How My Cleaning Business Hit a Record $130K Month

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Introduction

Stephanie: Hello, everyone. Welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I am your host, Stephanie from Serene Clean. And in today’s episode, my friends, I want to go over our July numbers for Serene Clean because we had some record numbers. I want to give my thoughts behind how this happened, what’s working, some other things that I’ve noticed that we still need to continue to work on. But all in all, I just wanna say how proud I am of my team because this is kind of crazy. We had a record month in so many ways and I want to tell you guys about it.

I think it’s been really cool this year — well, really the entirety of the podcast — to document as time progresses what’s going on at Serene Clean and what we’re changing, what’s working, going over the numbers so that you guys see that I am literally right there with you trying new things, tracking stuff, looking at how I can make my business better and what’s going on. And that’s why it’s so important to me to be transparent with all of you and share what’s actually happening, what the actual numbers are, because that is truly the most useful thing I can imagine for everybody — that transparency. So that is what we are here for.

If you are new here, my name’s Stephanie. I own a cleaning company in Western Wisconsin called Serene Clean. I operate it remotely from my lovely home in Savannah, Georgia, and we are now over seven years in business. I started as the only cleaner and now I have a team of 31 staff at this very moment. And my incredible management team does all of the day-to-day operations and I do the not day-to-day operations. That is digging into the data, sharing it, strategizing, suggesting and implementing improvements and processes and all of these good things — calling attention and saying, why is that happening like that? And do we need to change it? Is it an actual problem that needs to be addressed? And of course, highlighting and making my team feel as good as they should, because I have a killer team.

So all of that to be said, we hit our highest revenue ever in July, which is crazy. I absolutely did not expect a record month. I am caveating it — we did have six months of crazy revenue back over 2021 and 2022, and that was due to a large government contract that was a once-in-a-lifetime project that ended up being a million dollars in revenue from that project alone. So when I say we’re hitting our record numbers, I mean for normal, outside of that Fort McCoy job. So we hit record numbers outside of that total anomaly, right? So this is true Serene Clean normal business record numbers.

And so what did we make? We made over $130,000 in revenue, and I am so proud of it. We blew away June numbers. It’s crazy because I think we were at $121,000 for June. So to hop up another $9,000-plus for July is absolutely spectacular. And I did double check — we had, in January, $97,000 in revenue. So we were super low. We were behind all of the first quarter of this year compared to the same time last year, because I was comparing every single week — where are we at, where are we at? And we finally have caught up and far surpassed that. So I literally cannot believe that we hit this.

And need I remind you guys, my goal — if you go back to anything related to my goals this year — my goal by December was to have us at $125K a month in revenue so that we can set up 2027 to hit $1.5 million a year. And so we blew past that, obviously. So that’s crazy. So new goal reset, and I am officially saying it right here: my goal by December is for us to be at $140,000 in revenue. I think we can hit it. I really, really do, based on what our MRR add for August already is and September, because we’re tracking that.

So obviously we’ll talk a little bit about the metrics I’m looking at and stuff. And I know a lot of these things you guys have heard before, but that’s because it is worth bearing repeating, because it’s working, all right? I’m just gonna keep beating this dead horse until you guys implement some of these things, because look what it’s doing for me. It’s happening in real time, and I want you guys to have that same growth and that same confidence in what the heck’s going on in your business. So that is the first big thing — our revenue. Blowing that out of the water, new goal. New goal, new me. And yeah, I just, I can’t believe it. It’s incredible. I’m so, so proud of us. It’s amazing.

350 Recurring Clients and Commercial Growth

Other huge milestone goals — we surpassed 350 reoccurring clients. So that is across the board, recurring for residential, commercial, and vacation rental. And we only have eight vacation rental clients, mind you. But that is our recurring base. And we started out the year — let me find my number — 300 in January. So we have added 52 active recurring clients this year. That is a significant jump in clients. So that is super cool.

Commercial specifically, we have added, I believe, 17 commercial accounts this year. So commercial is cooking, and we are not doing a ton to pursue it. They’re coming to us via Google. I actually just hopped into a consulting call yesterday — or Monday. I can’t, what day is it today? Yeah, yesterday is Monday. Today’s Tuesday, guys. What day of the week is it? I had a consulting call with a commercial-only listener. Hello, you know who you are in Michigan. And we talked a lot about how I get commercial and what the gap is between how she’s getting it versus how I’m getting it now.

