like that. So what can you do right now? Well, Google Drive is free to everybody, right? And really creating that impression point has been really useful. So it’s just, it’s been really, I think what I really appreciate, well, about all of you for sure, but you do this really, really well, is you guys at this point come to me and say, “here’s this new process, or these are the improvements I’ve made, or this is the new template that we’re using.” Pretty much never am I coming to you guys and say, “make this” that never happened. You guys are so full of initiative to make your life more, your work life more systematic, organized, systematically.

Self-Driven Improvements

Katie: Easier. Yeah, easier, efficient, and just more enjoyable. And I guess that’s a motivator for me. Yes, I think about efficiency, that’s just where my brain goes, all the time. So whether I’m here at home, that’s just the way my brain works. But why? Because it’s more enjoyable to me then. I just made a new follow-up email yesterday for cleaning for a reason patients because it was we don’t really acknowledge them after we’ve done these free cleanings for them and they’re going through this huge thing so here we showed up and helped you two times with your cleanings and then we don’t say anything afterwards that doesn’t feel good so we’ve got a new template for that and it’s set up and click up so it reminds me to send it and I just did all of that and you just said you didn’t know till now, surprise. But once you get into doing those things it didn’t take that long to do it. So but the impact that it’s going to have is going to be huge so.

Stephanie: And it feels good you’re right efficiency feels good yeah and it

The Sales Process Overhaul

Stephanie: Well, and even looking at you and I, we’ve worked a lot this past year on the entire sales process. And we had been really it took us a while because we knew it was going to be kind of a bitch to the discipline to sit down and lay out every single step of first interaction to closed, they have first cleaning and beyond. Everything it’s not just three things need to happen. It’s “okay, five things need to happen. And under every single item, there’s 10 subtasks that need to be completed in order for it to be this perfect thing or as close to perfect as possible for everybody.” And so you and I sitting down and just laying it all out and then setting up all of the automations to make it after those calls, those Zoom calls you and I would do and click up, setting up automations and Zapier, I literally felt like I was gonna… My brain was on the floor or in a jar on my counter. “There’s my brain,” cause it’s not in here. Yeah. I was “nobody talked to me. I can’t think.” it was just hard.

Katie: “This is pile of mush.” But now it’s “why didn’t we suffer through that way before this?” But we didn’t know then. So…

Stephanie: It’s amazing.

Hard Work Behind the Scenes

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. And just being willing to put in the hard work of, and, I think a lot of times we think, especially as coming from a cleaning company, we think hard work is physical, but a lot of times for us now as, the admin of running this machine, the hard work is sitting down and talking through every excruciating detail of the sales process or going back and forth for an hour and a half until we come to the conclusion of we shouldn’t do XYZ service or “this is exactly what we want out of this” or adding something to the client guidelines. That’s the boring stuff, but it allows the fun stuff to happen because you guys are so much better for the techs and for the customers when you’re feeling not chaotic and the chaos is created by not having these systems in place. And yeah, your life is just better.

Katie: Yeah, for sure. Take away any of the things we do now. And it’s “how did we do it without that before?” Well, because we felt crappy about it. I don’t have that issue coming here to work. But there’s aspects of it that’s “I do have to do that thing for sure.” But when you do the hard thing and you’re just “now I know why we needed to do that.” It feels so much lighter and better. So it’s yeah, could you imagine taking away click up now or I mean, you’ve done ZenMaid from the very beginning, but could you imagine without it pencil and paper or use a spreadsheet or something there’s some things I think just, it just makes sense, to do it from the get go, then there’s other parts of that have evolved and it’s evolving still and will continue, but to meet the needs that we have and the changes that happen and just having to be able to roll with it.

Accepting the Reality of Business

Stephanie: Yeah, yeah, and really there’s certain aspects that are unsavory about all of our positions. When you gotta call an annoying customer, it’s not it, that’s Aunt Katie, ha ha, that’s your job.

Katie: Not always, not always because I work with people that I like and that like me so they help me out and that’s awesome.

Stephanie: Yes. It’s it’s even there’s no perfect job. I’m living my dream. This is my dream job. But there’s certain aspects of it. Yeah, it’s what flavor of shit sandwich can you eat every day and smile doing it, and I feel like we’ve all really honed into what each of us are really good at what we enjoy, and it’s just become a lot more organized. And it’s been really fun to make those little improvements that are adding up to a giant impact. And I feel like, yeah, we’re really enjoying the fruits of our labor from an operational standpoint. And it’s just yeah, it just feels so much easier, and especially for you guys, obviously you’re the ones who are having to do a lot of the work. And so the pain has been enough that you guys have made this improvements.

Katie: I mean, that’s kind of what it has to be usually.

Stephanie: Yeah, you got to feel the pain before you make a change because otherwise why would you, And so we just, we, yeah, we learned from the hot pan a lot faster than maybe we used to. We’re just throwing the whole pan out altogether.

Katie: Everything in the games for throwing the match now.

Mutual Support and Growth

Stephanie: Yes, yes. So I think I’ll wrap it up there. This was really good. I feel like people will have some good questions from this conversation. Leave them in the comments below, guys. Katie has been truly so important to the growth of Serene Clean, the trajectory that it has and really established our brand really well. And yeah, just taking the reins and ran with them from an operational standpoint. And I just really appreciate you, Katie. And I don’t know. I don’t know what else to say to you guys. I’m so unserious as a boss, I feel like. But again, just here for the vibes, guys, and whatever happens, happens. So, anywho, thanks for listening, guys. We’ll see you on the next episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners.

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Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• ZenMaid
• ClickUp
• Trainual
• Slack
• Zapier
• ChatGPT
• Cleaning for a Reason
• Google Drive