Frustrated with your scheduling? Try the easiest-to-use calendar app, made by and for maid service owners.
Brought to you by expert maid service owners
Introduction
Stephanie: Hello everyone, welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I am your host, Stephanie from Serene Clean, and today’s amazing guest is Emily Cox, and she is the owner of Just Peachy Cleaning Professionals in Woodstock, Georgia. So she is just a hop, skip, and a jump north of me here in Savannah, and I cannot wait for you guys to hear her story. She has so many incredible lessons that she’s going to be sharing about her journey today. Emily, how long have you been in business? And tell us how you started. Of course, thank you for being here.
Emily: Thank you for having me. I’m really excited to be on the show. I have been in the cleaning industry for nine years — in business nine years, but five of them were just as a solo cleaner. And then I took a short break, which we will talk about, and then I jumped back in two and a half years ago.
Stephanie: What is the size of the business at this point? Either staff or revenue, whatever you’re comfortable sharing.
Emily: Revenue, we did about $330,000 last year.
Stephanie: Great job. That’s killer.
Emily: I feel like I’m always super critical of myself, but I have to remember that two years ago I started completely over, and I have surpassed anything that I did prior to that in just two years. So I guess that is something to be proud of, and I have to remember that when I am being critical of myself and comparing myself to other local cleaning businesses.
Stephanie: As we were talking about before we hit record — just being our own harshest critic, and how sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for the trees, because it’s like, yeah, but I could have done this better. I think that is what leads entrepreneurs to success and growth sometimes. I don’t know if you can relate to that.
Emily: Oh yeah, I absolutely relate to that. My biggest word for really the second half of last year and into this year has been excellence. I am obsessed with excellence, and I feel like if I do not do something 100% or perfect, or at least strive my hardest to reach excellence, I am super critical of myself. So if I let the ball drop on something, I’m just really hard on myself.
Stephanie: That’s so relatable. Literally before we hopped on this recording, I was talking to the head of marketing at ZenMaid on the phone, and I’m just like, I am so disappointed because I’m not nailing every category at the level I know I can. And my sticky note says “perfect every detail, limit the number of details.” So I think we’re the same person.
Emily: Well, I did tell you when I first started watching you — before even this podcast, when you were doing your training seminars with ZenMaid — I watched everybody. I gravitated towards your personality, your style, and your mindset. I think we’re really similar in that aspect.
Stephanie: It’s the positive and negative of the same coin. We’re very critical on ourselves, but that means we hold ourselves and our business to a really high standard, which can have detriments, but obviously there are a lot of positives. I’d love to hear how you got into cleaning nine years back. What drew you to it? Was it more that you needed to start this, or did you want to start it?
Table of contents
- Introduction
- How Emily Got Started in the Cleaning Industry
- Managing Vacation Rentals Effectively
- Wild Turnover Stories and How to Handle Them
- Hiring for Values, Not Experience
- Handling Theft: A Hard Line in the Sand
- The Business Merger That Taught Everything
- ADHD, Perfectionism, and Finding the Right Leadership
- Current Management Structure and Business State
- Starting a New Business: Good Bones Estate Sales
- The Power of Authenticity in Business
- Closing Thoughts
How Emily Got Started in the Cleaning Industry
Emily: Nine years ago — going on nine years this June — I had just had my first son, and I was slinging bottles in the restaurant industry, bartending, and managing a couple local restaurants in my area. When you have a newborn and you’re working until three o’clock in the morning and waking up at 6am for that, it just wasn’t sustainable anymore. I had just finished my business degree and thought that I was qualified to just start a business, but I had no money. I was a new mom and I didn’t have a lot of experience outside of the restaurant industry.
Somebody at my church had a solo business cleaning cabins up in north Georgia, and she told me what kind of money she was making, what she charged, how long it took. And I was like, yeah, cleaning, I can clean. My mom wouldn’t agree, but it’s me. So I just went out on a whim with a newborn.
