I Asked Alex Hormozi to Fix My Cleaning Business

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Introduction and Why I Went To the Acquisition.com Workshop

Stephanie: Hello everyone, welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I’m your host, Stephanie from Serene Clean, and I am so excited about this episode, guys, because I’m going to be talking about going to the Acquisition.com scaling workshop put on by Alex Hormozi, why we went, do I think it was worth it, and all of the things that we’re implementing based off of this workshop.

So if you’ve never heard of me, if this is your first time interacting with me, I own a cleaning business in rural Western Wisconsin named Serene Clean. It has three locations and it is around 28 employees right now. And we have kind of been stuck for a couple years now around the $1.3 to $1.5 million in revenue. And so this was one of the reasons that I thought now was the time to invest in this workshop.

Obviously I have been consuming the Hormozis’ content for years now. I reference them a lot on the podcast. Both Layla and Alex I think are invaluable in a variety of ways, and I just really appreciate their content. I have their books, all of these things. And so I’ve already applied a lot of their strategies and suggestions at my business.

But honestly, it’s just been like this past year — if you listen to the podcast, you know that we’ve had a lot of struggles and we’re kind of hitting the same wall over and over again from a size perspective. We get up to a certain size and then we get stuck. And obviously that has to do with staffing and turnover, structural things, that type of stuff, because cleaning businesses are typically high turnover.

We have tried to fix that in a lot of ways. Obviously high wages, benefits, all of these things that we try to do. But it’s still not solving the problem. I feel that we have a very good workplace culture based on the feedback that I get from my staff, especially the long-term ones, of why they’re staying. But clearly we’re still hitting this wall for a reason.

And so I had not invested in any type of paid mentorship or coaching or conferences really for several years now. And so I was like, you know what, I’ve wanted to go to this for a while. We financially are able to do this and I think it’s the right time. And if I waste the money, lesson learned. But hopefully I take something away from this that is worth that. And spoiler alert, I do feel that it was worth it.

Bringing My Managers to Vegas

Stephanie: I took all of my managers. It’s not just me that went, and there was a reason I did that. So my three managers, April, Crystal, and Katie, I flew out from Wisconsin to meet me in Las Vegas a few weeks ago. It was so fun. We hadn’t done a management trip ever. That was something that’s been on my bucket list that I’ve wanted to do, and we just kept kicking the can down the road. It never felt like the right time.

So I was like, you know what? We could turn Las Vegas into this kind of management fun trip, which it absolutely was. We got in early in the week because the conference was on Wednesday and Thursday, so we got in Monday night, just had so much fun, went to the Sphere, went to a Cirque du Soleil show, frolicked all about. It was delightful because I’d never been to Las Vegas before, which is crazy. So it was really, really fun. I gambled a whole $20, guys. A whole $20 on the very last night at like 2 a.m., ’cause I’m not a gambler, so I finally did it. I was like, eh, that wasn’t that exciting. But it was really fun. I enjoyed it. I would definitely go back to Vegas.

And so come Wednesday and Thursday, that was the conference. So you may be wondering, why would I pay to have all of my managers go when I could have just gone? Especially if you did not know, these tickets are $5,000 apiece. So do the math for four people, guys. It was a huge amount of money to spend on this.

And I don’t regret it. I do not regret it. I think it was invaluable for me to have my managers in the room being able to ask questions alongside and hear the information alongside of me. Because typically what will happen is I will think of a concept or be exposed to an idea and then I’ll come to them all excited. And the buy-in is sometimes a struggle because I butcher the explanation, or they don’t have the full context or full experience of going through that. I’m just coming and putting another thing on their plate.

So that buy-in alone of having them by my side, experiencing it all at the same time, hearing the same information and the why behind it from people who are obviously much more successful than I ever will be when it comes to finances and business — and hearing it from people who know what they’re doing — that was incredibly useful. So I do think it was worth it in that way of having them by my side for that.

So I’m very happy that they were there because we are just like this force now together. We’re very united right now on the front of the progress that needs to be made. So I’m very excited about that. And it was just a really cool experience to have them with me and be like, yeah, these are the ladies who are doing all of the magic.

Our Goal: Fixing the Staffing Constraint

Stephanie: Our goal for the conference was to figure out how to fix our constraint of the business, which is turnover and staffing — turnover of current employees and how to keep up with staffing in such a rural area.

So again, if you’re new, my business is in super rural Wisconsin. We have three locations, but it is regional. So all of them are within driving distance. We can pull techs from each location if we need to, to go to the others and serve customers in those areas if necessary. But the first town that we are located in is 5,000 people, Black River Falls. Sparta is the second, which is I think nine or ten thousand people, and then the third, which is La Crosse or Onalaska, which is right on the Mississippi, right next to Minnesota, is about fifty thousand. So there is a city city there, but for some of you guys, you’re probably like, holy crap, that’s not a city at all.

So that being the case, there is certain constraints, it feels like, when it comes to that. So it’s like, okay, knowing these parameters, what can we do about it? And so the advice doesn’t really change for rural from the sounds of it. It really is the same and universal for everybody. So I wanted to figure out how could we fix that, as well as just uncover what other areas of the business that we need to improve upon. And we definitely walked away with a lot of valuable information.