Now, most of our commercial clients are coming to us via searching — web searching, Googling, that type of thing — and they’re finding us on Google that way. Whereas back in the day when I first was starting out, it wasn’t all like that. It was a lot more me going outbound, doing cold calling, cold emailing, drop-offs, which I am going to do my Maid Summit talk on — how to get commercial and everything I can jam into that 45-minute talk about commercial. So if you guys are interested in it, I’m gonna save that for my Maid Summit talk ’cause I think it’s a really good topic. But just know that we are not really — I’m not advertising, we’re not really pursuing anything for commercial. They’re coming to us via web search. We are doing some light cold emailing right now, and we do plan to do some drop-offs later in the year once we’re able to fit it into our operations from a workflow perspective. But right now we don’t have capacity for that, and things are cooking without doing it, so we’re not doing it right now. So adding 52 clients.

Average Revenue Per Client and 29 First-Time Cleans

This one is real — well, these next two ones are crazy exciting. So our average revenue per client. This is a good metric to be tracking because the goal is to have that rising. And we had been at a plateau of under $500 for a long time for our average revenue per client. And I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this metric before because I don’t have it right in my face. But since using Claude to do my data analysis — and I literally just gave it my sales by customer summary and a bunch of other reports — it’s able to call this stuff out. This is one of the big game changers this year for us, has been all of the data analysis because of AI coming to fruition.

And now we are at an average of $532 per client. That is our average revenue per client. So last year in May, it was $455 — or no, this year in May it was $455. Now it jumped to $532. That’s crazy. So that has to do with price increases on current clients, as well as all new clients are at higher prices. That directly correlates, right? So it’s not just number of clients. Every single client that we’re bringing on is bringing us in, on average, more money. So that starts to add up.

And then finally — oh, two actually, two metrics. Sorry, I lied, two more, guys, two more. This one’s huge. I know it probably feels like I’m just bragging. I am — I’m bragging on my team because I’m so excited and I want to show you guys what’s possible. So please, please, please don’t take this in a negative way. But you come here for authenticity and you come here for transparency. So I share when we have big losses and when we fuck things up and when everything feels like it’s going wrong — look at last year. If you want to go get some of that negativity, go to last year’s episodes because it was horrific. But this year we turned it around, and this is what’s working.

And so this one is crazy. We had 29 first-time cleans in July. 29 first-time cleans — that’s crazy. Versus last year, we had three in July. Three. And it’s not because clients didn’t want us, it’s because we didn’t have any capacity because everything was literally on fire. Serene Clean was a fucking dumpster fire, it felt like, in comparison to right now. It still was going well, but my dumpster fire comparison looks different than your dumpster fire comparison. So for me, it felt like a dumpster fire, and the numbers reflected on it. So that’s crazy. And in June of this year, we had 18. So we literally had 11 more first-time cleans last month than the previous month. So that is absolutely insane.

No Client Above 10% of Revenue

And then finally, the last metric I want to share before we dig into what’s going well — okay, I might have a couple more. I don’t know why I keep saying that. Because the numbers are just popping off the page for me. We now have no client above 10% of revenue. And this is the first time ever. And you might be wondering what I mean by that. One of the things after I went to the Hormozi conference in March was one of the risks of a business can be having too many whales — or one or two whales — in your business. And by whales, what they mean is that one client or customer is bringing in more than 10% of your business’s revenue. And that is a risk because of client concentration. So if something happened to that client, there goes more than 10% of your revenue, right? And so that is a risk.

And so it’s something that came to the forefront for us of realizing that we have historically, now for years, had one whale, which is that federal account I always talk about. It’s a research facility. I think they’re at like $12,000 a month or something like that — 12 or 13 at this point, I don’t know, ’cause every year we do a price increase on them. And it’s a five-year contract, and I think we are in year three. So obviously the goal is once the five-year hits, we get the bid again — but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. However, as we saw last November — and September through November, I think — when the government federal shutdown happened, that account revenue went away. And that hurt us so badly when we were already hurting last year. So that’s a huge risk. We felt that risk firsthand.

And so for us, keeping an eye on that and really categorizing our clients into: are they a whale? Are they a dolphin? Or are they a minnow? And literally how many of each do we have, right? And the goal is to either add more whales or really just add more everything, right? But not have us relying on just one or two clients to make a huge chunk of our business. So this is the first time — because it’s not because we made less money off of that account, that whale. Because we’re raising the revenue on everything else, it lowers that percentage, which means it’s lowering our risk and attachment to that client. And that makes the business healthier.