When you have kids, your whole world shifts. Your priorities shift. Nothing else matters except spending time with that baby. So I said, I do not want to be tied to someone else’s schedule anymore, which is something I have never wanted. Even waking up for school every morning I had raging anxiety. Seeing my name on a schedule gave me raging anxiety. I just always hated being tied to somebody else’s time clock. I didn’t know at the time that that was entrepreneurship.
I said, I want to do something where I can do it on my time, schedule it when I want to, and still go home with cash because I was bartending and I like instant gratification. So without much thought at all, I printed some really terrible business cards, made a website on Wix and a Facebook page, and just started telling people I was cleaning houses.
I will never forget the first house I ever cleaned was this old Grammy house, and it took me nine hours to clean it, and I charged her $80. And I said, I’m never doing this again. But one thing turned into another, people kept asking, I learned how to price, and people kept referring me. Suddenly I was a full-time independent cleaner and my schedule was maxed out. What do you do then? You hire people to come help you, and then one thing turns into another. Here we are nine years later and I have a business that I sort of accidentally built. I’m happy that we’re here, and I genuinely do love the industry and I genuinely do love cleaning. It’s been a backseat on cleaning and more focus on the business side, but that’s how we ended up here.
Stephanie: Do you guys do all residential, or is there some commercial? Vacation rentals? What does your split look like?
Emily: It’s primarily residential — recurring service, deep cleans, maintenance cleans. We do have a handful of small offices, and we do a lot of Airbnb cleaning. I’m really passionate about Airbnb cleanings because nobody can get it right. There’s a sea of people who can clean your house, but the organization level, communication, and things that come along with Airbnb cleaning — it’s like you’re a mini property manager if you’re doing it the right way. I really love that aspect. I feel like we really excel in short-term rentals. I would love to have more, but they’re hard to get into.
Stephanie: They are, because you can’t just go on Airbnb and comment “hey, I’ll clean for you.” They tend to kick you off for that.
Emily: I’ve done some investigative workarounds with that, but I’ve been blocked a couple of times.
Stephanie: I love warm business. Let’s go a little deeper on vacation rentals, since you clearly have a lot of expertise there. For the listeners who are interested in operating effectively with vacation rentals — your most practical advice on how to handle them, schedule them, communicate with them. You alluded to being almost like a property manager, which is one of the reasons we dropped them. But talk to me about how you balance the boundaries related to tasks included and what you expect of your cleaners.
Managing Vacation Rentals Effectively
Emily: There’s always inconsistency with turnovers. Most properties have property-specific instructions, and communication gets lost. Somebody forgets how many candy boxes go out, or what the welcome sign name is supposed to say, or how many toilet papers are supposed to be there — and they’re all different. So it’s a lot of legwork on the front end, but I have a binder for every vacation rental we have with photos of how the beds are supposed to look, what color the sheets are, pictures under every sink of what’s supposed to be under there, as well as a checklist form. That goes in a clear slip binder, and the team flips through and checks things off.
That way, no matter who goes — it doesn’t matter who goes, it doesn’t need to be the same person. I could send anybody who knows how to read and follow instructions to any of the Airbnbs we clean, and it can be the exact same as the person who has done it a hundred times, as long as they can read and follow instructions.
As far as staffing for that, it’s not difficult because it doesn’t matter who goes. Whether we’re working with a property manager or the actual owner, we use Turno for all of our properties. I push everybody who signs up with us as a short-term rental to go to that because it is easy scheduling. When they book through whatever system, it goes straight onto our cleaning calendar.
I have the host also create their checklist and property-specific instructions. There are certain things I ask them to do to hold my team accountable. Within those softwares, you can make it so in order to complete the checklist and get paid, they have to take certain photos of things, and you have to open the camera roll — you can’t open it from your photo library. So if it says make sure the lake dock is cleaned up and it has a picture, if you don’t take the picture, we know you didn’t do it. That’s how I manage making sure things are done properly.
In all my years, the only reason we’ve ever been let go from a short-term rental is because they sold. We’ve never been fired.
Emily: And I don’t remember the other parts of your question. I’m sorry.
Stephanie: That’s okay — that’s like the really super, because excellence, right?
Emily: No, absolutely.
Stephanie: So when it comes to things we’ve run into with vacation rental owners — they want us to do things outside of cleaning, and they get disappointed when we won’t do that or frustrated that we won’t behave as a property manager. Things like hauling firewood, shoveling snow, changing light bulbs. How do you differentiate?
Emily: We do those things. I feel like that’s because the market is so saturated, especially where I live. There are Airbnbs everywhere. It’s a very touristy area. So I feel like there has to be a competitive edge outside of just yes, our system is great and we get it right all the time — but so can other people. So how do you stand apart?
When it comes to expectations — they want us to skim the pool, no problem. Change light bulbs, okay, we can do that. Anything that is reasonable, we will take care of, and I build those small things into their turnover service.
We have properties 30 miles away in a really popular lake community. Over the winter, when we had that really bad cold front come through, they called me and asked if I would go shut the water off. No problem. And I bill them for it. Because I have such a good relationship with all of the property managers and hosts, and because they’ve been with us for years, I don’t mind doing those things as long as we get compensated for it.
If you’re strictly focused on cleaning only and you can stay competitive in your area, I would rather just do that. But for my area specifically, there has to be something else that we’re offloading for them to remain competitive.
Stephanie: That makes a lot of sense, and I’m happy we’re having this conversation because it points to the fact that every market is slightly different. We are not saturated with vacation rentals — we’re so rural and it’s very seasonal. It just felt more like an annoyance to do things outside of cleaning. But when you have a saturated market both on cleaners and clients in a specific niche, you’ve got to do something to set yourself apart. And a lot of people can clean well — they may not be able to stay organized and have the binder and all of the operational side of things down. I don’t ever want people to blindly think that because Stephanie doesn’t do that, they shouldn’t either. If your cleaners are getting compensated and you’re good with it, whatever you choose is good. Don’t feel bad about how you’re making money.
Emily: It works for us. I’m sure it doesn’t work for everybody, but for somebody who genuinely likes the turnover industry, I want more of those properties, and if I can sprinkle a little more “this is why you should choose us” on there, I will do it.
Wild Turnover Stories and How to Handle Them
Stephanie: Have you had any wild guest situations where you had to clean up after anything untoward?
Emily: I have total horror stories about turnovers. All of our rentals are huge — they’re massive, like 5,000 square feet, eight beds and bunk beds on the lake. Parties are definitely thrown. We have run into vomit, broken things galore, and furniture in random places that didn’t even belong in the house. When those things happen, this is not a standard turnover — this is way above and beyond. We bill for that and itemize it on their invoice, then they send that to Airbnb or VRBO, and the guests pay for it. I never have any issues as long as it’s reasonable for upcharging.
Recently, one of our party houses — somebody had left the stove on. It’s a glass top stove, and when we got there, it had been on so long it cracked into pieces. That’s not our responsibility. We just handed that back off to the property manager. That’s the fine line of — this is not even remotely cleaning. This is your problem.
Most of the time, 90% of the time, it’s a good, practical turnover. There’s lived-in mess, obviously, where they’re having a great time, but it’s not usually excessive.
Stephanie: One of our colleagues in the industry who does a lot of turnovers in Atlanta shared that they will only do places that have at least two-night stays, because so many adult films are being filmed in Airbnbs rented out for the day. The cleanup after that, as one could imagine, is maybe a bit sticky. Not something we want to be doing.
Emily: I wish you wouldn’t have told me that, because that’s what I’m going to be thinking of. But I will say — you can cut this part out — semen is not soluble in water. The amount of condoms we have had go through the washer and then the dryer — once you dry them, they become flaky. At that point it’s just, hey, you need new sheets.
Stephanie: I don’t think we should cut that. I think we should keep that in, because we have not even used that word on the podcast. We’re 115 episodes in. How have we not said the word semen? We’re cleaners, for goodness sake.
