How Handwritten Letters Built a Thriving Cleaning Business, with Lucy Spencer

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Introduction

Stephanie: Hello, everyone. Welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I’m your host, Stephanie from Serene Clean. And in today’s episode, we have a very special guest, Miss Lucy Spencer from River Girl Cleaning in northern Boston, Massachusetts. Lucy has owned her business for darn near two decades now, and we have a lot to learn from her. She has an incredible story, and I can’t wait to hear all about it. So welcome Lucy. Thank you so much for joining us.

Lucy: Thank you, Stephanie. I’m super excited to be here, super excited to meet you, and let’s do this.

Starting a Side Hustle with Sister

Stephanie: Yeah, heck yeah. Love it. Love the energy. As you know, I like high energy. So tell me about what were you doing before you opened your cleaning business. Give us some backstory of just your life in general.

Lucy: So before opening the cleaning business, I pretty much bounced around between retail and I worked for many, many years at Dunkin’ Donuts. I worked at Duncan’s for a very long time. I worked at retail. When I did the first step to start the business, I was actually working in a big, like, national chain of retail stores. And I was happy, because I love people. I love the interactions, but I have sort of a backstory, because I have people in my family that run cleaning businesses. I have two family members that have two different businesses.

Lucy: So at some point, I was talking to my sister, and was like, why don’t we start something, even if it’s just like a little side gig to make a little extra money, or just get ourselves busy and own our own time. So that’s how we kind of started.

Stephanie: And are they in Boston, your family members that have the businesses? I’m intrigued how that all works together.

Lucy: My sister actually worked for our aunt when we started this thing. She was doing cleaning. She was a cleaning technician for that business, and so was my cousin. And my cousin ended up going and opening his own business as well. It’s actually awesome, because we exchange information very often. We help each other with the business. In family meetings and dinner parties and all the stuff, the subject of the conversation is always the same one. We always talk shop.

Stephanie: I actually really love that, because one of the biggest kind of negative experiences that I’ve seen is just in consulting or just talking to people, is people working with family in their business, and that can be some of the worst things that you can do. So in this kind of solution that you guys have, you’re all in the industry, but you stay in your own lane. You’re collaborating and kind of like, so say, you have too many clients, or you’re overbooked or something, would you then send that to a family member? Or how would you handle this?

Lucy: Yes, definitely, I do. It’s just so funny, because I do send to my friends. I have friends in the industry. You know, as you would imagine, we network and we connect with people that way. One of my very good friends, I’m always sending clients that I can’t take on. I call her and I say, “Hey, I gave your number to so-and-so, they’ll be reaching out to you.” So she picked up quite a few clients from that.

And my cousin, he’s going on vacation next week, so we’re kind of covering for him on the days he can’t service everybody. So it’s good. We exchange experience and we learn from each other. Funny enough, we are in the same region, the same area. There are clients for everybody, and there’s more than enough to go around, even though we are in a market flooded with like individual cleaners. We have a lot of solo cleaners going on in this area. I would say probably about 80% of the business in the area is run by small businesses. It’s very hard for a big chain to kind of dominate the Boston market.

Personalized Service Beats Big Franchises

Stephanie: That’s interesting. So you would say that Bostonians aren’t interested in going for a Merry Maids or a franchise? They would like to work with smaller businesses?

Lucy: I feel like there’s two factors in there. The first one is, when you get a smaller business, you kind of get a more personalized service. And also, because there is such a high flow of people offering the service, it feels like you may end up hiring someone local, rather than a big company that you have to go through hoops to get in touch with someone.

Stephanie: That’s a great example of how we can kind of stand out compared to franchises. Every single large city is going to have franchises, and it sometimes feels very overwhelming. Look how many reviews they have, or they’re so established, or they look so professional. But there’s definitely downsides. I’ve talked to many people who have gotten clients from franchises, and that’s what the customers say – it’s so impersonal, it just feels like we’re a number to them. There’s things to learn from franchises, for sure, because they obviously know how to scale, but I feel like we can really have the upper hand as small businesses sometimes, because we can give that personalized experience.

Lucy: Yes, I feel like there’s a client for everybody. There is this kind of person that will prefer a more standard service. There’s this other client that will like a different, more personal approach, or more customized cleaning. There’s plenty of people in the world, so there’s a little bit for everyone.

Getting First Clients with $10 and Handwritten Letters

Stephanie: I love that you guys clearly have a very abundant mindset about clientele in general. So tell me about getting those first few clients. What kind of tactics and strategies did you use when you first opened up? How did you get customers right away?

Lucy: So there is kind of interesting, because my initial investment in the business was literally $10. That’s how much we spent. I was working retail and talking to my sister, brainstorming this idea, and I was like, how do I go about starting this? This was like in spring of 2008, many moves ago.

I was like, “Well, how about if I reach out to people I know, or people around me?” So what I ended up doing was I wrote a letter, and in the letter I stated who I was. I gave my home address, told them where I live.

I started the letter like, “Hi, my name is Lucy. I’m married. I live at this address and me and my sister, we’re starting a business. We’re offering cleaning services, and I’ll be more than happy to come and talk to you, to introduce myself, if you have any interest along those lines.”

I remember at the very bottom of the page, I said, “We’re willing to offer a free cleaning for women undergoing cancer treatment.”

So then I made 100 copies of those letters, folded them neatly. And I have to mention this, because my husband will be very disappointed if I don’t – me and my husband, he helped me with this. We went around our neighborhood, the immediate neighbors right next door, and we started passing those letters out. We left the letter on the front steps. We went through 100 houses, and from those 100, I got four clients, four phone calls, and that was the very first four.