So that would be a really good one to start analyzing — how many whales do you guys have, if you have any? And we want to diversify, we want to add more, because I know it’s really exciting when you have these big giant accounts and you’re like, I’m set for life. And all you do is focus on that account and you’re like, I don’t need to grow at all. I don’t need to add anything else. But there is a huge concentration risk when we just have these really big accounts and we’re not diversifying that income. So I just wanted to bring that to your guys’ attention too. Something to watch out for, okay?

Tracking Monthly Recurring Revenue

All right, so we added a ton of MRR. So this is going to be the never-ending saga of how tracking monthly recurring revenue has changed my life — changed my business life. Because if you look at our graph — our giraffe — of our MRR, last year, all but two months were negative. This year, every single month has been positive. And I set the goal of $1,500 a month added in net MRR, meaning reoccurring services. That’s what this means, right? We’re not talking one-offs. We’re not talking first-time cleans. We’re talking people who sign up for reoccurring services. That is when we add that to MRR.

And I know that in previous episodes, we have linked to the MRR tracking spreadsheet that we use. I think I have that templatized. If I don’t, we will be sure to add it to this one again, because I want you guys to be tracking your MRR. And then we’re adding that to ClickUp as well, and that’s where we’re watching it.

But I must say, what is crazy is June’s numbers. And I must share them with you guys. Okay, so in June, we added $3,249 — $3,249 in monthly recurring revenue, net. In July, we hit $3,442. So we even upped it from June. So that’s incredible. Again, when my goal was $1,500 — like, we’re just literally blowing that out of the water. It’s insane, and that comes down to a lot of things.

And spoiler alert — I know it’s August still, and I know this number is going to change because people will cancel, that type of thing. But guess what? This is crazy. I can’t even say this number. In August, we have added $5,899 in monthly recurring revenue. Like, what the fuck? What the fuck? Like, I cannot believe this. This is insane. And again, knock on wood, this can and will change. Hopefully it goes up even more, but it can change, ’cause changes are not locked in until the month is done, right? Because somebody could cancel their reoccurring service right now for tomorrow, and that’s going to take that net down. But the point is, tracking this makes it so clear what’s going on and how we’re doing. So please, guys, if you don’t track anything else, track this.

Actually, in ZenMaid, this is one of the AI reports that they have added based on me being like, this is what we need to track, guys. It’s been so life-changing. And so they are working on their AI tool. It is not released to everybody, but once it is released to everybody, please, guys, go run the MRR report, because this is what it’s going to do for you, and it’s so, so exciting. Of course, you need to have your appointment prices all in ZenMaid so that it can calculate this correctly. But if you have all of those prices in there — which you should — then this is going to be stellar for you, ’cause it’s actually going to call this out, along with so many other reports: first-time clean reports, your close rates, just all of these things. I actually picked my top 10 reports that are so important — all of these things that I’m talking about, I’m having them added to ZenMaid, which is really exciting.

So again, that is the AI tool. She’s not unleashed for everybody yet. I know they’re doing a soft launch to just a few select percentage of ZenMaid customers, ’cause they are basically running experiments and improving it to make it as good as possible before the full unleash. But holy shit, if any of you guys do have access to it, please start running those reports and see what you think, because it’s incredible. So that’s a side note. But yeah, it’s insane. So adding $3,400 this month — or I’m sorry, last month — in recurring revenue, which is absolutely nuts.

Hiring, Capacity, and Seasonal Demand

So how did this happen? Obviously having capacity is going to be the biggest thing — fixing our hiring. And what did that mean? It’s just we spent more on Indeed, guys. We spent more. We still are doing the group interviews, we are still doing all of that. We also hired a couple students. Actually, at least one of our hires, she is done — is it this week or next week? — because she’s going back to school in Florida, and then she’s gonna come back at Christmas time and hopefully clean for us. And then every summer, hopefully thereafter, while she’s in school, she’s gonna do that. We’d never done that before, but it was amazing, because that allowed us to fit more in.

So don’t be afraid. Depending where you are — if you are in the northern half of the United States — summer is gonna be busy for you, right? It’s gonna be so busy. So what we are going to start doing — we actually waited too long — we are gonna start overhiring in like April or May, because we need to be ready for the summer influx. Because we didn’t do any extra advertising. It’s just the demand is there, especially on first times and move-outs. Like, look how busy we were, and we could actually fit them in. And so that’s why this happened.

And for you guys in the southern half, especially my Florida friends, you guys tend to slow down a teeny bit because all of your snowboards — your snowbirds — go north for the winter, where our snowbirds go south for the winter. So the winter slows down for us — it’s the complete opposite. So for you guys, it could be hiring more for the winter — the same thing, except opposite, right? So that was something interesting that we experimented with, and it worked really, really well. Just having that capacity — that was a huge part of it, is just simply having the capacity to fit the first times in.

First-Time Cleans, Recurring Close Rate, and the Flat Rate Estimate Email

Because the reason why we’re seeing these huge jumps in MRR is because — and like this month, right? We already have whatever it was, $5,000-plus in MRR — it’s because we had 29 first times last month. So that flows into recurring revenue, because we have to have the first time for them to become recurring, right? So really looking at how many first times are we getting in, and how many people are closing, and are they converting to recurring? That’s huge. That conversion rate is going to be huge, because this is another thing I hadn’t been tracking until this year — how many of our first-time cleans converted to reoccurring.

So when I look at that in July, seven out of the 13 conversions became reoccurring so far. In June, 10 out of 14 of the closed — like, we closed 14 leads in June, and 10 of them, the majority of them, are reoccurring. So that’s why this MRR is happening. It’s latent — you see it after the fact. That’s why this is occurring now, and that’s why August is looking so good. And that’s why that pipeline of first times, and then tracking how many converted, is so, so valuable.

And that’s another thing that the AI reporting is going to do in ZenMaid — that recurring close rate, right? Because a lot of us — most of the folks I talk to — aren’t tracking close rate at all. And if they are tracking close rate, they’re not tracking how many are going to reoccurring, right? And shout out to Molly Moran. I love you, Molly. You’re amazing. You asked me this: how many of your leads are going to recurring? How many of the closed leads become recurring? And I didn’t have that data handy. And it really brought to my attention — oh my gosh, close rate is number one, but recurring close rate is actually the true most important thing, because that’s where the recurring money is. So if nobody’s converting to reoccurring, we need to dig into why, right?

So that is why this is happening — because we are converting folks to recurring. And how is that happening? It happened because when we switched to flat rate, we started putting in that flat rate estimate email the prices and options for recurring, and we asked which one they want to go with, right? And so you guys have heard me talk about this a lot. We will be sure to link down below if you’re interested in that flat rate estimate email that’s working so beautifully and causing this money for us — amongst other things, right? Obviously we got the reviews, we’re obviously nailing the cleanings, but this is absolutely changing the game for us. So if you are interested in purchasing it, I believe it’s 20 bucks on my website. We’ll link that down below if you want it. A lot of you guys have already bought it and said it’s working really well for you. So please buy it, tweak it however you like, because that has been killer for us. It has really, really changed the game for us.

Payroll Runs, Call-Outs, and Normalizing Your Data

Some other reference numbers that I wanted to call attention to as you guys are starting to get into data analysis. When you’re looking at things like your profit and loss, I wanna make sure that you’re paying attention to the number of payroll runs that are in that month and not comparing apples to oranges. And what I mean by that is, when I’m doing my data analysis, I always want to normalize the information based on the payroll runs. So for example, last month in July, we had five payroll runs because there were five weeks instead of four, and an extra payroll run is $15,000 to $20,000. And so in the months that we have five payroll runs, we’re always going to be less profitable than the months that we have four. And so I know that, and I do not compare July to June in that way. I actually equalize it, normalize it, so that I can see, okay, all things being equal, are we more or less profitable than the previous month? And then I also look at the previous year, that month, so I can start comparing. So just wanted to note that for comparisizing — ’cause that’s a word, right, guys?

Another thing that allowed us to fit a lot more first times in is we had 57 hours of call-outs versus 158 in January. So when we were sub-$100K months, we had 158 hours of call-outs. We had 57 hours last month, which of course has to do with the sickness season — cold and flu, all of my cleaners’ kids are getting sick. So they just called out a lot less. So we had more capacity. So it’s important to track that, because if I didn’t know that — like, why did this happen? Well, there’s about 10 reasons why this happened, and they’re all now coming together, right? Which is why I’m documenting it for you guys. But that is one of the variables we need to consider: how much are people calling out? How much time off are people taking? Because this determines your capacity to fit in first times, to fit in new recurring clients, right? So that is super duper exciting.

Flat Rate Pricing and Production Rate Audits

So yeah, it’s transitioning to flat rate. Like, I am now going to be an apostle of that, because it’s just crazy. I mean, seven years — seven years of charging hourly. And I’m not gonna tell you guys not to do it. I’m just gonna share my experience and tell you what my experience is. And the flat rate has been incredible for us. It’s been incredible for our clients to say yes to recurring, because it’s one price. And it just — it’s a no-brainer. It’s not a no-brainer, still a lot of money for them. But there’s no question of, this is what the price is gonna be. And that security makes them say yes a lot easier, because it’s not like, well, it could be this, it could be this. But with certainty, it feels really good.

And of course, we’re doing production rate audits on every single first-time clean. And we’re watching that like a hawk to make sure — okay, are we going over? Are we under? Are we on target for how much we’re estimating? Is that how long it took? Did we go over? Why did we go over? Are we estimating enough? Because that was my fear, as you guys know, with switching to flat rate for first times — we’re gonna lose our ass on jobs. And there has been, I think, one or two jobs where we still had to request more money over the past few months. But considering, out of the dozens of first-time cleans we’ve had, that’s pretty good. So we are really on the money with our estimating. That’s why production rate auditing is so important.

And guess what, guys? Guess who had a two-hour meeting with ZenMaid today to build production rate auditing into ZenMaid. Ah, I’m so excited. I cannot wait. I cannot wait. This is gonna be like a game changer. And I don’t wanna overpromise. Obviously, I went to them with my list of complaints and grievances and what we need to have. And there may be a V1 first before we can get it to the perfection of what I want. But it’ll at least get us started on giving you guys the data of, what was the production rate on this appointment? How much did you make per hour? And I don’t know when it’s gonna happen, but it is happening. I’ve been pushing and pushing on this because of the retreat. And I brought it to their attention of, this is the most important thing: how much are we making per hour on every job? And how fast do we clean, so that we can estimate correctly on future cleans? So this is gonna make you guys so much more successful. It’s so important. So yes, I’m just so excited about all of this shit coming down the pipeline for ZenMaid. It’s so crazy. I’m in a good mood — can you tell? Lots of good shit is going on.

Travel Fees: Are You Charging Enough?

Okay, so some of the other things that I noticed from August. So we have been honing in on travel time and drive time. And we really, really dug into it the past two weeks of, what the hell’s going on? Are we charging enough? And the answer is no, we are not. We are actually subsidizing our travel fees, like, a ton. A ton. So what we did was we ran a bunch of numbers of how much we are paying out in the travel time and the gas stipends versus what we are charging the clients, because now travel is just built in, right? Because it’s flat rate. And on average, every single one of our clients needs to be paying $30 for travel across the board in order to make sure that we are breaking even.

Now, on our new clients, we are doing that. All new clients are getting $30 extra. I think I told you that a few episodes ago — or I don’t even know what episode — but I told you that we were doing that. However, all of our old clients are not doing that. They did just get a price increase, though, so we are not touching that. What we are going to do instead is, now on future clients — and especially one-times, move-outs, that type of thing — we’re gonna up that travel fee built in even more, to help even out the playing field over time. It’s gonna take time. I don’t expect this to be fixed overnight, but the goal is that over time we start to eat away at that negative margin that we’re dealing with with travel. So we are way — I don’t wanna say we’re overpaying, we’re just undercharging when I actually looked at travel.

So if you guys are interested in me doing a deep dive as to what that actually looked like, leave it in the comments below — maybe put a little car emoji down below so I know that you’re interested in this, because I don’t wanna spend too much time here. But this is what I have my laser focus on right now: how can we improve those margins on our travel? Because that is eating away drastically into our numbers, of course. But I had no idea. We kind of were just guessing. And so now that we started categorizing things correctly with our drive times, we’re just improving so many things. But this one, I’m like, okay, this is still a big gap between ideal. And there’s some things that we’re gonna do right now in the meantime. But if you wanna know more about — like, what am I even talking about, or anything related to, are you charging enough for travel? — I can definitely do that, because lo and behold, we were not. And so I did not know that. I thought we were, but we are actually not. So let me know if you are interested in that.

Why Nobody’s Making It to 90 Days

And then the final interesting thing about this year so far that I learned in July — I keep wanting to say August or June. Why can’t I say the word July? What’s really fascinating is that of all of our hires — all of them — we have had 14 people leave in 2026 at Serene Clean. None of them have made it to 90 days yet. Okay, so this is really interesting. And I started digging into it because I was like, what the hell? Like, why? And I started going through and combing through the reason behind everybody leaving.

So one of the things that was really interesting that Claude, with the data analysis, brought up to me was that my hiring — or my staffing — is like a barbell. And what it means by that is everybody’s either under 90 days or they are over like three years, right? Three-plus years. So once they get to that, they are staying. But getting them to that basically 90 days to two years — there’s pretty much nobody living in that little wasteland, right? And it might be two years, it might be a year and a half. I can’t remember where the wasteland stops and where that other side of the barbell starts to grow, but that’s really fascinating.

So I’m just like, why is nobody making it to 90 days? What the hell’s going on? Because if we can’t get people to 90 days, that means our turnover is high, of course. And zero people have gotten there. We have two people who are close, and we have obviously new people that are under 90 days that are doing great, but it’s going to take a while to see if they make it to 90 days. So this is a really interesting one to start running — your turnover rates of how far people make it before they leave, right? And so I literally combed through all of the reasons why these people left, so that we can start addressing and fixing it if there is something to address and fix, right?

So what’s really fascinating is that it looks like a failure until you start digging into the reasons, right? So four of them were circumstances. What I mean by that is health stuff, life stuff, kids stuff — literally nothing that we could have prevented. And they literally said, I love it here. I cannot do this job — or maybe any job — because of X, Y, Z, or I need to move, or whatever. Unexpected things. So four of them were that. Three of them were either seasonal slash planned, meaning they were moving — we knew that they were moving, and it was okay. So there’s seven right there. Three, it was job fit related, meaning this was not a good fit for them. And they were doing super duper well in training, and it kind of came out of nowhere. Three of them were kind of performance related. One of them we fired — maybe two of them we fired, I’d have to look, I don’t have the full list in front of me. But the other one was like, they knew — they’re like, I’m not good at this job, this isn’t for me kind of thing. And then the other one, they got a different job. That was kind of performance related to the physicality — like, he couldn’t do the job.

So when we look at that, obviously there’s some things that we can take away from that of, okay, can we ask more questions about their life stability and stuff? But frankly, if I needed a job, I’m probably going to lie about that, ’cause I need a job, right? I’m not gonna be like, yeah, my life is super unstable right now, and I’m probably not gonna be able to stick to this long-term. So realistically looking at this, it makes sense. And I’m not actually freaking out over this as I was when I first saw the number — of like, holy shit, nobody’s making it past 90 days. But then when I start digging into who and what and why, I understand.

Turnover Is Normal

And the reason I want to highlight this to you guys is that it’s not always necessarily a failure. Obviously, we continually wanna work on our culture and our career path and doing all of these things to make this the best workplace we possibly can. But I wanna highlight this to you guys — even amidst all of this incredible success that we’re having in these other areas, look what’s happening with staffing, right? So despite this, we’re still able to do this. And the reason I wanna highlight it is that this is kind of normal, okay? So if you are like, oh my gosh, I’m having turnover, this is crazy, blah, blah, blah, everybody keeps moving, or their cat died and they had to leave, or whatever the thing is — I wanna tell you, that doesn’t change. That does not change, okay?

And sometimes you’re gonna hit a really good streak of, nobody leaves for like a year, and you’re like, this is amazing, I’ve got the best crew ever. And then you hire a few ’cause you’re growing, and all of a sudden you start hitting this bad streak, right? And obviously we wanna keep — like what I’m doing here, this is what we wanna do. We wanna keep digging into it. Why is this happening? What’s the reason that they’re giving? Is that actually the reason? Is there something I can actually improve? What else can I filter for? Blah, blah, blah. We wanna start thinking and digging into why.

But a lot of times there’s literally nothing you can do. You just need to be looking at more people and always group interviewing, always be hiring, because you simply don’t know if this person who seems perfect, in three months they decide it’s not a good fit for them — as much as you check in with them, as much as you give them showering glowing reviews and atta girls, atta boys, bonuses, throw money at ’em, whatever. Sometimes they’re just like, you know what? I don’t think I like this anymore. And that’s okay. Or, I have to move, or whatever the thing is, right?

So I want to share this with you guys because that sounds like a failure, and obviously I don’t want it to be this way. We are continually trying to make this better. But when I look at actually why this is happening, I’m like, well, there’s not a lot we can do with most of this. We are gonna take some of the feedback and try to implement changes, but at the end of the day, just keep interviewing and hire more people. That’s the solution, right? The pay is good, the career path is there, the bonuses, the appreciation, the culture — it’s there. At the end of the day, I accept that this is the reality. We need to be hiring if we want to keep growing like this. We need to always just be interviewing, hiring, paying for Indeed now, keeping our job listings up to date, all of that good stuff.

If you need job listing inspiration, we’ll link our Indeed down below so you can look at Serene Clean’s active jobs right now. You can shamelessly steal that — unless you’re in my competitive area, then please don’t look, ’cause I know some of you listen. But that’s okay, there’s plenty of business to go around, I guess. But if you need that inspiration, it’s there for you. So I really just want you guys to know that this is normal. This is what’s going to happen, because this is the cleaning industry. So don’t feel bad about yourself. Do what you can to make this better and take feedback, but sometimes there’s nothing to be done. And that’s what I want to highlight — this is our Groundhog’s Day, right?

Final Thoughts

So all in all, this has been a crazy year. I cannot believe — I just, I can’t believe it. It’s crazy. I’m so thrilled. It’s so exciting to see this happening in real time and digging into the numbers — why is this happening, and what can we do to make it even better? ‘Cause I’m like, okay, now how do I make it happen faster, right? How do I make it happen faster? So if you guys have any questions on any of the things that I’ve mentioned — I know I just threw a shit ton of stuff at you for the past 40 minutes. I’m very excited. But if there’s anything that piqued your interest, please — I’ll be happy to dig into any of these metrics. I know I went over a lot. This was a very numbers-heavy episode, but I want to show, this is what’s causing all of these wonderful things — looking at these numbers.

And I know it can be really overwhelming, especially if you’re cleaning right now. You’re like, Stephanie, I don’t got time to look at the numbers. Claude does, ChatGPT does, right? And the biggest thing is you just need to have numbers for them to even look at, right? We need to be doing bookkeeping. We need to be having all of our income in one place. So in order for me to get to this, I had to have the groundwork laid of the data in place. I have the scheduling software. I have a payroll software. We have a bookkeeping software. The numbers are there so that I can just give it the raw data, and it can then say, cool, this is what this means. This is what these numbers are telling you about your business.

Because before I had this last year, I was tracking things. It’s crazy, because obviously I was telling you guys how much I was tracking, and nothing gave me the insight like this has this year. Literally, that’s why we’re growing like this. That’s why this improvement has happened — this data analysis. And that’s why at the retreat this year, I was pushing so hard of, we need to get this data into our customers’ hands at ZenMaid, because look what it’s done for me. And that’s what I want for every single one of you. So I’m super excited for them to unleash that to everybody. It’s really cool shit, and I just am so excited for what it’s going to do for all of you guys. So please let me know any questions you have on anything specific.

If you have made it this far, leave a little apple, ’cause I be looking like a teacher today, guys. I got this shirt in Barcelona, and I don’t wear stripes. This is the only striped piece of clothing I think I own, actually. And I do not wear stripes. And with my hair up like this, I look like a teacher. And it’s funny, because in my meeting this morning, everybody kept calling me Ms. Pipkin, and that’s really funny. So class was in session today, guys. I need a ruler to beat on the desk and tell you to start tracking your MRR. But we’ll make sure to link all that down below. Leave me that apple.

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Please hit that like, hit that subscribe. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you’re listening. It really helps us get to other owners, ’cause I wanna help as many owners as possible with all of this free information. That is my goal — to have a huge impact in our community. And the only way we can do that is if we get the word out, guys. So please share this, hype this on YouTube. I would so appreciate it. And if you are not signed up to come to CleanCon yet in Austin, Texas at the end of September — what are you doing? Please, I’d love to see you guys there. It would be so fun to meet you in person, give you a big old hug, tell you thank you in person for being a wonderful listener. So I’d love to see you at CleanCon. I will be there, as well as several of the ZenMaid team. We’d love to see you guys there. So without further ado, guys, that’s another solo episode. I hope you enjoyed, and I can’t wait to see you in the next episode. Bye-bye.