Hiring for Values, Not Experience
Stephanie: I wanted to note — having previous hotel cleaners on staff, they never work out. That’s one of the reasons I don’t hire people with cleaning experience necessarily. Almost every single cleaner that has worked at another company and came to us — you’ve got to break them of bad habits instead of just starting with no habits at all. People who hop from cleaning service to cleaning service — well, there’s a reason they didn’t work out at the last place.
Emily: I know some companies say to only hire experienced cleaners, and I totally get that, there are positives. But people who come from other cleaning services — they never measure up. They can’t ever get there, whether it’s cleaning or attitude. The attitude is, I can teach you how to clean, but I can’t change your attitude.
Stephanie: I totally agree. It’s more like, what kind of person is this? That’s what we’re hiring for — not can they clean right now in this moment, but what kind of person are they? Can they problem solve? Are they good? When tempted, are they going to steal? And sometimes you don’t know that until they do it, but there are signs sometimes.
Have you had any theft issues?
Handling Theft: A Hard Line in the Sand
Emily: Once. It’s interesting because you would never hire somebody you thought would steal to begin with, but this was somebody who actually worked for me in the restaurant industry, somebody I knew for a very long time and trusted. Never in a million years. And it was the most mortifying moment of my life when I got the text from the client who said there was $400 missing out of his top drawer. I responded with a laughing face and said, “ha, like you’re funny.” And he said, no, I’m serious. And I said, shut up, are you kidding me? There’s no way anybody on my team, especially the people I sent to your house today, would ever do that.
Long story short, I bluffed and said there was some footage, and somebody came clean. The money was returned, and she was let go. He didn’t press charges. He was very understanding. She was in a really bad spot — had two young kids, was a single mom. It’s not that it makes it excusable, because it’s not. But in a moment of despair, it’s like, there’s the solution to my problems. That’s where excellence and integrity comes into play — yes, it’s tempting, but that’s not the solution. That actually buries you even worse.
She was super apologetic. Said she didn’t know where that came from, that it was very out of her character, which it was. But at the end of the day, that trust was totally tainted. That was probably five years ago, and I have never had an issue since.
Stephanie: Thank you for sharing that, because that’s going to help somebody. Almost all of us have had some type of stealing scenario. It’s not if — it is when it’s going to happen. Not to freak anybody out, but it’s kind of a rite of passage to be a cleaning business owner. When people are in financial dire straits, their sight gets very short. I need to solve this today, right now, because I can’t pay my bills. Desperation will make people act in very strange, out-of-character ways, and they can’t see that what they think is solving the problem right now is actually creating a worse one.
You handled it exactly right, because Maria Dorian, who is a good friend of mine, has said the same thing — say that there’s footage, say that they’re pulling the tape and you haven’t seen it yet, but is there anything we’re going to see here? That makes them typically fess up.
Emily: It was a risky move to go that route, but I knew this client wouldn’t lie about it. He had no reason to. So I gave it a whirl, and it brought it to light. I don’t know that that’s always the solution, but it worked in this case.
Stephanie: How did the rest of the team react? How did you handle that from a cultural perspective?
Emily: This was five years ago, and my team was really small at the time — only about five people, including the one who had stolen. They were just as shocked as I was. But if anything, it put the fear of God in them to never steal. And at some other point in their life, if they’re ever tempted somewhere else, they’re going to think back to that moment and be like, man, I could catch charges.
Stephanie: And it also makes people respect you — that you’re going to do the hard thing in the moment. That’s really the only thing we can do, which is let somebody go. Because that’s the one thing you can’t do in this industry — you can’t let stealing happen. You’ve got to have a really strong, firm line on that one that cannot be crossed. As much as they’ll beg and say it’s a one-off thing, that’s a hard line in the sand.
Emily: And at that point in business, I didn’t have a backbone. I came from what felt like power-hungry dictator managers my whole younger-life career, and was never under good management. So I was kind of traumatized by that, and it bled into me being a people-pleasing manager for a really long time. I was not an efficient leader at that point. That was maybe one of the turning points of, okay, it’s time to stop being everybody’s best friend and letting everything slide. Those are the type of moments that are character builders for ourselves as leaders.
The Business Merger That Taught Everything
Stephanie: I really want to hear about this merging of another business with yours and what that looked like. Why did you feel that was a good idea? What led you to that decision?
Emily: At the core of it all — lack of confidence. Keep that in mind as I tell the story.
I was four years in. I was a solo cleaner for a hot while, then started hiring help, and finally started to build a team. At the time I had a pretty large team — for me, it was large — ten or eleven cleaners at a time, all with booming schedules. I was wearing every hat. Field manager, quality control, marketing, scheduling, client relations — everything. And I had hit this wall where it’s like the make-or-break moment for most people: am I going to quit here, or am I going to push through?
I felt so maxed out. I had just gotten remarried, we had found out we were pregnant, and I just didn’t have anything else to give to the business. I felt like there was so much I could see that I couldn’t obtain or achieve because I didn’t have the skills — leadership skills, backbone, speaking skills. I didn’t even know what a spreadsheet was. I was doing everything by the seat of my pants, just hoping it worked out. And it always did, which was lucky for me, but there was very little strategy to scaling.
Every time I needed to look at a spreadsheet with profit and loss statements, I was incredibly overwhelmed. And instead of reaching out for help or picking up a book or watching a podcast, I was just in a moment of desperation like, somebody — I just need another version of me who knows all the things I don’t know.
I met somebody in a local business club, and she complemented all the things I lacked. She was very business savvy — great at spreadsheets, systems, processes, and things I didn’t want anything to do with. I wanted to hype up my team, lead them, encourage them, be really nice to our clients, push for good reviews, do all the things in the day-to-day field work.
Long story short, she had just launched and didn’t have hardly any clients or revenue. And I just said, what would you think about partnering together? Because I have all of the clients and all of the cleaners and the reputation, and you have everything it would take to scale this business.
Without seeking counsel or much of anything, I just said, this is the solution to all my problems. She had a great brand — a much more relatable brand that could be scaled to things other than just cleaning. We agreed to take on that brand, dissolve Just Peachy, and announce the partnership with that brand.
That lasted six months.
Stephanie: Wow.
Emily: It was when you start to feel like you are an employee of your own business and everything you built — suddenly I’m back to punching a clock for somebody else. And there was no buy-in either. Stupid me, I didn’t even require a buy-in. I just said, come on, you can have 50%.
I don’t want to say it was the worst decision I ever made, because it propelled me to where I am now. Now I can look at spreadsheets, and now I know that if there’s something I don’t know how to do, you can pay somebody or outsource it instead of giving them half of your business.
We just weren’t compatible. I am a people person. I love people. I am compassionate, empathetic, I understand life situations. I came from being managed by crazy dictators who didn’t know how to speak to a human or how much farther a “good job” goes than “why are you effing this up?”
My team didn’t love it. There was a huge culture shift. It started to feel very corporate, and that was not at all what I was striving for. I always said I want every day when somebody wakes up and has to go to work, I want them to not dread going to work. I always wanted to create a place where people actually enjoy not only what they do, but where they do it. And that was dying. It was dying for me because I didn’t like where I worked, and it was dying for my team. Some of these people had been with me for years, and people were leaving.
I was pregnant, I hated my business, and my team was leaving — not quitting the job, they were quitting the people. And that hurts worse. If you hate your job, fine. But when something shifts so drastically that they don’t want to be around you anymore, that hurts.
I had this moment of, this is not what I expected at all. And I said, you can have it.
There was a small buyout over the course of several months that I lived off for a short while, and then when that compensation money ran out, I was broke again with a baby, newly married, and looking for a house. Just this terrible storm of, wow, what did I do?
I told my husband — if I ever start another business, it’s not going to be a cleaning business. I just felt so burned and so embarrassed. I made this great business that I loved with this brand that I loved, and then I just kind of lit it on fire. I felt a lot of shame through that.
Stephanie: It’s such low-hanging fruit, and because you’d been doing it for so long, you still had people every single day reaching out. Are you cleaning, are you cleaning, are you cleaning?
Emily: I talked to my husband and I said, I don’t know what else I’m good at other than scrubbing toilets and leading people. And I genuinely did miss it. Because I still owned the name and the LLC, I just re-registered it and started over from scratch with zero cleaners and zero clients, and I honored the non-solicitation — I did not reach out to a single client. I had some come back, but I honored that.
That season was hard, but I will say I don’t regret any of it. I’ve surpassed everything in the last two years that I ever did before. I created my own standard operating procedures, I created all of the things on the back end that you’re not thinking about when you’re like, oh, I’m going to start a cleaning business. Because of that experience, I’ve learned that it’s better to learn how to do it yourself than to give it all away to somebody else and get burned.
Now I genuinely do like making Airbnb binder checklists. I still outsource my books — I do not look at my bank account, I do not look at a profit and loss statement, because my accountant will either say yes or hey, you need to cut it out on this. There are still so many areas that I need to grow drastically in.
ADHD, Perfectionism, and Finding the Right Leadership
Emily: When I watch your videos and you talk about spreadsheets and tracking, I aspire to the amount that you track. I am recently diagnosed ADHD and finally medicated for it. Found out I’m not crazy and I’m not lazy — my brain is just different. I aspire to get to the level of being so in tune and aware of where everything is, and I’m getting better about it. But those are still things I don’t love, and I’m having to get over the hurdle of — just because you don’t enjoy it doesn’t mean you are exempt from the responsibility of it.
Stephanie: That’s so true. And to give you some credit, I also have a full, very analytical management team who help with operations, which gives me the bandwidth to really dig into that data analysis side. I also have ADHD. I think a lot of people with ADHD are much more likely to be entrepreneurs — for even what you said about not wanting to clock in and give somebody else your time. But it can make things more challenging, and you have to come up with solutions to manage yourself. Anytime somebody compliments me on my organization, I’m like, I have people that organize my life.
Right now I still wear all the hats. I had a great leadership team, a phenomenal field manager. She was incredible, she did quality control. But she wasn’t a good leader. The techs didn’t respect her fully. Can you pinpoint exactly what wasn’t working with that hire?
Emily: Arrogance. I consider myself to be a servant leader, and I will die on the hill that humility is the key to everything. You will earn the respect and acceptance of pretty much anybody if you can admit when you’re wrong, apologize when it’s appropriate, and take accountability even when it’s uncomfortable.
When I’m looking for leadership potential, I’m looking for: are you humble? Can you stand your ground when it’s necessary, but are you humble enough to be teachable and likable? Because whoever says “I don’t care if they like me” — well, you should, because it’s a lot better and easier if they like you. There’s a fine balance between them liking you and them respecting you.
Most people I’ve had in leadership positions lean one way or the other way too heavy. I have sympathy for that, because I’ve been in management a long way. I hate the word boss. Somebody on my team got me a little plaque — it’s about a boss or something, and almost like, but under it was like a really sweet saying, and it was like very, you know, a certain leadership kind of boss. But people who just let power go to their heads and can’t come back down to reality — I don’t want those people on my team. At the end of the day, the techs are the people who are making you money. If they don’t feel fairly treated, encouraged, or respected — if they feel like the hammer is coming down on them all the time — they’re not going to work hard.
People who genuinely like their job will work harder than anybody, even over being paid $10 an hour more. Money is a motivator, but I do not believe for most people that money is the biggest motivator. On a psychological level, people want to feel taken care of and safe and respected and told good job, and be given grace when they mess up. I will give forgiveness all day long as long as you can own up to the mistake, correct it, and make sure it doesn’t become a habitual thing. I don’t know how I got off on that tangent.
Stephanie: I’m so happy you went into that, because it really highlights what you value. Anytime I’m really upset about something somebody has done, it’s typically because it’s completely at odds with something I hold very near and dear. Why is this bothering me so much? Because they are not acting in accordance with my strong values and the values I want in the business.
What you’re describing — caring about humility and having a servant’s heart — I think that’s incredibly common in cleaning business owners. We really care deeply about what we’re doing because we’re helping people. It’s so intimate. You have to care in order to do this thing long term.
Current Management Structure and Business State
Stephanie: What does your management look like now, structurally? Do you have other people in place? Is everything back on you?
Emily: For the most part, it’s all on me. I had a great operational field manager and a back-end scheduler and client communications person who I laid off simply because the business just wasn’t making money at the time. It was a really hard decision, but it was necessary. Within about a six-week period, I laid off both of them and absorbed it all very fast. It was hard, but it wasn’t anything I had never done before because I’ve worn all these hats before.
When you reached out and asked me to come on the podcast, I hesitated for about two seconds because I really love you, but I had this thought of, I don’t feel qualified to be on this podcast right now because I’m just steady. I’m just leveled out. I’m not going crazy trying to scale right now.
Stephanie: I’m so happy you’re being vulnerable right now, because I cannot tell you how many times I have felt that before hopping on camera for a solo episode — like, how should I be speaking about this? Because it’s a mess right now, financially or whatever the situation. You go through peaks and valleys. You’re not in the pits of hell and despair, but you’re also not at the mountaintop. It’s very important that we have these conversations, not just when we’re at the mountaintop being like, yeah it was really hard back then, look where I am now. Thank you for agreeing to join me today.
Emily: When I was getting advice from Bestie Bot — which is obviously ChatGPT — we were having a conversation and I was saying I just don’t feel qualified to be on the show right now. I’m not doing anything extravagant with Just Peachy right now. I started another business, which is probably why I feel so level — because Just Peachy runs itself for the most part. The team does great. ZenMaid has made my life so easy that it’s kind of on autopilot outside of scheduling, leads, and sending quotes.
Chat was saying it’s okay to just not be going insane trying to get to the next thing. It’s okay to level out for a while and gain some sanity and see what direction you want to go next. And it made me realize it’s okay to just be vulnerable. If you can be genuine, you will go a lot farther and be a lot more successful than somebody trying to give a hard sales pitch. I have no desire to fake looking polished or to fake that I have it all figured out, because if you came in my office right now — it’s madness and chaos. But as somebody with ADHD who just lives in fight-or-flight mode and loves fixing chaos, finding solutions — I’m in this spot where I’m not drowning. And it’s so weird. I’m content.
I can take the time and it’s quiet to decide where I want to go next. The business is steady, it runs well. Next week looks empty, but I know that before the weekend ends I’ll have five realtors call me and two contractors and an Airbnb book. I don’t even stress. When you start panicking is when things get worse. So right now I’m just level, and I’m taking the time to really decide — do I want to go, or am I just okay with where this is right now?
There’s no requirement that says this has to be a million-dollar business. This helps my family pay our bills, gives me a bunch of write-offs, feeds into the business, and supports five other people’s livelihoods, and they all love their job. This is fine. This is good for them. It’s good for me. Our clients are happy. And do I want to lose my mind again and keep going? Of course, because I love chaos, I eventually will. But for right now, I’m just good. I have something you talk about — I have right now a work-life balance, which is unheard of for me. I usually do not have that because I love work and I make it my life. But that’s not always sustainable, especially for my husband.
Stephanie: This is so important for everybody to take away — where your business is going to be only needs to make sense for you as the owner. A very useful exercise for me years ago was to work backwards: what is the number I need to take home to have what I truly need, and what does the business need to be in order to facilitate that? It was a lot smaller than I thought. It made it concrete — I could happily live off of it being this size and never getting bigger, and anything over top would be the icing on top. Don’t do it mindlessly if it doesn’t make sense for your life. If the only reason you’re doing something is ego — to look big and impressive — that doesn’t make sense. I really admire the fact that you are in this moment just being like, this is what makes sense for me. Only make that decision when it’s right for you.
Starting a New Business: Good Bones Estate Sales
Stephanie: Do you want to keep your new business private for now, or would you like to share?
Emily: Just Peachy has been on autopilot and I’m happy with where it is, because it’s not causing chaos and stress every day right now. I needed something else to cause stress. I guess I would always just open a new location in Wisconsin when that was happening.
My best friend and I — she has been working with her mother-in-law, who is a very well-known name in the Buckhead Atlanta area, doing estate sales. She has like eleven years of experience doing estate sales, and I have quite a few years of at least somewhat running a successful business. She asked me one day, do you want to start an estate sale business with me? And I was like — me, you, no employees, alone in people’s houses selling stuff.
So it’s Good Bones Estate Sales. We actually just launched it at the end of December and we’ve already done one sale, with another coming up in a couple weeks. It is not a saturated market. It is a very outdated industry that really needs modernizing, and I just love bringing new, fresh energy to very outdated industries.
It’s great because it doesn’t interfere at all with the current business — one of my big things was it cannot interfere, I have huge responsibilities with this business. They complement each other very well and I don’t feel overwhelmingly stretched between them. It’s something new and interesting which feeds that dopamine desire, but it’s not boring. There are so far and few between right now that if it picked up later and became something bigger, there might have to be decisions within Just Peachy about hiring management and outsourcing. But we’re not there yet. I’m just enjoying treasure hunting and leading the business.
Stephanie: I would struggle not buying everything. My house would be filled with crap. I just know it.
Emily: Let me show you my goose. This is my goose that I found. I turned into a meemaw when I started this business. I love everything old and I hate everything mass produced. I love character, and yeah, I struggle with it too. I want to buy everything also.
Stephanie: It sounds like you will be agile and not drop anybody’s belongings.
Emily: We’re going to hope so, but we are clumsy, so we’ll do our best.
The Power of Authenticity in Business
Stephanie: That’s amazing. I’m so happy we had this conversation because there are so many relatable things. Like you mentioned, authenticity — people can feel it. In our businesses, the clients, the employees, they can all smell bullshit. We can smell it from a mile away when somebody is not being authentic. So I really appreciate your emphasis on that, and that it will get you far if you just be yourself — unless you suck, then don’t be yourself.
Emily: I used to mask it for a long time. I’d be like, I’m just so freaking quirky and weird, and I say the wrong things. It was exhausting trying to be polished and perfect all the time. One day I was just like, I’m done doing that. Ever since then, I feel like my network has grown. People reach out to me for so many things other than cleaning, even if it’s just a referral, because they know I am very straightforward and I’m not going to BS people or try to earn a referral and get something in return. It’s just like, I’ll tell you who’s good. Just providing that value and trying to help people in any way you can.
Closing Thoughts
Stephanie: I’ve so enjoyed this, Emily. Where can people follow along with your business, or maybe they have somebody who just passed and has a house to sell?
Emily: Well, I will say, you don’t have to die to have an estate sale — you can move from Wisconsin to Savannah and downsize. But the estate sales that do come from passing people are the best, because they have the best treasures. We are Good Bones Estate Sales in Woodstock, and then Just Peachy Cleaning Professionals in Woodstock. You can follow both of those pages on Facebook, and I would love a referral for either one.
Stephanie: We’ll definitely link that all below. Everybody leave Emily some love down in the comments. This has been fantastic. I’d say leave a condom emoji, but I don’t think there is one of those for engagement, so maybe an eggplant. Just please leave an eggplant down in the comments below, and don’t say anything else guys, because we want the future listeners to be totally like, what is going on here — until they get to the very end. You’ve got to listen to the end to know what the hell we’re talking about. I guess that’s it guys. We’ll see you on the next episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners. Thanks, Emily.
Note: This transcript has been edited for clarity and readability.
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
QUICK TIP FROM THE AUTHOR
Simplify and enjoy your scheduling with a scheduling software made for maid services
- Have a beautiful calendar that's full but never stressful.
- Make your cleaners happy and provide all the information they need at their fingertips.
- Convert more website visitors into leads and get new cleanings in your inbox with high-converting booking forms.
- Become part of a community of 8000+ cheering maid service owners just like you.
Start your FREE ZenMaid trial today and discover the freedom and clarity that ZenMaid can bring to your maid service! Start your FREE trial today