I remember our first cleaning. We charged $50 for the cleaning.

Stephanie: How long did it take? Do you remember?

Lucy: I think it took like, three hours, like two and a half, three hours. And back then, I was like, “We’re happy.” My sister got $25, I got $25. Yay!

And so we booked, we ended up booking four clients that stayed with us for a very long time. One of those clients, she’s my neighbor to this day. She lives right across the street from me. She’s a real estate agent, so she’s like, “I can book you when I need to put houses on the market or prepare for open houses.” And that’s what we did. She would call me and say, “Hey, are you available? Can you do this?”

So we started working one day a week, me and my sister. We took a day off from our regular jobs, and then pretty soon we went to two days, and then three days. Back in the day, we used a very important tool in 2008, which was Craigslist.

Stephanie: Oh gosh, I can’t imagine going on there for cleaning now!

Lucy: It was very – you had to put a lot of effort, because I was stalking Craigslist every day, looking for people that say, “Hey, I need someone to clean my house.” And so I would reach out to the person, schedule to go meet them. They would give us the address. And it was before GPS was very functional like it is today. So we had to usually print out the address from MapQuest and follow directions on MapQuest. We went up – anything to show up, we would take it. If it’s like an hour away, we’ll go. If it’s like two hours away, we’re there. So we’re like, taking everything and anything, so much that one of the very first clients we got through Craigslist is actually still with me today. It’s been like 17 years, and she’s still there. We went through a lot of things with her through the years – she moved like three or four times, she got divorced, her kids went to college, and we’re still there.

17 Years with the Same Client

Stephanie: That’s amazing, and also just shows how entrenched you can be in people’s lives in our business. I do hope you’ve done a couple price increases! But what I really love is that you’re highlighting how easy we have it today. You are making me so appreciative. I can’t read a physical map, because I’m 29, so I’m like, what would have – if we had to use, like, I had to print out maps? Everything technologically has come so far, even going on Craigslist to find clients. Oh my gosh, we’re so lucky nowadays. There’s way more competition, but it just makes it so much easier.

What I love you highlighting about the writing of the letter is that it is very genuine and earnest. I feel like people respond to earnestness really well, and authenticity very well. Was this literally a handwritten letter?

Lucy: Yes, and then I made copies.

Stephanie: Wow, that’s awesome. That would not work for me, because I have the handwriting of a doctor. They’d be like, “What is this chicken scratch?”

Lucy: But you know, Stephanie, maybe a year or so ago, with everything that’s going on with technology, Google Ads and many different ways of trying to conquer the new client, I was kind of stuck in things that I was doing. It was pretty much what everybody else was doing – trying to get clients the same way as everybody else.

And then I sat down and thought, “Wait, I have – what can I do differently that will gain me clients without spending like $10,000 a month?” I was like, “Look inside of you and try to have an idea.” And then I was like, “Oh, maybe I can go back to my old ways, because that’s what worked in the beginning, and maybe it will work now. Who knows? It doesn’t hurt to try.”

So I went to the post office, got a roll of 100 stamps, and it cost me $78. I wrote a letter introducing the business, saying who I am, where we work. I made a list of clients in certain zip codes that I would like to service. I went online, looked at their houses, and put together a list of 100 people, because I had 100 stamps.

I went to the trouble of printing the letter. This time, I didn’t handwrite the letter, but I did handwrite their addresses. I put an address label with my company and everything, but I handwrote the address where the letter was going to. And to my surprise, out of that, I’ve been getting probably about one to 3% return on that. And then I kept doing that. I’m like, “It’s working and cost me $78. I’m gonna keep doing this.” It costs me a little bit of my time to handwrite every single address, but now I kind of got it down to a science. In like half hour, I can just bring a bunch of them out, and so it’s working. I went back to the basics, and it’s working, and I’m not spending a fortune. So it’s a win-win.

Human Connection Over Technology Fatigue

Stephanie: What I think that really highlights is, I think everybody’s kind of getting fatigued by all of the technology of it all, the AI of it all. And obviously there’s certain things that we can utilize those tools for, but that human connection – I’m glad you highlighted that you are physically handwriting the address, because for me, if I get a piece of mail with handwriting, I’m opening it. That would stand out to me compared to all of my junk mail that’s just normal. If you did just like a normal promotional postcard or something like that, it’s getting tossed. That would stand out to me.

So I love that, and at the end of the day, we can always go back to the basics of what we know works. Same with me, I did cleaning giveaways in the beginning and so we continually go back to a cleaning giveaway, a good old fashioned “you want a free clean?” It doesn’t have to be rocket science. It doesn’t have to be this complicated thing.

I’m glad to hear that that’s working for you. That’s amazing that you’re getting clients from that.

Lucy: I am. And actually, once I saw it was working, I’m like, “I have to keep doing this.” And I was like, “This is what I’m going to be doing every month. I’m going to be mailing out whatever we need to fill up our calendar. If I need three clients, I’m gonna send like 200 letters out.”

And I’ve been doing this, it’s been working. And one of the things that I feel is facilitating the process was when I wrote the letter, I mentioned, “If you call and you say you got this letter, I’m gonna give you $50 off your first cleaning.” I feel like $20 is too little for someone to bother. $50 gives me a better chance of them calling.

So I’ve been doing this, cutting my profit margin on first cleaning, just to get my foot inside the door. And then once you’re in there, once they reach out and you book their first cleaning, you have better chances of booking a recurring client from that.