I think the biggest value for me of going to this conference was in order to know what the next steps are, and I wanted to walk away with exactly what should we do next. So I definitely feel that we got that clarity, and that was incredibly useful.

Day 1: The Business Scorecard

Stephanie: How the conference was structured was, on day one, it was kind of more like sessions of education and presentation, and we all worked through this workbook that they provided for us. It’s this pretty purple — for our listeners, I apologize, it’s just this lovely, lovely purple color. And we just worked through it.

What this book works through is basically how to increase or add value of your business and take away the things that are detracting value from your business. So the first thing we did was a business scorecard of where our business is at right now. And a lot of these I was not able to even fill out because I didn’t have the numbers. So that was one thing that I was like, oh, I need to figure that part out. But it definitely gave me a lot of clarity of what we’re doing well and what things are risky and subtracting from the value of the business.

There was a couple different metrics that I figured out that I need to add, one of them being like cost to acquire our customers, which is very low. Like our cost to acquire customers is very low. But cost to acquire staff is definitely something — honestly, everything when it comes to acquiring customers, I’ve flipped that advice on the head and put it towards acquiring staff members, since that is our constraint. Obviously all of those concepts can be applied to getting customers as well, like advertising, spending money to get customers. Well, you can advertise and spend money to get staff. And so obviously that’s our biggest constraint. So that’s where we’re focusing.

And then one of the metrics — LTV to CAC ratio. So lifetime value of a customer to the cost to acquire your customers. That ratio, you can do the same thing with staff members — like lifetime value of that staff member, of how much money they’re bringing in, to the cost to acquire your staff members. So those are some metrics that I’m certainly going to be adding. I already know lifetime value of customers, but the other ones I want to get some clarity on.

So that was one. When it comes to the value adders that I want to figure out: yearly revenue retention percentage, revenue growth percentage, EBITDA margin — all of these things are value adders to your business. So we first went through those and we all kind of made our notes on what we need to do when it comes to increasing or improving those metrics.

Value Subtractors: The 5 Risks

Stephanie: And then the value subtractors is definitely where I got a lot of value from. So to go through the few value subtractors, there is key man risk, key client risk, single channel risk, market risk, and data risk. And we have some of these risks. And so that gave us tangible things to work on for the business to improve and take away from the value subtractors. So stop making my business less valuable by doing these things.

Key man risk — I do not feel that we have that. The business operates well without me. Obviously I’m valuable to my business, however, it does operate day to day without me having to be there. So we do not have that.

Key client risk — we kind of do. And this is where the concept of whales and minnows was introduced. A whale is a client that is more than ten percent of your revenue. And you don’t want that, because then if you lose that, obviously there goes all your profit and that might shut you down. And so some of you guys listening, you may have a whale of a client who, if you lost them, it would be really bad.

And I experienced this last November with our largest commercial account when the government shutdown happened. They are our one whale. And so it really, really hurt. We weren’t going to shut down because of it, but it was very painful. And it made me realize just how beholden we were to them. So they’re whale territory. They are a whale — it’s just when it comes to the percentages, questionable there. They’re right at that 10% mark. So they are a whale.

But that doesn’t mean take them away. It means add more minnows. And we added the category of dolphins for us, because we have a lot of middle range dolphins that are actually very attractive for us. So for us, what we’ve categorized internally now for Serene Clean, a dolphin is anything that is like a thousand to twenty-five hundred dollars in revenue. Based on the percentage of our total revenue we have, I just ran the numbers — we currently have 14 dolphins. And so it was really cool to lay all of our clientele into these categories and see, oh, we have, and we have right now 222 minnows. So our baseline is made up of minnows.

And then looking at what the lifetime value of the average minnow versus the average dolphin was really enlightening. I just ran all this information this morning, that’s why it’s top of mind. So that’s one of the things that we’re doing going forward — categorizing our clients into these chunks: whales, dolphins, and minnows. And we want to increase the amount of dolphins that we have, because what that’s going to do is reduce the percentage of that whale of our total revenue, just by increasing our revenue elsewhere.

And the reason I want to go more dolphins, which is going to be majority commercial — you guys already know that — is because the lifetime value of a dolphin compared to a minnow for us, from a math perspective: our average minnow lifetime value is roughly $3,500 at the most recently calculated metrics. Our average dolphin lifetime value is roughly $9,000 plus. So from a pure efficiency standpoint, one new dolphin equals five to six new minnows in lifetime value, with significantly less per month operational overhead per dollar.

So for me, this really clarifies that those size commercial accounts — and sometimes a residential can slip in. We just booked actually a weekly residential client that is going to be a dolphin because of the amount of revenue they’re pulling in. So it can happen with residential, it’s just much more likely on commercial. So it’s really cool that we have this way to bucket our clients now and see how the percentages lie. And this is all related to that key client risk. We want to reduce the risk of that one top client that we have, that whale, so if something happens to them, it doesn’t affect us as much.

So what I would suggest for you guys to take away here is looking at your client list — do you have any whales? That sounds really funny, but do you have any whales? And if so, it doesn’t mean get rid of them. It just means, how can we add more so that if something happens to them, you guys don’t feel it so much? I’m sure you all have that one client that, if they dropped, it would really really hurt. And it would be a good idea for you to actually have, you know, Claude do the math of, here is all of my clients. Just upload your income by customer summary report from QuickBooks, and over time, month to month, that’s how I do it. And it can tell me exactly all of these percentages. So if you guys don’t have your bookkeeping together, this is why that’s so important, so that we can figure these types of things out. So key client risk, we definitely have. And so I circled yes for that.

Single channel risk — we don’t have that, I don’t feel. And that is basically, where are all of your customers coming from? Because if something were to happen to that channel, obviously that hurts you. And we don’t have single channel risk. We have a lot of Google and online searching for sure, but that’s fairly diversified, and it’s not like the internet’s just going to disappear. So I don’t feel that we have that. Whereas if you got all of your customers from word of mouth from one customer, or something like that, that would be single channel risk. So we do not have that.

Market risk — we do have, because we are a local service business in a small area. So market risk is, there’s a limit to what that market can do. So for us, that means eventually we will probably have to open more locations in order to keep growing. We’re not at that point right now. I think that we still have a lot of depth to go in our current market. But that is something that we do have simply by being a local business. It’s based on the current market that we have there. Whereas if you sell something online, that isn’t market risk, or it could depend on what you’re selling to. So it depends on a lot of factors, but yes, we have this, and it’s because we’re a local service business.

Data risk — we definitely have data risk. And this is one of the biggest areas that I’ve been working on the past week since we got back, is improving this data risk and not having to pull a bunch of data from a bunch of different places, and kind of centralize everything into one dashboard.

You guys know I’m working heavily in ClickUp, and so my goal is to make everything from a metric standpoint at a glance be there in ClickUp, so that at any moment I can pull it up instead of having to go digging. And so that’s going to be involving setting up a lot of automations with Claude using the API tools and ClickUp and all sorts of things that I’m doing. But really what it means to have data risk is, is it spread out all over? If I asked you something, would it take you forever to go find it? Would you have to run reports, that type of thing? Where I want to know my metrics, my key metrics that I’m going off of — I want to have those all in one place, and that it’s automatically pulling the information. We’re not having to go look for it. So that is data risk, we do have it, and it’s something I’m definitely improving on.

So that was day one. It was just a lot of those presentations, kind of going through these value adders. There was a couple exercises that we did that were really fun. And then they just talked about thinking like a CEO. Like what makes a CEO great? And how you should be investing your time as the CEO and how you should be thinking. So that was useful as well, of like, where am I still struggling with that?

Day 2: C-suite Sessions and Group Breakouts

Stephanie: I found day one very useful. It was great. And then I think personally day two was the best day. So day two is where they split you and all of the other attendees up by your business size, your revenue size. So they had multiple groups so that we were grouped kind of like how CleanCon did it, which I really loved in the mastermind session. You’re talking to people and you’re asking questions alongside people who are similar size businesses to you, so that the questions are most relevant.

Because obviously me in a room full of people who are pulling in ten million dollars a year — really cool and inspiring, but they’re having different levels of problems than I am. Just like somebody who is just opening up is having different levels of problem than I am. So I always find it useful when you can be in a group of people who have similar size businesses to you, or slightly above, so you can kind of see what the next problems are going to be. That’s super useful as well.

So what they did is, they took all of their — I guess heads of, it’s C-suite, I believe, and they each had a session. So it’s like the head of the hiring guy, the marketing guy, the sales guy, a strategy guy. And so they just rotated those people around the groups, and we got a half an hour with each of them, and we could just hammer them with questions on that particular topic. And literally for us, the first guy that we got was the hiring guy, and that answered — like, we were like, okay, we can go home now, like, that was very useful. So I found that incredibly useful.

I’ll get into some of the takeaways in a moment of what we’re going to be putting into place because of it. But yeah, that was how it was structured.

Asking Alex Hormozi a Question

Stephanie: And then at the very end we had some Q&A, and this is where the exciting part was. They asked me to ask the question, and I did not know until the very end that Alex himself was going to show up and answer the questions. So they definitely don’t promise that Alex is going to be at any of this conference. So don’t go into that expecting it. It’s ran by their workshop team. I keep using the word conference, they use the word workshop — whatever, I mean the same thing. So their workshop team is the one handling all of these things.

And so I didn’t expect that until the very end, and then it was like, oh shit. And so that was crazy. I was one of ten that got to ask him a question. So they told me earlier in the day that I would be doing that. So I was trying to think about a question. And obviously I wanted it to be about our constraint, and just kind of let him go and free-form off of what he would suggest for us.

So it was really nice, because I got about six minutes of back and forth with him to go over the problem. So I just listed our revenue, I listed our constraints, and kind of my thoughts on it, what we’re doing right now to solve the problem. And yeah, it was really useful advice, I would say. He suggested several things that we are definitely putting into place, and I will get into that.

But that was definitely a huge shock. