How Cold Calling Built Ty Severa’s Commercial Cleaning Business

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A 98% Commercial Cleaning Business

Stephanie: Hello everyone, welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I am your host, Stephanie from Serene Clean, and today’s guest has a very unique story. I am thrilled for him to share it with you guys. I have Ty Severa with us, and he comes from a long history of law enforcement and public service. He brings that into his cleaning business in a really unique way.

Ty, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me. I’m very excited to be here today. Heck yeah! You, sir, do commercial exclusively, if I’m not mistaken, right?

Ty: I do. We are about 98% commercial. We have three or four houses that we do on a recurring basis.

Stephanie: Okay, I gotcha. And what kind of commercial? What’s the spread or type of accounts that you guys are currently doing?

Ty: So we’re mainly in small to medium density office. We have a small amount of small medical. We’re moving into manufacturing. We have a church campus, retail, salons. We have kind of a lot of small to medium density office. We have a little bit of everything, but we’re strongest in office space.

Stephanie: Okay. So would you say that’s your favorite — office spaces?

Ty: It’s probably the easiest to build a scope of work for. But, you know, they all have their challenges and their quirks. But it’s probably the easiest for us to replicate what we’re doing in.

Stephanie: Do you have a cursed type? For us, it’s a dentist’s office. Specifically, we’re like, screw dentist’s offices.

Ty: For us, it’s mainly restaurants. We’ve never touched them, but we don’t want to touch them. We’re moving into a manufacturing facility that has — it’s actually food manufacturing, but we’re not going to be in the manufacturing area. So we’re getting a taste of the GMP requirements with that. But mainly, you know, I haven’t really experienced a type that’s just like, I want to stay away from that.

Stephanie: Not yet. Not yet.

Ty: Yeah.

Stephanie: Something juicy will happen, I’m sure. GMP — what do you mean by that? What does that stand for?

Ty: I believe it’s the something manufacturing practice. Good manufacturing practice. It’s just the abbreviation that they use. But essentially, they have their own standards that are laid out and policies that we have to adhere to. And so there’s some of the things that, you know, I can share that we do on the policy side that lines up well with that. And I’m excited for that. But it’s not like we’re, you know, in kitchens and deep cleaning commercial kitchens.

Stephanie: Yeah, exactly. No, I’ve definitely also steered clear of anything that requires kitchen work or anything like that. Obviously, outside of break rooms — like we’re not calling that a normal kitchen — but any of the large equipment, I’m like, no, I don’t want to do that. Totally outside of normal scope. So you, sir, are in Virginia. You said Southern Virginia, right?

Ty: Yes. Southwest Virginia. It’s Roanoke.

Stephanie: Roanoke. Born and raised?

Ty: Yes. Here all my life.

Stephanie: Very cool. And you have a new baby girl. Do tell. How has that been? I imagine.

Ty: She’s actually been the happiest baby we’ve ever, like, experienced or been around. She sleeps through the night. And I’m sure that when we have another one, it’s going to be completely opposite.

Stephanie: It’s a trick.

Ty: That’s what everybody tells me.

From Law Enforcement to Cleaning Business Owner

Stephanie: Oh, that’s awesome. And you know, before we started recording, you talked about how you wouldn’t even be doing this most likely if it wasn’t for her. So I would love to hear more about that here. But as I alluded to in the intro, you have a very unusual coming to this industry line of work. Like, I haven’t spoken, that I’m aware of — somebody correct me in the comments if I’m wrong — to any former law enforcement that has gone into this. So I would love to hear about your former career and what led you to this.

Ty: Yeah, absolutely. So going back before my previous career — my mom cleans. She is a solo cleaner. She cleans houses, has for like 40 years. So my summers when I was a kid were spent helping her clean her houses. So that was an honest and good way to make a living. And she has some of her customers now that she had literally when I was born, like 30 years ago, 28 years ago. So she’s doing something right. So she’s done that. And my dad is an entrepreneur as well. He’s been in the racing industry and NASCAR for years. And he’s out of that now. But so I grew up with two entrepreneurial parents.

And so I went straight out of high school into public safety. I was a dispatcher for two years and a police officer. So I was the youngest police officer to ever be hired by the agency I got hired by. I was 20 years old when I was hired, and I turned 21 six weeks before the academy — we graduated the academy. So did that for seven years. And really about two years before I left, I started getting an interest in self-development, listening to podcasts. And I actually went into real estate first. So I was flipping raw parcels of land with my brother-in-law. And that was going well.

And I have a very successful father-in-law who, three years in a row, he would sit there when we were on vacation and he’d tell me, you ought to start a cleaning business. And do you have any coworkers, any first responders that would want to go out and earn extra money? And so I thought about that. And every year I never did anything about it. And we were flipping land. And the year before I ended up leaving, I was like, all right, he’s done it like three years in a row. I’m going to do something about this. I’m going to do it. So I told my wife when we were on the way home, I’m going to start this cleaning company. And we started it in 2024. I did one job that entire year. I wasn’t focusing on it at all.

But fast forward to February of ’25, we had our first baby, my wife and I did. And I had a few bad calls leading up to the end right there. And I had already made my mind up before we went and had the baby that I was not going back. But my daughter had to have a small procedure done out of town, and we were on the way home from that, and I told my wife, I was like, I’ve wrote my memo. I’m not going back. And this is what I’m going to do. So I left in February of ’25, March of ’25. And at the time, I was just doing real estate, and the cleaning company was just in the background. And go through last year, it just kind of shifted towards, okay, the cleaning company has a lot of growth potential and recurring revenue. And I can’t feed my family on, you know, a flip that closes and we make money and then make two or three months without money, right? So that’s what led me to shift gears there.

Stephanie: Feast or famine kind of situation, I’m sure. Talk me through that, the emotional. That must have been incredibly difficult to manage, fear and unknown. Like, can you walk me through that?

Ty: Yeah, I mean, I think it was really difficult to manage fear and unknown. I was mentally in such a bad place that I was probably going to put myself in like a bad, like a dangerous position, honestly, or my coworkers or the citizens if I went back. And so I just — I had been listening to so many podcasts, and I had done a little bit of flipping and, you know, had a little experience there. And I was just like, it’s either now or never. And if I fail, I’ll just go do something else. Like, I’ll figure it out. But failure never really, for me — like, I just haven’t let it kind of enter my mind. I mean, there’s been times where I’m like, holy crap, what am I doing? But yeah, it’s been tough. But I’m so glad that I made the decision.

Stephanie: Yeah, it’s incredibly brave and obviously working out well. I’m curious, did you have any social pressure or doubt coming at you? Because I know I certainly did. And I was not in that kind of environment. Like, were friends, family — were they like, what the hell are you doing?

Ty: Honestly, I think where I had been — on the real estate side, I was a member of a mastermind here locally. And so I was going, and I’d actually presented a couple of times at the mastermind about what we were doing in that space. And actually, I had a lot of people supporting me. And when I left, it was — I mean, it was like an outpouring of support that I didn’t expect. So that made me feel great about my decision. I mean, it didn’t make me earn any more money or anything. It’s not like it directly attributed to that. But it gave me a peace of mind that I was thankful to have.

Why Commercial?

Stephanie: Oh, that’s really wonderful to hear that you’ve had so much love and support from everybody in your life. That’s fantastic. So I want to hear why commercial. Was there strategy behind that decision? Was it simply, I don’t want to do houses because of XYZ? Like, can you walk me through that decision process?

Ty: The original business model — it’s kind of shifted a little bit, but we originally just wanted to hire first responders and then their families. And we’ve expanded out to a different class of people — not a different class, but just a broader class of that. And it really is, it’s about like local heroes, right? So there is inherent value in going into residential spaces with that, saying, these are the cleaners that’s cleaning your space. But for me, it’s an easier thing to talk to clients about if I’m saying, hey, this is after hours, this is, you know, when nobody’s here — you need somebody that you can trust. And that is what it was all built on. It’s still all built on that. And it’s still one of the easiest ways for me to sell, honestly.

Now it’s proven to be increasingly difficult to continue to staff things. But I mean, that can be solved, in my opinion. But that was the main reason I went commercial. And then also I like the higher ticket sizes of commercial, to be honest with you, versus residential. A juicy commercial account is different than a juicy residential account. And by nature of — I don’t know of a house that — we’re not in a house more than bi-weekly, and we have, you know, commercial accounts we can be there five days a week. So that inherently makes a little bit easier staffing, I feel like.

Getting the First Accounts

Stephanie: Absolutely. And obviously if you’re open to evening work. So how did you get your first account? I know — and I definitely want to get into the whole BNI. You’re the president of your local chapter, which I’m sure lots of listeners, they have lots of questions about BNI because I have recommended it before. So I want to talk about that heavily, but first let’s talk about those first accounts. How did you get them? What was the experience like?

Ty: My first account actually came from word of mouth, by nature of having a family member who is successful with having a network. And they just so happened to be at an event and they said, hey, I know this company that’s starting up, and I know you guys need a cleaner. And that company we’re still with today — we’ve been with them almost a year and a half now. A nice juicy weekly account right from the start, and about a 6,000, 7,000 square foot office. And just word of mouth on that.

And then our second client came from Facebook, from a forum — just somebody, a business owner, posted, we need a cleaner. And then the third was BNI. I went ahead and joined a BNI chapter. And funny enough, when I joined, I was still so heavily in the real estate side, I was trying to find a way to enter the classification for what I was doing in real estate, which was buying and selling land. But I was like, okay, that’s not really a classification. And looking back, I’m so thankful I went for the cleaning company, because that’s become my sole focus. And it’s allowed me to really build credibility there with that. And BNI has — I think we’re at four or five recurring accounts now from BNI, which isn’t huge in the grand scheme of things. But when you talk about the investment you make for something like that and the recurring revenue every month, it’s more than paying for itself every month. So that was the start. And, you know, we’ve switched into some outreach and stuff to get clients now. But word of mouth has always been great — just letting people know what you’re doing. And that helped me definitely get off the ground.

Stephanie: What is the population of your guys’ area? Like approximate — I’m just curious, how large is this city?

Ty: Yeah. So the city itself is about 100,000. And then the MSA, if you include Blacksburg — which, like, Virginia Tech University is Blacksburg — it’s about 400,000. So we’ve stayed in the Roanoke, Roanoke County area. And we’ve just recently expanded out just by nature of some opportunities that we’ve had. But so call it 200,000 right here in the Valley.

Stephanie: Okay. So a nice little city, which is a really great size, I think, especially given the angle. I think your branding and marketing is amazing anywhere. Like, it’s just so unique. Obviously you’ve already alluded to the problem of, okay, how do I keep staffing and then growing with this very small market of type of employee. But I think just saying, we welcome these people on our staff, we want these people on our staff — and like you said, I mean, I don’t know how better you can sell like this part. If you can trust this person with your life, you can probably trust them with your facility. That’s amazing.

Hiring and Getting Out of the Field

Stephanie: So how soon did you start hiring after you got your first accounts?

Ty: Yeah. So I actually did this a little backwards, I feel like. And the reason why is because I did have the real estate there, which, looking back, I’m thankful for the way it went. But I hired my first employee in June of ’25. So we had three accounts. I was doing two, and I hired somebody to do the third, which was that first building that we had gotten — our weekly account. The other two were bi-weekly, so they were small. And the first hire, I was paying too much. I was paying her too much, which — that’s another thing we’ll get around to later. I pay flat rate, but I was paying too much.

But what it did was — we were actually on the way out for vacation that weekend. And I had done my buildings, and her building was coming up. And the first time I saw revenue hit the dashboard that I didn’t have to clean for and be there for, it was life-changing for me. It was like, holy crap, that just happened, right? And so she was with me — she ended up leaving, I don’t know, maybe she was here four months. I started hiring additional employees about September, and September of last year was really when I started trying to intentionally grow this and really focusing on it. So it was really just me until we hired our first few after the first employee.

And I ended up closing out 2025 — I wasn’t cleaning at all. And it’s really continued, with the exception of our first whale account, I would consider, that came on, and I was woefully unprepared for it. But since we staffed it and I got out of cleaning four nights a week, I’ve been 0% in the field since then. So I’ve kind of taken the mindset from the beginning of, how do I figure out how to make money and not be in the field? And that’s what I’ve kept. And if I’m in the field, then I feel like I’m struggling is what I feel like. So that’s the mindset I’ve always kind of taken.

The Whale Account

Stephanie: Yeah, I agree with that. It’s very hard to, as everybody knows, focus on the business and be strategic when you’re out physically doing the work. Obviously being backup — whatever we do, we got to do what we got to do. But if the focus is to grow — I have two questions. Wait, I have three questions. Sorry. One, what type of account is the whale? Like, what is the facility?

Ty: So it is a church campus. There’s two separate buildings, and it’s a total of probably 40,000 square feet. The one has a gym and a daycare with classrooms and bathrooms. So we do that four nights a week. And then in the church itself, they have a custodian there, but the custodian refuses to clean the bathrooms, and there’s eight bathrooms.

Stephanie: Jesus.

Ty: I mean, it’s a funny story. So he’s nearing retirement, and his deal is he loves the floors. They have VCT floors, and he loves stripping and waxing his floors. So the floors are the most beautiful tile that you have ever seen in a church.

Stephanie: Eat off of them, I’m sure.

Ty: Yes. So when we started cleaning — so we clean all the bathrooms in the church two days a week as well. And it’s like 21 toilets. It’s a lengthy clean just for the bathrooms. But he was mad originally when we were going in and mopping the floors, and that was part of our scope of work that they had agreed on. And so our cleaners were getting flack from him. He was hanging around, like, why are you — what are you doing with my floors? And they’re like, we’re mopping the floor, right? So he’s worked his way around. He likes our people now. They’re like, yeah, he brought me water and asked how I was doing. So it’s gotten better.

Stephanie: Neurodivergent. That sounds very neurodivergent. Those are my floors.

Ty: No, I think there was prior maybe addiction issues is what I was told. But they gave him a chance. He’s been there like 17 years.

Stephanie: Good for him.

Ty: Yeah, exactly. And he was supposed to retire this summer is what we were told. So we have already quoted out the rest of the church, and it’s another 16 hours of labor a week that’s out there whenever he retires. It’s just a matter of — some days he comes in mad, and he’s like, all right, F this place, I’m getting out. And then some days he’s like, oh, I’m staying here until next year. So it’s literally, we don’t know. Luckily we have the staff to handle it if and when it happens right now, at least. But anyways, that’s the whale account.

And literally — and this is, I think, a good story for the listeners, I feel like. So when I started that account, I had two applicants that had applied, and one of them was a sergeant of mine when I was at the police department. Him and his wife both applied. And she fit the mold perfectly too, because she was in healthcare. And so they applied, they started doing our onboarding and our training process, and they made it through our training. And I had literally told them, you know, this was the scheduling commitment we were going to have. And it got all the way to right before scheduling them — they were getting ready to go to field training — and they both said, we can’t do it. And so, I understand. I would appreciate knowing it now versus having them in the account a week and then they can’t. So it was frustrating. But it’s like, okay, all right. So now I’m out there cleaning.

And so I was out there for probably three weeks, four nights a week, and I had people that I was interviewing, and they were just in the process. So it’s a slow process, but I knew there was light at the end of the tunnel. But there was a specific night — on Thursday nights there in the gym, they have open gyms like a lot of churches do. And I go one night and I’m in our attire, and I’ve got our janitor cart, and I’m cleaning. And there’s dudes that I went to school with, that graduated with me, that are there playing basketball. And I’m just like, yeah, I’m here. I’m scrubbing the toilets, man. That’s me. But so that was like, okay, all right. I promise I’m doing all right, but I know my path. And I know that — I don’t even worry about what they think. But yeah, it’s tough. It is tough.

Stephanie: I definitely have felt that same chip on my shoulder of, yeah, running into people — I have to give all this, no, no, like, this is a good thing. It taught me to be humble, but also, I don’t even care, because I know what I’m building. I know where I’m trying to take this. And if I don’t get it there, then it’s going to be a hell of an experience, and I’m going to take it and do the next thing. But I feel confident with what I’m doing. And so when I saw them, it’s like, okay, this sucks. But also, I could be at home doing nothing, watching Netflix or playing basketball — but you are making money and building your dream.

Ty: Yeah, exactly. So that stayed in my mind a little bit throughout this whole journey.

Stephanie: Oh, absolutely. Okay, second question. Why “woefully unprepared”? What about it was so challenging? Was it the staffing specifically, or was there scope of work?

Ty: No, the staffing. The scope of work I felt really good with. And actually, the scope that we do there — we actually just added some scope today. They wanted to add certain things. But it was just the staffing. Like, you know, I had it lined up and then it just disappeared. And then one of the nights specifically is a heavy night — it’s six hours. And then once a month we do an additional scope on top of it, so that’s an eight-hour night. And so having that — I’ve got some of my best people in the company, I feel like, are there right now. The clients are so happy. But early on, it was just like, how in the world — I’m going from, at that time, our biggest account was weekly accounts. And then we go from, okay, we have weekly accounts, and now four nights a week — technically six, if you add the bathrooms in the church. There’s six different scopes a week. So that was a big learning curve on the staffing and just setting that up. But once it was set up, it’s like, okay, well, everything else is kind of feeling pretty simple now, in a way. But I was unprepared for that.

Stephanie: The nice thing is, though — I mean, commercial can be very different, for sure. But at the end of the day, a lot of these places, what’s scary is the size and the volume, right? What’s not scary is, that’s just a toilet. There’s just 30 of them.

Ty: Exactly.

Getting Serious About Growth

Stephanie: My third question, coming back to what you said earlier — you said that, I believe in September, that’s when you really — maybe I could be making that up — that’s when the focus happened. What did that focus look like? What behaviors did you change?

Ty: Yes. So I think we had maybe three accounts in September of ’25, and I was still cleaning two of them, and we were maybe doing like $1,600 a month of recurring. And so I just looked at the math and I said, if the flips stop and I don’t want to clean, this is how big I need to be to provide for my family. And I just did the math and came up with how big I wanted to get there and what I was going to do to get it there. And so I basically just knew that I had a limited amount of time to grow it to a point without cleaning before I was going to have to get in the field. And so I just started marketing for people and really just trying to do a bunch of outreach and just talk to people. And we actually had a lot of word of mouth growth that started happening during that time, which was good to jumpstart us. But I think we ended ’25 at 12 accounts. So it went from three to 12 by the end of the year. And I think that was maybe $4,500 a month of recurring by the end of the year. So it was small growth, but it was there.

And so January came, and it was like a solid quarter of just cold calling. That’s what it was. And it went very well. I did door knocking too, and I did some other stuff. We ran some ads. And the cold calling is what we come back to. That’s where the gold is for us. But yeah, it was just focusing on marketing, because at the time I didn’t know how hard it would be to continue to staff and catch that up — and that’s why the whole whale account and unpreparedness happened, because we had all this growth that happened, and the marketing to people to work for me wasn’t keeping up with the marketing for new clients. So that’s where the focus was — really just, how do I market this thing? And it really is — I mean, it never ends. I feel like it’s that pendulum of, oh no, not enough staff. Oh no, not enough — I mean, literally my ops meeting today, we’re like, okay, if we hire this person, can we fulfill their schedule? You know, it just never ends. I think you get better at figuring out what that pace is and moving quickly when you need to.

Cold Calling for Commercial Accounts

Stephanie: I know that everybody’s ears perked up — slash they put their head in the sand — when you said cold calling. I’ve talked about it heavily on the podcast, despite the fact that — for me, getting commercial during the year of our Lord 2020, when I was like, I need business and nobody’s letting us in their houses, I was cold calling, cold emailing, doing everything I could to get commercial. And it absolutely works, which I know people are terrified of, of this concept. Let’s do a quick and dirty — run me through what that looks like, how you manage your work, what kind of goals and expectations you have.

Ty: Yeah. So it’s easier now, because I have the data to show how many calls I need to get certain things. But when I didn’t have it, I was quite literally just putting a list together in a spreadsheet of the businesses I wanted to call. I mean, I quite literally went to Google Maps. So in real estate, it’s called driving for dollars, right? And so we did that, and we had a bunch of software that was really expensive. But for this, it was much more targeted, but it took more time, because I’m going on Google Maps and I’m driving for dollars — just putting a list together through that of businesses I want to call, and quite literally just calling them.

And you fine-tune a script. I mean, you can build a script out, and then you’ve got to change it, and then you figure out what works. But like, for my branding, it’s very easy. But for, you know, whoever’s company that’s out there that’s trying to grow, and what your value prop is — you have to tune it for you. But what I learned is, if I just approach this as, I’m trying to help them out — because more than likely they have a problem. More than likely their cleaners are not doing a great job, which is unfortunate. But I mean, you probably can speak to this — like, you have clients that come to you and their previous cleaners weren’t doing a good job. So if you approach it in a mindset of, I’m genuinely trying to figure out if they need help because they’re dealing with a problem, then the call is coming. So it got so much easier than it was.

I always had an ethical dilemma — just a problem in my head — with real estate, with cold calling. And that’s where my experience came from. But I was calling owners trying to get them to sell me their property at a heavily discounted rate. And there were some people who needed to do that to sell. But the overwhelming majority of people, specifically in land and that asset class — if they own land, they probably don’t need to sell it for that discount at a very quick rate. So I had a problem with that. But it was a lot easier, and that’s what I would speak to anyone: if you’re calling because you’re trying to genuinely solve a problem, it shouldn’t make the calling as hard or as intimidating as what it is.

Stephanie: I completely agree — the more that you believe in what you are providing and that you are helping people, which hopefully everybody listening truly feels that that is what they’re doing, and that’s what they should be doing, it does make it easier. Because you’re, just like you said, genuinely trying to see, could we help you? Because if you’re struggling, this is stressing you out — whether commercial or residential — like, I could be the one to solve that problem for you. And why shouldn’t it be? And they’re probably spending nearly as much with, frankly, shitty service or shitty results. Because it’s usually one of two things: either the quality sucks, or the reliability or communication is awful, and they do not trust that it’s getting done correctly.

Gatekeepers, Drop-Offs, and Follow-Up

Stephanie: So you really lean into obviously your branding and the first responder aspect of it and the trust. When it comes to your script — I’m sure for us, what we do is really lean into, we’re local. Like, oh, I’m calling from this — we’re right down the street. Like, I literally say where our office is, because then it’s like, oh, this isn’t some random person. This is somebody in our community. Because we’re such a small town, it is very small townie of, if I don’t know you, I don’t trust you kind of thing. So is there anything else when it comes to scripting — obviously trial and error — but any really big overarching themes that you would say worked well for you? Or maybe cold emailing too — I don’t know if you do that.

Ty: So I never really played with emailing. I’ve done some. But I think the overwhelming theme with commercial is there’s always a gatekeeper. So just figuring out a way to get to that gate, or get through that gatekeeper, and get to the person who actually makes a decision. So I usually start my conversations — and I’m still to this day, when I cold call — it’s just, you know, are you guys happy? One of the first questions that I’ll say is, you know, I’m a cleaning service here in town — are you guys happy with your current cleaning provider? And more times than not, the gatekeeper will give you the information that you want to know, because they’re the ones that aren’t happy. They’re the ones dealing with it, right? And then getting past that person is a lot easier when they sit there and say, okay, I’m not happy. And then you’re like, well, this is what I can offer — or figure out why they’re not happy, and then tailor to what problem they’re dealing with.

Like, for the reliability — for us, you know, we have some specific things that we market. We’re never going to miss a cleaning. That’s one of our promises to our clients. And so when they say, yeah, our cleaners — we don’t even know if they’re showing up — well, that’s like gold to us, right? So I think it is going into it with an understanding of, you’re going to have a gatekeeper, but the gatekeeper can still give you quality information. And that’s for commercial. I don’t have any experience cold calling for residential. All of our residential has come from referral, word of mouth. But that would be what I would leave for that.

Stephanie: I totally agree. And with the gatekeeper — you know, for us, we do a lot of drop-offs. Right now, currently, we’re not trying to super pursue anything — it’s kind of just coming from Google. But when we do drop-offs, we always bring donuts. We bring donuts, we drop off. Because that gatekeeper — if I can ploy you with sweets, and you tell me, especially like woman to woman, what’s not clean around here — they’re ready. They’re like, I’ve been waiting to bitch about it.

Ty: Right. Yes. Yeah, I had the same conversations when I’ve done some of the dropping — I call them door knocks — with that, and I’ll take cookies or whatnot. I haven’t had any luck with converting any of those. But I was going through a period of, I was just trying everything and seeing what worked. And once one showed that it worked, I’m like, all right, well, screw the other thing. Keep doing that. So I’ve got all those old door knock leads in the CRM, and it’s like, okay, well, I probably should call them back. Because there were a few that said, you know, they had issues with things, but then the follow-up trail just went cold.

Stephanie: I would say that’s one of the hardest parts with commercial versus residential — it’s much harder to stay disciplined on the follow-up, because it’s a much longer sales process, and staying on top of yourself. And what I mean by that, guys listening, is with residential, it’s very typically like, if they’re calling you, they’re ready to make a decision. Whereas if you are basically trying to woo them, and they’re like, yeah, we’re on contract till June, maybe call back then — it’s just you staying on top of yourself. They’re probably not going to call you. You have to manage yourself in that way, and just basically leave a really good paper trail for yourself, whether that be in a CRM or a simple spreadsheet, whatever. But it is tough to stay on top of it, or just hit people consistently with, for example, a drop-off. Like, okay, I’m going to go back next month to the same person, and just get them familiar with my face, so that when they’re ready or they’re pissed off enough, they think of me.

The Long Commercial Sales Cycle

Ty: One of our early accounts — it was maybe like our fourth or fifth account — was an insurance agency. I’m sorry — no, it had to have been probably our eighth or ninth, I don’t even know, but it was this year. But the reason I know this is because, right when my daughter was born, there was a veteran first responder breakfast at a local — it’s a horse stall, they do like therapy with horses. So I was invited there, and I met a veteran there. He was an insurance agent at the time. And of course we were getting along — he was in, or wanting to go into, law enforcement. And so we just, you know, hit it off. Well, he was like, you know, back at the office, our cleaners suck. I mean, we wouldn’t even know if they’re showing up. And so we exchanged information, and we stayed in touch for probably a month.

Well, a month came down the road, and I was going up for my insurance renewal on my car. So I called him up, and I was like, let’s see if you can help me out with this. And he did. He ended up giving me a good rate. I ended up buying insurance from him. Well, two months after that, like, nothing had happened. I had, I think, maybe followed up, sent him an email one time, you know, just keeping it warm — like, if you want me to come in and quote the cleaning, I’m happy to, just let me know, or something along those lines. But he then ended up calling me. He said, look, can you come out? Can you quote this? And, you know, just tell us if you’re going to be comparable to what we’re dealing with or not. So I did. I went out and I drew up an estimate and I sent it to him.

Waited another few months, never heard anything. And this specific insurance agency, they have a board, and they have to, like, put it through the meetings and everything to make any kind of changes. So several months later, he finally calls. He said, yeah, we want to go ahead and start your service. So we started the one building. Well, as soon as we started that — we had two services, it was biweekly — and then I got a call from the regional manager, like, hey, can you do the rest of them in the town, or in the city? So I was like, all right. So we ended up — we have four buildings from them, and we’re closing in on — I think we started them in — I couldn’t tell you again, I don’t remember, but we should be closing in on a year with them. But so we’ve got four of their buildings now. And that came from just months of, like, scratching and clawing, just kind of like, is this actually going to facilitate into something? And it finally did. And then it, like, exploded into more buildings. So yeah, long process.

Stephanie: Oh yeah, for sure. I can imagine. For everybody listening that’s like, I want commercial, I want commercial — guys, it is going to most likely be harder to get commercial clients. It’s going to take longer. So if you need money right now, it’s residential. And you can always transition, if commercial is truly, this is what I want to do strategically. But if you need money, do what you need to do to make money.

Post-Construction Cleans and Getting Burned

Stephanie: And actually, I’m curious — I think you put a post-construction job in your intake form. I want to hear about this — how you lost a little bit of money.

Ty: Well, okay. So we have done quite a bit of post-construction and deep cleans. Where I have my real estate background, I have connections over there, so we’ve done quite a bit. But we just bid on one — I’m not sure if this is the one that was in the intake form or not — but we just bid on one, and we ended up not getting the bid. But it was our newest whale commercial account that reached out — the contractor on it reached out and wanted us to bid it. And that was a 700-plus labor hour job that we bid. And that wasn’t including windows. We were subbing out the windows, and we had our sub go and give us a quote for that.

And so that was one — I was on the way out on vacation, and I got a call from a 540 number. It’s our area code, and I always answer those. And I was driving, literally. And he told me who he was, and I was like, oh, I know what this is about. And I was going out on vacation for a week, and I was like, oh God. So he’s like, we need a bid by the following Tuesday. And I was like, yep, I’ll make it happen. And so I sent my lead out to do it, and our window guy — we sent them out together, and they gave me all the information they needed. We had measurements from the janitorial side. It’s another one of those — this started back in February or March, and it’s taken until now to get a signed contract. And so that would have been a massive job, and we were just going to figure it out and make it work.

And we actually got word back that we were very competitive on the bid. We were not the low bid, but it was one of those situations where they went with the low bid, and the company that low bid us had been doing work for them for like 10 years. And so I was pleased with the outcome of that. But that’s actually transformed into further opportunities. We’re now on their vendor list. We’re getting opportunities to bid some additional projects. And so — there was a time this year where I had a few different opportunities to bring somebody on and build out like a specialty division. And I passed those opportunities up, just because I felt like I needed to focus on this until I get it to a certain point. But that will come back around and circle back around, because there is money there.

Like, for anybody out there listening, on the post-construction side — we got in with a builder early on. It was actually the second clean I ever did, in February of 2025 — a builder that builds houses here locally and in North Carolina. And he was posting on Facebook saying he needed a post-construction cleaner. And his words, I quote, were: not somebody who can do post-construction — somebody who does, like, is a post-construction cleaner with experience. And I was like, here I am. I had no experience. I didn’t have any equipment. And I was like, all right. And so I went and did my first job, and he was, like, ecstatic. He was like, this is the best post-construction clean I’ve ever had. And so we ended up doing probably 40 or 50 jobs for him over the last year and a half.

Stephanie: Holy crap.

Ty: Yeah, we’ve done quite a few. And those can be very profitable, but they can burn you too. So we got burned — I think maybe I put — this was what I meant to put. We got burned on a deep clean on a triplex. A deep clean, that’s what it was.

Stephanie: I remember — triplex. That’s what you — yep.

Ty: Yeah, okay. So that one — so I do written scope of works for everything now, but there was a time when I was doing written scope of work for recurring cleans, kind of freeballing the deep cleans, which was a terrible mistake that, obviously, I learned from. But we went out and did a clean, and I had went out to do the walkthrough, and I had missed a bunch of things. I mean, there was maggots, like, stuck to the inside of the cabinets, and, like, just tons of mouse droppings. And the worst part was, there was a sign on the door where the house — like, they were approved. They were like a ghost kitchen in this house. So it was like, this house was disgusting.

But so we went in and did it, and we missed a few things on the first clean. And I went out and I was like, we definitely missed these things. We’ll go out and we’ll fix them. Well, we went out and fixed it, and we did everything that was on what we had agreed on. I went back on the messaging — and even though it wasn’t a written scope of work, it was still written somewhere that we did what she said that she wanted us to do. And then she complained again. So I went out, and we ended up being, like, double the hours on this job that we were even bid to be. And she still never was happy. And then she ended up never paying us. And so, yeah, I contemplated taking her to court, but then it was like, you know what? I’m just going to learn from this and move on, because it’s a waste of my time.

And so that one ate at me for a while, because I’m like, do we suck? Like, what are we doing? But now — so it was a smoking house, and I learned from you, like, hey, don’t do smoking houses. And we have certain clauses now with, like, if we find rodent droppings and infestations and all that stuff, and a written scope of work with a post walkthrough — it all came from that one learning lesson and losing that money. Because I mean, that was close to a $1,000 job that we ended up going double the hours on, and then I still didn’t get a dime of it. So I ate it all. So I’ve learned on that one.

Stephanie: You’re never going to forget all of those things. And that’s the thing — I really appreciate silver linings. And I feel like if I can impart any wisdom on everybody listening: one, get fricking guidelines and contracts and things like that, right? Like, get that stuff — scopes of work. But two is being able to look at every single mistake and thing as, okay, what are we going to learn from this? And let’s never have that happen again.

Pricing Commercial Accounts

Stephanie: I want to talk about pricing and how you pay, right? You said you started too high. I think pricing is one of the scariest parts about commercial — how do I do this, right? How do you figure out your pricing for commercial?

Ty: Yeah. So early on, it was just, you know, hope and a prayer. But now I have a calculator. And so I’m actually very meticulous. I go in and I do measurements, and I count off how many toilets, how many sinks, how many, like, surfaces. Like, I do everything now.

Stephanie: Fixtures.

Ty: Yes. And so I have a sheet that we go by when we’re in the field, and then we just plug it in our calculator, and then we just sit and look at it. And I go with my lead now, because she’s out in the field far more than me, and I say, look, do you think we can actually clean this building in this time? And then we adjust it from there. We’ve gotten it more tuned as we’ve obviously had more experience. But I will say that commercial is really tough to do, just because — I mean, for example, we have a 2,000 square foot building that we’re in for three hours, and then we have a 10,000 square foot building we’re in for the same two hours, because the scope is so drastically different. So it’s really tough. And, you know, I’ve leaned on a mentor down in Tennessee a little bit that’s helped me — like, is this ISSA measurement, or whatever, is this close to what I should be? And then I get some information from him, and I dial it into the calculator, and then we go and build it. And really, you just have to go and learn your production rate. And that’s what we’ve had to do — just learn our rate and then adjust our calculator to it, and not worry about what the competition really is. We know our rates and our standards, and then kind of tune it to that. And it’s still — I mean, we started this big account in September, and I’m still just like, I hope it was right. You know? But we’ll see. I don’t know. But there’s always that.

Stephanie: Yeah. That’s how I felt when we started our whale, because they included expendable items — you know, all of them, right? Everything.

Ty: We don’t do that. Like, that’s not something we provide — we don’t bid it. Because, like, telling me to provide enough toilet paper for a facility — you can’t even tell me how many people are going to be there. Because it’s like, well, sometimes people work from home, but sometimes they don’t. And I’m like, so how the F am I supposed to know how much toilet paper we’re going to go through?

Stephanie: It was a total gap. Literally — or like, tampons. Like, I’m like, how many women work there? And I’m doing calculations, like, one period — I would just be lost. I just plugged a number and hoped it was good. And luckily, I guesstimated correctly, and it’s super healthy margins. But that’s an example of — you can absolutely lose your ass on commercial. Like, you have to read so carefully what is included. It’s so much easier to plug in AI with the request for proposal, or all of the details that you have, and be like, what am I missing? And just ask, you know, what could I be missing here? Because that happens so often, where people, they’re excited, probably the bid’s due yesterday, and they’re like, let me just get it in. It’s this huge number, and they’re so excited, because they’re like, this is going to add $5,000. But it’s like, yeah, but if it costs you seven, it doesn’t matter.

Ty: Literally did that today — plugged it in. And it’s funny — like, you use AI enough to where it starts to know your company and exactly what you’re doing, and it’s like, this is not a good bid for you to submit. Like, don’t do this. And so, yeah, I do that, and it’s definitely helped me with a couple of different things that have come up like that.

Paying Cleaners Flat Rate

Ty: And with commercial, like, I do the flat rate — we pay flat rate and we bill flat rate. So it’s like our margins are fixed, but I have to closely monitor our cleaning time, our performance, because then I’ve got to make sure my people are getting paid adequately. There’s always variance at the beginning when somebody is new on an account, or where it’s a new account, period. And so accounting for that, and then making sure it stabilizes where it needs to be. And so I’ve been very upfront with people — and a lot of the listeners are probably going to think this is crazy — but I already start my people at an hourly rate that’s significantly higher than the average wage here for the work that we do. But on the flat rate side, I even bid it higher, because if I bid it higher, that’s like my buffer, right? Because if I pay my people X an hour and then add $2 an hour to it on the bid for the flat rate side, then if we actually underbid it, we’re still going to be able to pay them the hourly rate that they’re getting paid. But our average hourly rate on our flat rate over all the accounts — so the small accounts and the big accounts — it’s like $33 an hour.

Stephanie: That’s incredible. That is incredible.

Ty: And the margins are still healthy. So it’s like, I’m thankful for that. And I have that as a fallback on, like, if we do have those accounts that we mess up on, you know, we get through it — get through the period until we can do, like, a price review or whatnot. But I’ve done flat rate from the start for the recurring stuff, and I don’t have any plans to go away from it. It’s been very good for us, I would say.

Stephanie: I have a lot of questions about this. So, you know, we charge all commercial — well, except very, very rarely is anything hourly in the realm of commercial, right? So let’s just, for all intents and purposes, say all commercial is flat rate for us. And we pay hourly, because so many of our cleaners are hybrid and they do both residential — like, it would just be convoluted to do that. Additionally, one thing I wonder about with paying a flat rate, not a percentage — for people who are interested in this — like, isn’t it hard? So you have two accounts that you bid, and this one you had to be a bit more competitive on, so you bid it less. And now that cleaner, even though they’re cleaning the same amount of time, they’re getting paid less at, you know, facility A versus B, because B you were able to be higher. Like, how has that ever come up? I mean, it sounds like for you that’s not an issue, but if somebody is experiencing that — because I’ve thought, like, oh, maybe I should do this, and I’m just like, yeah, but we make vastly different amounts at these accounts.

Ty: Yeah, it’s crossed my mind. But typically the way that it works — I mean, the bigger the account, the lower margin the account, and typically I do have to bid those at a lower, or closer to, their average hourly rate for our people. And when I realized that that was what I was going to have to do, as an owner, I just went to my whole team and I told them that this is how this is going to work. If you’re cleaning a once-a-month building, our margins are going to be higher, because we bid it that way. Like, we’re going to have to drive all the way across town for this building once a month or twice a month, so we set the flat rates higher intentionally for that. And so there’s some accounts that we have set — it may be an hour building, and it’s set at $40, $45, because we’re accounting for travel time. We’re accounting for everything. So as a blended rate, we just make sure that everybody is making a blended rate that’s at or above what their hourly rate is. And then, you know, when we do our offers that they sign — our employment offers — we have that language built in. It’s like, this is the pay system for the recurring accounts. Like, this is your hourly rate for your training or any hourly assignments or anything. So that’s where the blend comes from. But we have that language that says that on property pay, or flat rate accounts, this is the structure and how it works. And so they agree to that from the beginning.

Stephanie: You know, I don’t do it this way, but I’m sure lots of people want to, so I want to make sure I’m asking enough questions here. Is there any confusion? Because I know some people get this with percentage pay too — of explaining. Because what is attractive about hourly is they know how much they’re going to make, right? Like, it is guaranteed — you are going to make this much per hour. So when it comes to, like, your job listings and things like that, do you have any pushback of, I don’t know how much I’m going to make? Do you just say, on average, this is what a team member makes? Like, how do you sell the pay, basically?

Ty: So we frame it differently, because we say that this is how much you’re going to make. Like, no matter if you go out and you need to go have a lunch break at the building, or you go out and you clean it in an hour — we sell it as, as long as the scope is complete and it’s to our standards and our clients are happy, this is what you’re going to make. And it’s kind of in your wheelhouse how fast you clean. Like, I talked to someone today who’s interested in applying, and he’s like, I’m slow. I was like, well, everything is based on our company performance rates, right? And so, like, remove the outliers — the fastest people and the slowest people — find the averages, and that’s what we set the expected pay on the accounts at. And then that’s what the flat rate pay is built on. So we really actually haven’t had any pushback on that, because we just sell it as a benefit.

Stephanie: Yeah, right. I mean, as long as you show up to clean, you’re going to make, you know, that amount for that building kind of thing.

Quality Control and Blind Inspections

Stephanie: What kind of quality protective mechanisms do you put in place? Do they get a hit, do they get a penalty — what is that? Or is there the opposite — is there quality bonuses? Say you have a quality issue — what does that look like?

Ty: Yes. So we just rolled out part-time benefits. We have full-time core benefits coming too, but the first benefits were part-time. And so we do have a quality incentive. And so we track it based on, like, a labor hours per complaint ratio. And so if our people are at a certain ratio and up when they have their quarterly reviews, they’re eligible for the quality bonus. And if they haven’t met a certain amount of hours — like, let’s say they’re a really low frequency cleaner — it’s just based on not having X amount of complaints. But there is a bonus that’s there for them.

And then in terms of the quality control system — so that’s ever-evolving for us, and something that we’ve changed. But we used to be just solely relationship-based. And we’d say, we’re going to talk to our clients X amount of times in a quarterly period. And we had a situation recently this year where, if we would have had a system where we did blind inspections that were triggered by certain events, we would have caught the issues before it went as far south as it did. I mean, we built a system specifically for what happened with a cleaner that we had. And it was like, okay, would this system have stopped this? And if the answer was yes, we were going to do the system and roll it out. And so now, based on, like, a staffing change, or certain relationship touches with a client if it goes a certain way, or if the cleaner, on the time side, cleans it X amount faster than what they’re supposed to, it triggers an inspection. And we actually go out and we’ll do a blind inspection, and they don’t know about it until we give them the results, obviously. So, just to keep everybody honest on that. So that system is new — it’s about three weeks old since we’ve built it and rolled it out. But yeah, it was based on a bad experience with that.

Stephanie: What did they miss? What did they do?

Ty: Well, I wasn’t actually going to bring this one up — there was another employee story that I had — but so this was a cleaner who was doing very well. He ended up going out on a surgery leave for six weeks. And when he came back, he was assigned a different account, and it’s a retail space and a salon together, with an apartment over top. And we did the common areas too, so we did the whole building. And so it’s complicated, but we have a video checklist and walkthrough, so they can go and literally look at what doors need to be locked, what are they doing and what they’re not. There shouldn’t be any excuse why. And then the cleaner who was previously on that account trained him on it when he came back. So there shouldn’t have been any excuse. Well, the first week, he missed a door that was critical to locking, because the people in the apartment can access the retail space through this door if it’s left unlocked.

So that was a complaint, obviously sustained. So the next visit he goes — I actually get my haircut at this place, so, like, I go and I do an inspection all the time when I’m there. I was there yesterday. But so I go in — and it had been about a week and a half since he had been there — and he had done it again after the first one.

Stephanie: Oh my gosh.

Ty: But they didn’t call and complain about it on that one, but it happened again. So we were like, okay — so we went further in our discipline. And then the third time he goes, he didn’t clean an entire bathroom. And this is where a learning moment for me — I should have caught him then. But if we had done a blind inspection after the first complaint, after his second one, it would have stopped that. And then if we had done a blind inspection after the third cleaning, it would have caught the bathroom that wasn’t cleaned. And also, on that third cleaning, he had locked himself out. So we had to go — and it’s one of the accounts we don’t have a spare key for.

Stephanie: Oh, so embarrassing. I’m sure you heard my big one, where a car got stolen with a key in it. It was awful.

Ty: Yeah. This was a Sunday evening at like eight o’clock at night. And my lead is responsible for the keys, but it was one of those where the call went to me, and I’m like, all right. I had gotten home from being out of town, so she had had a busy week taking over my responsibilities. And I was like, all right, I’m just going to do it. So I had to drive all the way across town to the client, get a key, go downtown, let them in the building, go back to the client, take them back the key, and then go home. So I was not happy.

So then the fourth week — this was like the short leash moment. And we put him back on an account he had previously that is literally a two-hour in and out, one of the easiest buildings we do. And so my lead went and did a blind inspection after he went and cleaned, and he didn’t do anything. Like, it was complete — like, nothing was done. She had to do a complete reclean. And so we let him go the next day. But yeah, so that system came from that, because that would have caught the second and third quality issue. And that would have made the fourth quality issue not even become a thing — he would have been gone at that point.

Stephanie: Thank you for being transparent and actually spelling that out, because this is really solidifying the point of the danger zone of when you are going to lose a client — it’s when things change, right? Transitions, a new cleaner, a new scope of work, even new people in their office, you know, where some new person comes in. We’ve had this happen so many times, where a new general manager comes in, and frankly, they’re trying to big dick us and be the boss. And I’m just like, we haven’t had a problem here. So that being said, it’s like, do not ignore that. Or like you said, if you get a complaint, guys, then do a quality check the next cleaning. Because the only thing worse than one complaint, actually, is two complaints of the same issue on the same account. You want to toss yourself off a bridge when that happens. So please just use it as a trigger — complaint, quality check. Quality check the next clean. Easy. Right. Then it shows the cleaner, like, you mean business.

The Alexa Complaint

Ty: So that whole system was built from that. And then — I was excited to tell this one. So yeah, we just had a cleaner, and he was in training. My lead is great — I have a phenomenal operations lead that I promoted. She still cleans some, and she’s about to be full time for me. She’s been leading about half of our accounts and then doing, like, all the training, all the supplies, all the key runs, everything. So she was field training a new cleaner the week that I was on vacation. This was probably three weeks ago now. And they were at a building, and he made a comment while he was there — well, several things were said, but he made a comment. There was an Alexa, and he said, wouldn’t you think it’s funny if we said, hey Alexa, play seventies music at eight o’clock on Monday morning? And my lead said she didn’t think anything of it, because she didn’t know that Alexa would.

So I come back into work Monday. I was training a different cleaner in place of my lead, because she needed part of the day off. She had to come in — we did our lead meeting while I was there with that cleaner. So about 30 minutes before she comes in, I get a phone call from the said client with a complaint, and she is pissed. And she’s like, we got here at 8:30, and there is music blaring so loud that, like, you can hear it in the parking lot. From the Alexa. And I was like, okay.

So my lead comes in for our meeting, and — like, being in law enforcement, you can tell when people are off. And she’s distraught a little bit. She’s off. First thing out of her mouth, before I said anything, she’s like, I don’t think this person is going to work out. And I said, okay, why? And she literally describes exactly what was said to the Alexa, plus some other stuff. And so, yeah, there was some other stuff that was said that was unprofessional, and we ended up cutting him, you know, from that. But to have a complaint that was professionalism-based from somebody who was a retired first responder — just because I’m doing what I’m doing with the people doesn’t mean — like, the humans are still humans. And so that’s the challenge. Like, the other person I fired, in the first story, was a first responder.

Stephanie: Yeah. Doesn’t mean that they’re — yeah, just for that.

Ty: Yes, exactly. They’re human. So that’s the two this year. The second one — I was just so mad. When I called the client back, I told the client, out of transparency, like, look, this is what happened. This cleaner is not going to be a cleaner for you anymore. I didn’t know at the time he wasn’t going to be for us, because I had more investigating to do on it. But I told her, I was like, this cleaner is not going to be your cleaner anymore. I’m so sorry. And we’ll give you a credit for this cleaning — and can we move forward from this? And she was like, absolutely. Like, it’s okay. The cleaning was great. And so I was like — to have a complaint that wasn’t even cleaning-related on a Monday morning, when I have all this other stuff to do, and this is what I’ve got to deal with.

Stephanie: I feel like that exemplifies business ownership so well. I always thought I was a creative person — but not until I was an owner and could see the level of, like, behavior, excuses, lying. I mean, I’m sure as a cop you saw it so much. Like, my uncle was a lifelong cop, and he is like a human lie detector. Like, he knows when somebody is lying. And so, especially with some of the things that cleaners tell you, or clients — I’m just like, this is insane. Like, what is coming out of your mouth?

Ty: I’m like, just the fact that somebody could do that. And then some of the — like, oh my God. They set a panic alarm off at another building — and this was an accident, but they set a panic alarm off while they were dusting. And then law enforcement comes out, and my lead goes out, and he has everything cleared up, and the officer’s leaving — he’s, like, walking away. And then he comes out and he’s like, don’t worry, officer, I hid all the paraphernalia before you got here. I was like, okay, we’re done. Like, we’re done here. And that was not even it. That was more.

Stephanie: Because I feel like, okay, yep, I can clock it. I am stereotyping — they make bad jokes. Okay, they make bad — that’s not funny.

Ty: It wasn’t funny for me. I don’t think he was expecting to be let go over it, but he wasn’t coachable either. Two different trainers had him. And, like, we have policy and procedures in how we clean — and I’m not perfect, and we’re going to continue to learn and change things. But like, you’re not even out of training yet. Like, you’re coming in and saying, oh, I’m not going to do that. Or, oh, I’m going to do that. Like, that’s not going to fly with me. My lead tells me that she tells everybody this — like, if you got something, tell Ty, because he’s very receptive to it. And I try to be very receptive to everything. And like, if we figure out something that we need to do, I’ll add a policy, or I’ll change a part, or whatever, to try to make it as efficient as possible, and listen to my people. But when it’s like that, it’s like, okay, come on — at least get yourself established here. Get off the field training and then say what you want to say.

Stephanie: I know it’s kind of crazy sometimes when they act a fool within the first couple of weeks. I’m like, this is your best behavior?

Ty: Exactly.

Stephanie: So glad you did it now, right before I got you on a bunch of accounts.

Ty: Exactly.

What Business Ownership Teaches You

Stephanie: Wow. So how has this changed you? Like, if you were to say, how has owning this business changed you?

Ty: The management piece — like, managing people — and just realizing that, I guess, there’s a way to make money doing a lot of different things. Like, I mean, my mentor has told me along the way, he’s like, if you just are there for your clients, like, they’ll pay you to do just about anything. We have a client that will call us — hey, can you do the carpets up here? Or hey, can you, like, deep clean our bleachers, like steam clean them? Or, like, we have one client that’s like, hey, we need some stuff painted. And I’m like, we don’t do that. But like, the opportunities present themselves. And that’s one thing that this has taught me. And it’s just, I guess, clients always first, right? And if you do that, then I guess good things will come. That’s what I’ve learned.

I take the mindset of, I want to make this a sellable business. That’s why I have it clean from the beginning. I don’t know if I ever will want to sell it, but that’s the mindset I’ve always taken. And if I can achieve that, then, you know, I’ll have learned so much from owning a cleaning business and managing that I feel like I could do about whatever, you know, business-wise. It’s probably overly confident, but it’s taught me a lot, I feel like.

Stephanie: Once you can do that — the management, the finances, like, all of that culmination — I do feel the same way of, I could figure out, especially another, like, home service, no problem. You know, it’s like, okay, so that can’t be that difficult. I mean, that could just be my overconfidence showing, and ignorance, but I was like, okay, we can do this. We can do other stuff too. And it’s so true — people want their problem solved, and they are happy to pay for it, whatever that problem may look like. So I’m so happy that we had this conversation. This is really, really enjoyable. As I said before we started recording, I love when I can talk to folks who do commercial exclusively, because I know so many of our listeners are interested in it. They see the juicy money and they’re like, oh my gosh, like, I need to do this. But it’s not for everybody, that’s for sure.

The Hardest Parts of Commercial

Stephanie: I mean, if you could give, like, the top worst parts about commercial — what are they, to scare people off at the end here? What would you say are the hardest parts about commercial?

Ty: For us — we position ourselves as premium, and so large bids are tough for us. If you’re in commercial, you’re going to have a lot of — you’ll get the government bids out there. Like, one came to me today that literally will have the verbiage in the bid that we’ll go with the lowest reasonable bid, right? We were recently asked to bid the YMCA here, and that was an opportunity that was going to present more YMCAs. But that was a seven-day-a-week, with a day porter and nighttime, seven days a week. And when I calculated what they’re currently paying and the billable rate of that — I mean, their billable rate is, like, what I pay my people. Like, there’s no way. So the hardest part about commercial is learning that the big juicy account — sometimes there’s no juice to squeeze whatsoever, depending on your model and your business and how you pay your people.

The long sales — it definitely is tough. I mean, it’s tough. And then the after-hours stuff. If you’re not an after-hours person — you just, you got to understand you’re going to be staffing stuff late, and the phone might ring at 10 o’clock. It might ring at midnight if your people are out there. If you don’t have a management layer in place and it’s you, then, you know, the call has got to be answered if it’s your people. I mean, you got to be there for your people. So residential is easier in that regard, because your people are there during the day. If you’re not a night owl, you know, it has the potential to be really tough if you don’t have those things in place to kind of mitigate that.

Stephanie: And I don’t have you say all those things to discourage people, but I want to be realistic. You know, they hear me talk about commercial — like, I think we’re at like 77 accounts now — and it’s like, I want that. I want that. And it’s like, trust me, it’s not all rainbows and butterflies. It can be really shitty. And so I just want everybody listening to have a realistic understanding and perspective of what this can look like. Yes, you can absolutely do commercial successfully, but it’s not all perfect. And not every account — you know, you could have a bunch of turnips that you’re not squeezing anything out of.

Where to Follow Ty

Stephanie: Oh, well, this has been amazing. If folks want to follow along on your business journey, where can they follow you?

Ty: Yeah. So I’m on Facebook, just Ty Severa. And then we have a company — First Response Building Services — Facebook and Instagram. And then I post a lot more business content on LinkedIn, so you can find me, Tyler Severa, on LinkedIn. I have went through those phases of just sharing all the business content, and then I’ve kind of just not had the time to do that. But I do share a lot more of the nuts and bolts on there when I can.

Stephanie: Sweet. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, everybody. Please leave Ty some love in the comments. This has been a great one. We’ve gone over an hour, because I’m just like, I have so many questions. So thank you for such a stimulating conversation. I really appreciate it.

Ty: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve enjoyed it as well.

Stephanie: Perfect. Well, everybody, please hit that like, hit that subscribe, and we’ll see you on the next episode of the 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.