It’s been happening. I can meet with them, I can talk and I value personal connections and human interactions so much. I love people, and I’ll talk your ear off. But some people connect to that. Some people don’t. Some people are more reserved. They don’t want to chitchat, or they want to just go down to business, and that’s completely fine. But I feel like this is what I do. This is like, I want to be personable. I want to be the person that they know they can trust. If I’m bringing a crew inside your house to clean, I want you to know that you can trust this crew 100% because I trust them and you trust me. So it’s kind of like a chain reaction.

The In-Person Walkthrough Process

Stephanie: Oh gosh, you have such an infectious positive – I can see you, but that works. I love that what you’re getting from your business, it really is kind of filling your cup. I am also a very extroverted person, and for me, just that human connection, it invigorates me, because I’m the same way. I need to be around people. That’s what makes me feel good, and just pouring into the team as well.

So I love that. What a great tool, all of these things. Clearly, that means you’re doing in-person walkthroughs. Can you walk me through your walkthrough process for a residential client?

Lucy: Yes. So when they call or they text or whatever they choose to book – I have an online booking system on my website that rarely gets used. For some reason, my clients or my prospect clients, they don’t go through that system. I’m going to end up canceling the service, because it never gets booked.

So I book up – I first ask them, “What’s the best day and time for you?” And I always try to make an effort of accommodating their time. If it’s a Saturday morning, so be it. So they feel they are important. So they feel like their business mattered to me.

When we come in, I introduce myself, and I ask them to show me the house. “Can you show me around, and we can talk the details.” I ask questions during the conversation, “Are you sensitive to any smells? Do you have any allergies? Is there a cleaning product that you dislike?”

And then I always tell them, “We bring our own supplies, and unless you have something very specific that you want us to use, then I ask you to buy and provide that product. Otherwise, it’s what we bring.”

And one of the things that I did to just like, put it in the mix to cut costs a little bit, I always ask them to provide paper towels and trash bags. That’s the two things we don’t bring. They have the responsibility of providing that. We do use rags, but for the toilets and the bathroom in general, paper towel has, you know, a sanitary reason.

Stephanie: Yeah, we don’t use reusable cloths or microfiber on toilets. That’s nasty.

Lucy: So that’s the two things. Usually, when I do the walkthrough, I have this thing in my brain. I put the house in my brain, and immediately my brain knows how much I’m going to charge. I am studying to maybe make a more scientific approach, because it’s all in here. So like to figure out how I can charge them with square footage or whatever.

But right now, it’s like my price is in my brain. So I go in and like, “Oh, this house, okay, $300, $400, whatever.” And I have to come up with a system to come up with that price, just in case I step back and I have someone else doing the walkthrough, or we do the price over the phone or something like that. But I still value that initial visit. I like to have a chance to make a good first impression.

Stephanie: I love that you’re talking about this, because obviously, I’ve said many times, we don’t do in-person walkthroughs. And there is detriment to that. What you’re talking about, that connection is much more difficult to make without that in-person walkthrough. That’s the negative. The other negatives – we’re not seeing the space, we’re not seeing the clutter, we’re not seeing these things. And there’s ways around that.

But for us, that dictates the pricing model that we use of hourly, because we’re going inside unseen. It’s a lot more protective, in my mind, especially for that initial cleaning. Whereas when you go in and you see it, you can be a lot more confident on a flat rate price, because you’ve seen the space. And they’re also going to appreciate that you took that time.

So pros and cons to both ways, and obviously, you get a lot of joy and fulfillment out of that. So talk to me about your current team. How did that start? Did you start hiring pretty early on in your journey? What did it look like from the team perspective for your business?

From Sister Partnership to Going Solo

Lucy: For the most time, the first few years it was just me and my sister. We split everything half and half. It wasn’t until maybe five years into the business that we brought someone in, just to sort of help us out with our daily workload. And that led to another person, and then to another person.

And then at some point, my sister – her husband has a business, and his business took off. She was going to college as an adult, as a mother, and everything became too much for her. She was having a hard time keeping up with the things that she needed to keep up. And she was helping her husband with the administrative part of the business. And she realized it’s just been overwhelming. “I can’t do this.”

So we decided to split, which was the saddest day of my life.

Stephanie: Especially, it sounds like you guys had a really great working relationship. It worked well for you.

Lucy: We always had a great time working. We would be the people dancing in the client’s kitchen when nobody was home. We had so much fun together. I feel like that maybe held us back a little bit because we were in a very comfortable, very happy spot. We didn’t have any ambitions of growing big or making a half a million dollars a year. We’re just doing our thing, having fun, having coffee together, stopping for lunch together.

And then when she left, it was sort of like a punch of reality for me, because now I’m on my own. What do I do? I don’t know how to run this by myself. I always had someone right next to me. If I went on vacation, I had nothing to worry about. I could just turn off my brain and no worry in the world. I could be laying on the beach for seven days, and I knew everything was going to be standing when I came back.

And now I don’t have that anymore. That’s when my mindset started changing. And I was like, “I have to do something.” And then my shoulder gave up. It was too many years of vacuuming and dusting and I was like, “Okay, that’s it. This is my sign. I have to step out of the field and do this from behind the scenes. Still do the work that I love to do, interacting with people, meeting clients, but it has to be in a different way. I have to be behind the scenes now.”

The Transition to Behind-the-Scenes Management

Stephanie: What was that translation like for you, for your clients? Was that difficult on them? I know for me, my clients did not want to not have me. And so I kind of had to sit them down and give them a little talking to.

Lucy: It was – that’s a good question, because in my brain, I was like, “I’m done, because my clients are going to leave. They want to see my face. They want to talk to me.” And it was all here. I was freaking out, “I’m going to lose everything.”

And it turned out – let me just do this the easy way, slowly. I’m still going to show up here and there. And then when I tell them I’m not coming anymore, “But you can still reach me. I’m still around.” And the first few times, you still communicate with them. You still send them a message, “Hey, how’s everything?” Or you let them know, “You’re not going to see me today, but you can trust this person 100%.”

So it turns out that I never lost a client because of that, but it took longer than I expected. It’s just slowly, baby steps, letting them know that I’m still here and I’m still going to show up. I’m going to come into your house, I’m going to talk to you, I’m going to see how everything’s going, but I’m not going to be here scrubbing the toilet next time. Sorry!

Stephanie: I think a lot of times these fears are in our head of how people are going to react, and that stops us from taking certain leaps. Of like, “Oh, they’re gonna, they’re gonna be so upset with us.” And I know for myself, very strong – definitely worked on it over the years – but what makes us really good owners sometimes, what makes us really good service-based business owners, is people pleasing. We want to make our people happy. We want to make the customer happy, but I think that fear of somebody being unhappy with us oftentimes holds us back. Has that happened with you?

Lucy: Yes, definitely, all the time. And that was a point where, if I got a text message completely out of the blue, for some reason, my brain immediately was like, “Oh, no, why? What is wrong? Why are they texting me?” It turns out like, “Oh, I just want to let you know they were going to be out of town. And you can let yourself in.” And I’m like, “Oh.”

Shifting Into a Leadership Mindset

Stephanie: I’d love to hear – you already mentioned briefly that you had to really change your mindset when your sister left and put yourself a bit more into a leadership role, of “Okay, I’m not going to be doing the cleaning.” So now you’ve been at this for 17 years. Are there very strong shifts in your identity or in any of your behavior or personality that you feel has changed for the better since you’ve grown the business and continued to evolve?

Lucy: Definitely, because before, when I was on the field and I had the ladies working with me, it was more like, “We can do this together. Let’s get this, let’s do this.” And like, people know what to do. “You get the bathroom, you get the kitchen, and let’s go.”

And now you have to step back and you have to delegate. And I had no business background whatsoever. I didn’t know how to give orders. I’m afraid of giving orders. And I was like, “Maybe if I talk in a way that they feel like I’m being rude, they’re gonna leave.”

So I was always afraid of giving orders, or afraid of losing an employee, or afraid of something happening during the day. And that’s where I have to educate myself, teach my brain that now you have to delegate. You have to make sure this runs like clockwork, because it’s your name. It’s your business. This is how you make a living. If things go downhill, then you know who’s going to pay for groceries, right?

I have to educate myself to think, “Well, I’m responsible for this, and this is how it has to be done. This is how I think it’s the way to do. So let’s do it.” And it’s hard once you don’t have anyone to teach that. You have to go and find the information and find the education.

Stephanie: That’s why it’s like, I definitely implore all of our listeners, don’t just consume cleaning industry stuff. There’s so many wonderful leadership books and just self-development books in general. And you may not resonate with everything in a book, but sometimes there’s just that one little nugget that comes from it that sticks with you, and it changes your behavior, because it was said in a way that you’ve never thought of it before.

So I love that you seek out information that was going to better you and turn you into the leader that you wanted to be. And do you have any memories of kind of butting heads with employees or allowing them to walk all over you, learning lessons like any anything you care to share?

Dealing with Strong Personalities

Lucy: So this was like very hard, because I had an employee who had a very strong personality. She was fast, and she was like a workhorse, but it was always very hard to communicate with her, because she had her own opinions, and she would talk back, and she would let me know what she was thinking. And sometimes it was not pleasant, but because she showed up, she does the work, she’s fast, I kept going.

And to one point where that was being – because I was not putting things like setting clear expectations. That was – I was getting sick. I was dreading to wake up in the morning to go to work.

Stephanie: Wow.

Lucy: And it was so tough on me, on my family. It was getting me super tired early, and I didn’t even want to deal with her anymore. But I couldn’t make myself fire her. I could not make myself let her go for some weird reason.

Stephanie: Do you think it was because you were afraid you weren’t going to be able to replace her? Or what was that fear from?

Lucy: I think it was just a fear of the confrontation to put myself in a situation where I’m not comfortable with or something different than what I’m used to. Because it’s very easy for you to just be rolling things and letting slide, and “I’ll deal with this tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow will get better. Maybe she’ll have a change of heart. Maybe she’ll become a great person.” Who knows?

And I have this thing where I like to treat the people that work with me well. I like to make them know that they are important, that I care for them in a way that I understand they are helping me out with the business. And sometimes people see that as a weakness, I guess.

Stephanie: Well, it’s easily – I think, without boundaries, that wonderful trait, I have it as well, pretty much everybody listening probably has it – we see the best in people, we genuinely want to help. And if you don’t have a boundary in place, that will be taken advantage of again and again, because you’re not stopping it.

It sounded like almost every day there were instances of – I’m not saying anything negative, but because I’ve done this too, where I’ve been so resentful or not wanting to deal with somebody, but I won’t say anything to them in the moment, because I don’t want to deal with the confrontation.

Lucy: Exactly. And it was that point where we are inside a client’s house. What if I say something and things get out of hand? And also, if I say something without really thinking this through? What if I say something that sounds bad, or am I going to get sued for it? So I always been very careful with that kind of stuff.

Stephanie: So what happened with her? How did it play out?

Vacation Confrontation Forces a Decision

Lucy: So I was on vacation. That’s one of the things I have about vacation. I was on vacation and I booked a cleaning across state lines in New Hampshire on a beach house. I sent out the schedule, I sent out everybody’s hours.

And she sent me a message saying, “Well, just to let you know I will do it this time, but next time, don’t count on me going across state lines.”

And then at that point, I was like – I was in Disneyland. I was like, “No, I just want to enjoy Mickey Mouse. I want to go on my rides.” And I know I have to deal with this. And then that was it. I gave her till the end of the week, and then let her go. I feel much better.

Stephanie: I bet that was immediate relief. I also love that, in the recent podcast interviews, everybody has some type of vacation horror story. It happens!

Lucy: Exactly. And I’m like, “I’m here, I’m in Mickey Mouse, and I just want to be happy, the happiest place on earth.” And it was like, “No, not having this on vacation.”

Stephanie: But I would imagine, at least for me, once I started ripping the band-aid off and having those difficult, potentially confrontational conversations, it’s like a muscle. You get better at it, and you kind of have to, because it’s not like that’s going to go away if we are going to be the owner.

Lucy: Exactly. And it’s experience you gain, like you say, muscle memory. You gain experience from that. So next time you come across a situation like that, your brain immediately goes, “Hey, you’ve been there before. You know what to do now, because you know how this is going to play out.”

Same deal with clients. For the longest time, I was very proud of myself, because I always said, “Oh, I’m good with dealing with difficult clients. I can handle it. I do this.” And then it turns out they’re doing more damage than good to your mentality. My mentality was draining the life out of me.

So the moment I said, “Enough, I’m not going to deal with some person that has a difficult approach in life or a difficult attitude,” when I realized I don’t need to, everything became easier, it became peaceful.

Setting Boundaries with Difficult Clients

Stephanie: I think once you realize that there’s always going to be a client to replace them – just like firing a client versus firing an employee, it’s kind of that same thing. We’re letting the fear of multiple things potentially dictate our lack of action or accepting totally inappropriate behavior.

And I know for me, the first time I fired a client, he was flabbergasted. I don’t think anybody had ever said no to him before, and he threw a total tantrum. And I was like, “This isn’t a fit.” But once I did that, it made it so – yeah, I wasn’t afraid to do it again. That wasn’t the end of the world. They didn’t burn my business down. They didn’t egg my house. It’s okay.

Lucy: Yeah, don’t tell them where you live so they can’t egg it! My husband always says something to me, like every time I complain about a client being unreasonable, we talk about business. And he said to me, “You never missed a client that you fired before. What are you waiting for?” And it’s true. Everybody that came and went, I don’t miss them. More fortunately.

Stephanie: We painstakingly hem and haw, and we fixate on this thing. And it’s like, that’s a really great way to think of it – the last time you did this, it was instant relief, and you never thought about it again. So why are we waiting? Learn from our previous experiences, but faster.

Lucy: And then also, again, the muscle memory – you learn from your mistakes. And then when you come across a client that raises a red flag, you’re like, “Oh, not here. I know what is going. So let’s just cut it short.” And you know, maybe we’re not a good fit for you. Maybe you have to find someone else.

Spotting Client Red Flags

Stephanie: Talk to me about red flags. What are red flags for you in clientele?

Lucy: Well, let me – I’m gonna give you an example that happened this week.

Stephanie: Fresh off the presses!

Lucy: So we booked – we got a referral from a client and her friend needed a deep cleaning. So I go to meet the client, do a walkthrough, and I realize this is sort of almost like – I’m not going to say a hoarding situation, but she has a lot more things inside her house than the average American family.

Stephanie: A lot of clutter.

Lucy: Exactly. So she insists that she wants a deep cleaning. And I tell her, “Unfortunately, we can’t do a deep cleaning in the current state. We would have to work with you to maybe organize or declutter, and I’m willing to do this. It’s not something I do every day, but I’m willing to bring my ladies here, and we can definitely organize everything first before we can actually deep clean.”

So we booked the project into two steps: step one, first floor; step two, second floor. We did the organization declutter part, and after the second part, we did a quick cleaning on the first floor – kitchen, bathrooms and all of that.

And then I had this feeling when I sent her a message, “Please let me know how everything is. I hope you were happy and all that.” She didn’t reply. And then the next day, she sends a message saying, “Well, I wiped the kitchen floor with a paper towel.”

Stephanie: Oh no, not the paper towel test! When they do that –

Lucy: The paper towel! And I’m like, “Oh, geez.” And I bet that place looked like a million bucks compared to what it did before.

Stephanie: Exactly!

Lucy: Oh, my god, yeah, the bathrooms, all the effort we put into the bathrooms, and she goes and wipes the floors with a paper towel. And then she wants to know, what did we use? How was it washed? Did we use a spin mop? Did we use a rag?

And then I go through the whole thing, because she was referred from a client, and so I don’t want to have this expanded and being a big thing. So I was trying damage control with this lady.

And then she says, “Well, so then now we can book the deep cleaning.” Now I’m like, “I don’t think so.”

Stephanie: You said no, we’re not going to do the next one.

Lucy: Well, luckily, I have a cut off for new clients and deep cleanings, and this year we booked the cut off for November 3. So after November 3, I’m not taking any more new clients. I would just work with the recurring ones for the holiday season.

So I was like, “Unfortunately, from this point on, I can’t book that anymore. Maybe next year, January, we can definitely talk again.” So I felt like it was a way of not being rude, or telling her I don’t want to work with you, and then we’re just like, “We’ll push this problem to next year.”

Tactful Communication with Difficult Clients

Stephanie: I love that. That’s a really good point – when we’re like, “Oh, I fired this client,” or whatever, people think we’re being rude or very like – a lot of times, it’s just very tactful how we talk about things. If there is a certain skill to speaking professionally, like business speak almost, instead of – it’s not being sneaky, it’s more so protecting their emotions so that we’re not dealing – because how we handle sometimes a situation could lead to a bad review, or could lead to somebody walking by and saying, “Yeah, okay, next year,” and then she’s gonna forget about it, or hire somebody else. You can kick the can down the road.

Lucy: Exactly, because when they’re happy with you, they might never tell anybody about it. They might never refer you or tell any other friends or family members about it, but if they feel like you somehow disrespected them or offended them in any way, even if you’re in the right, or even if they are not understanding the context, then they might tell 10 people about it.

Stephanie: People are very loud, so we have to handle it. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be afraid – we can’t let that fear not have us do what needs to be done. But there is a very tactful way of handling things, sometimes staying calm. Was this over the phone that this was happening?

Lucy: Yeah. And also, I feel like maybe sometimes you can just say, “Hey, I feel like we’re not a good fit for each other. Maybe you will benefit from having a solo cleaner in your house. Maybe someone that can spend more time, maybe someone that can be there and do the little things that you expect to be done every time. Maybe a housekeeper.” Just kind of steer them in a different direction.

And I don’t mind referring other people. Sometimes I’m like, “Oh, I know this person. Maybe you can contact them and see if that will work.” I mentioned my friend before – I send people to her.

Stephanie: Yeah, like your competitors who you don’t like – if you have a difficult person, “Your problem now.”

Current Team Structure

Stephanie: I’d love to hear – how big is your team now? How many on average? I know it changes day to day.

Lucy: Sometimes we have five people right now.

Stephanie: Five people, yeah. And so do you run teams? Do you run individuals? What kind of is the model for that?

Lucy: So it really – I go with the flow. It depends on the day. So today we have three going to one site and two going to the other site. But at the end of the day, before the day is over, they will meet on the last house, because it’s the bigger house. So then this house will be serviced by five people. Usually I play it by ear with how it goes. And if this team finishes first, they will go to this house, and whoever gets to the place first.

Splitting Up Tasks in a Large House

Stephanie: That makes me very intrigued, because that many fingers in the pot sounds like a nightmare to me. How the hell do you split up a house and not – I know it’s a bigger house, but do you have a “when we have this many people, this is what you do, when we have three, when we have four”? Do you have that laid out, or how does that look?

Lucy: Yeah, so usually, we split like – one person, let’s say this house has seven bathrooms, so one person will start with the kitchen, the other person will start dusting, and one person goes to the bathrooms, someone else will come vacuuming. And then, usually the person with the kitchen will finish first before, because it’s seven bathrooms. Then that person will come and wash the floors after it’s been vacuumed.

I always give them the opportunity to choose what task they want to do. They will talk between them, and they will say, “Well, I feel like doing the kitchen here,” or “I feel like doing the bathrooms.” So most of the time, I let them decide how they want to do it, because they’re on the field and they know better what’s going to work for them that time.

But usually, one person gets the kitchen, the other gets bathrooms, one gets dusting, the other one gets the vacuum. Sometimes we bring two vacuums depending on the size of the house. So if it’s like a 7,000 square foot house, one vacuum starts to the left, the other starts to the right, and then we meet in the middle.

Stephanie: Wow, that is so interesting to me to hear that method. That’s really fascinating, splitting it up. I mean, obviously kitchen and bathrooms, that makes sense, but the dusting and the floors – I have seen that with some – I know some franchises do that where it’s like they’re assigning it in that manner, and as long as it’s very clear who’s doing what, it works really smoothly. For us, the convergence at the end, sometimes things get confusing.

Lucy: One thing that I always say, and my lead repeats this over and over through the day, is “We work together. If it’s five of us here, we work together because everybody wants to go home. So if you finish your task, you go help the next person so they can finish and we can all go home.”

Stephanie: Yeah, exactly. So are you paying hourly then, or do you pay a percentage, a flat rate?

Lucy: It’s a flat rate. It’s by the day’s work, eight hours of work. That’s what they get. And then I book them by the days. So I have people – I have one lady that she can come only three days a week, so that’s those three days that she works, but always by the day.

Stephanie: Are these W-2s or independent contractors?

Lucy: Independent contractors.

Stephanie: Ah, okay, got it. I’m glad I asked. That’s always very interesting, and that makes sense then what you’re how you’re describing it. So have you had a lot of turnover over the years or not really?

Lucy: Not really. So one my lead lady, she’s with me for over two years now. And then the other lady, it’s been pretty close to that. And I got two new ladies recently, but usually I like to keep them.

Stephanie: Well, of course, turnover is never fun. I’ve never been in business so long, but sometimes I talk to people and they’ve had just very steady, steady crews.

Overcoming Language Barriers

Stephanie: I know that you had touched on in your intake form that Spanish is your first language, and that language was something that was a bit of a struggle. Can you talk about that? Because you’re originally from Brazil – were you born in the US?

Lucy: No, I came to the US when I was 21.

Stephanie: Wow, that’s amazing.

Lucy: I didn’t know English. I learned as I went, pretty much. I taught myself. I joke around, I say Bon Jovi, because I would listen to the songs and try to follow the lyrics and learn from that.

And it brings a little bit of insecurity when you’re just starting a business, because you feel like, “What if they think that I’m not good enough for this, and what if they don’t trust me?”

But it was actually very surprising and brought a different level of gratitude to the business, to me as a person, to know that someone that just met me – I’m not from here, apparently you know that I’m from somewhere else, you realize that, and they just look at you and they go, “Here’s the key to my house.” I’m like, “Really? What?” It’s mind blowing.

Stephanie: Yeah, it is. But I think that shows – when you do show up in a very genuine, earnest, professional, friendly way, people can obviously – you can trick people, and there’s people who are very good at scamming and things like that. But I had that same experience early on. I mean, I was a 22 year old kid, and here’s this very wealthy person, like, “Yep, here’s the key to my house. I’ll be gone all weekend, on vacation, please get the deep cleaning done.” And I’m like, “Yeah.” I mean, I knew I wasn’t going to do anything wrong, but they don’t know that.

There is, I think, an energy about you that you have to embody – everything you do needs to scream “You can trust me.”

Lucy: Exactly, and that’s what amazed me. It feels like that’s a big part of interactions, human connections. I present myself to a potential client, and I want them to know they can trust me. And back then, when my English was all broken down, to know that I somewhat sent out the vibes that I am someone that you can trust – it felt so grateful. I felt so grateful, and felt amazing.

We celebrated every client we got, like, with a little dance. We’re super excited. And then come to a part that I watched a couple – I listened to a couple your podcasts where you say, “Well, I was a little naive.” And I was super naive when we started this, to the point where I was so happy to be there. I was so happy to get a client, to book someone that, if they say, “Oh, can you clean the fridge for me?” I’m like, “Yes, I can do that. I’ll be happy to.” And it was like, I was just happy to be there. I was just happy to be working and have work to do.

Grateful for Opportunities in America

Stephanie: So do you feel that running – the opportunity that you’ve had here would be the same in Brazil? Do you feel like you’re so grateful because you came to America?

Lucy: Definitely. The opportunities back in Brazil would be totally different. Here, money plays a big part in everything, of course. And then what makes it – the motivator was the exchange rate. When I would look back and say, “Whoa, I just got $100,” in Brazil it was so much more money. I would have to work probably close to two, three weeks – I don’t even know what the exchange rate is right now – to get the same amount of money.

So it was so awesome. It felt like, “I want to keep doing this,” because it multiplies by truckloads. And the immigrant mentality is, you come here, you work hard, you make money, you secure your life, to have a better life, to offer a better life to the people that you love. And that’s how I cared about it. It was just making a better life for myself while having fun.

So much that I didn’t care about growing the business. I just cared about doing the work, just being of service kind of thing for the longest time.

Stephanie: I love that. And I think my biggest takeaway just from this conversation that I know I’m going to reflect on is just, how can we take joy in all of the small moments of it? It doesn’t have to be this big, gigantic win. It’s just the simple act of the work that we’re doing. There is a lot of joy in that. And being present, I think that is very infectious when you have that, and it trickles down to the rest of your team, because they can feel it and they can feed off of it. And your clients can as well.

I’m sure you’ve seen so much success because of the energy that you bring to the room.

Lucy: And then Stephanie, I feel like I like to say that I’m not selling them a service, per se. When I’m selling them, it’s their own time. And with that, they are benefiting from the work we’re doing for them, because I’m freeing them from all the tasks that nobody likes to do.

And it feels like when someone complains about, “Oh, but that’s too expensive,” two things that come in my mind – it’s too expensive compared to what? Like, if you go out to town and you go out to dinner, you’re probably going to spend the same amount of money as you’re paying people. You’re helping a local business, you’re helping people to make a decent living, the same amount of money, so it’s too expensive compared to what?

And the second thing is, when they question, “How much is it for hour per hour?” And like, “We don’t charge per hour, we charge a flat rate.” But there’s always some people that they’re always like, “Oh, but this is like, $60 per hour.” I’m like, “But you have to understand that you’re not paying that for my time. You’re paying that for your own time, because if I – if you don’t pay someone to do it, you’re gonna have to do it.”

So when you have someone cleaning your house, let’s say it will take us two hours, because we’re trained. We know what to do. We know the system. We’re good, we’re fast. But if you’re going to clean your own house, you’re going to take eight hours to clean the house the way we do, the same amount of things we touch. You’re going to take eight hours.

So imagine that you’re paying yourself for eight hours of your own time. That’s what we’re freeing in you. We’re giving you free eight hours in your week. That’s how I like to think.

Selling the Dream, Not Just Cleaning

Stephanie: Absolutely. And I love that – one, you’re a natural saleswoman, but what you’re doing is you’re not selling them cleaning, you’re selling them the dream. You’re selling them the fantasy that we can provide to them, they can make it a reality.

And it’s so easy to sell when you know absolutely without a doubt you’re about to make somebody’s life better. That’s why I found, compared to my previous job that I worked at – I was in like the marketing and sales kind of role, and I was not good at it, because I frankly did not give a fuck about anything that I was doing. Like, I didn’t care about what I was selling.

Whereas this, I’m like, “I know I’m about to change your freaking life.” So it’s very easy for me to be excited. It’s like, and so sure, because I don’t know, it just doesn’t feel like I’m selling them something. I’m genuinely helping you give you the life that you desire, and that makes it so easy.

Lucy: Exactly. You’re like, “You’re going to come home after work and you’re going to feel so much better because you’re going to walk into a serene place. You’re going to walk into a peaceful environment. It’s going to smell good. You’re going to feel good that things are done. The floors are washed, you’re gonna feel so much better. Your life’s gonna start rolling.”

So it’s always this – we’re selling them peace of mind. We’re selling their their own time. We’re telling them something that they can do themselves, but they don’t have time, or they don’t feel motivated, or they just completely hate cleaning. It doesn’t matter, that’s why we’re here.

Stephanie: Yeah, I’ve been cleaning in bathrooms before and I’m like, “Oh, I don’t want to do this little detail or whatever.” I’m like, “This is going to sound really weird. I envision my client sitting on their toilet and looking at that edge that I’m like, if I don’t do this, and they’re sitting on the toilet and they see that, and they’re going to be unhappy, and I don’t want them to be unhappy on the toilet.”

Lucy: Exactly. But no, I totally agree that it’s very invigorating when we can just focus on what is it that we’re giving our clients. And it just like, there is something just so wonderful about being able to give people – we make people happy every single day. And I love this business so much because we get to make people happy.

Stephanie: Exactly. I’m so enthusiastic about it. I love what I do, and this is what I’m going to be doing for the rest of my life. And I feel like I could talk about this for hours and hours. It feels like it makes everything so much easier. It feels like we all have bad weeks. We all come across people that will eventually make your day a little gloomier, but what matters is that we keep doing this. We don’t quit on a hard week. Just keep going. If it means something to you, you have to wake up the next day and go for it.

And I’ve been saying every morning, when I’m in my car, going somewhere, and I feel like my brain starts going about the things I have to do, or situations that I have to take care of, I’m like, “I can handle this, I can do this.” And then I remind myself, and I feel so much better because I get into that mentality that I can definitely do that. I’m good, I’ll do it.

Stephanie: That’s like having that self-confidence, and because you’ve been doing this for almost two decades now, you’ve figured out every single situation that comes across. And that’s why I said it all the time, you have to have that belief in yourself that you may not know how to do this now, but you figured everything else out. So of course, you’re going to figure this out.

And I love that you utilize a lot of positive self-talk, literally catching yourself in a negative thought process and stopping it and saying, “No, I can do this. I got this,” like, stopping the overwhelm, basically, is what it sounds like you do for yourself.

Lucy: And through the years, I’ve been in almost every possible situation. You would name it, I’m like, “That happened to me, that happened to me.” And it’s good because it gave me the experience, like the muscle memory, like we talked about before.

And now I’m like, “This doesn’t surprise me anymore, or this doesn’t shock me anymore.” If someone comes and opens the door wearing their underwear, I’m like, “Another day.”

Stephanie: It makes for a funny story, and that’s why I like when weird things happen.

Lucy: Exactly, another day in the office. Let’s just keep rolling. We need to vacuum here.

Focusing on Steady, Manageable Growth

Stephanie: So what does the future look like for you? What do you envision for your business?

Lucy: So right now, my focus is on acquiring new clients. But I want to grow in a manageable way. I don’t want things to spiral out of control that I feel overwhelmed and I feel like I’m not able to handle this. So I want to grow steady, slow, in a pace that I’m able, I’m capable of keeping up with, because I know we have to always be hiring, and we have to be one step ahead of the game. Better be overstaffed than understaffed.

So I want to be able to also provide the best service I can and have that reputation. Because if I start picking up 500 clients and I’m not able to manage because either I don’t have the staff or I don’t have the time, or I don’t have a vehicle, or whatever situation is, then it’s going to do more damage than good. So I want to be consistent and grow in a steady and manageable way.

Stephanie: That’s such a great goal. And I think that we can oftentimes see people who do have that explosive growth. I definitely experienced periods of like, “Whoa, this is crazy,” and it didn’t feel good in the moment, let me tell you. And I look at – I’m so grateful now for a lot more of that steadiness. And it feels like then things aren’t getting out of control, or the world’s not crashing down so much, because it’s just much more manageable.

So totally, that’s amazing. And just in general, I’m so happy that you are in this industry, because clearly this is what you’re meant to be doing, Lucy. Your energy is just – it’s very infectious. And I know our listeners are going to really connect with it. And if they do want to connect with you, where can they find you? Where can they find your business?

Lucy: Well, we are on Instagram, we are on Facebook. We also have a website, www.rivergirlcleaning.com. You can find us on Facebook – River Girl Cleaning, and Instagram, the same handle. We’re out there, you can always – you can find my address too!

Stephanie: Well, thank you so much for your time. This has been incredible. I’m so happy that we were able to finally connect in person. Thank you so much, Lucy. This has been great. Everybody, leave her a like, leave her a comment. Tell her how much you love her. Because I definitely just really enjoyed this.

Lucy: Stephanie, it was very nice meeting you, talking to you. I had a great time. And I’ve been listening to the podcast. I watched your webinar on ZenMaid, and I was super excited about this. As you can tell,

Stephanie: I’m so happy, this is fantastic. And I just love speaking to owners from all sorts of backgrounds, from all sorts of sizes and back histories, because it’s just so fascinating. We all have our own stories and we resonate with each other. So this is why it’s so fun to be able to share our stories.

Thank you again, and everybody again, give her that love in the comments below, and we will see you on the next episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners. Bye, guys.

Lucy: Thank you. Bye.

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

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• River Girl Cleaning website
• River Girl Cleaning on Facebook
• River Girl Cleaning on Instagram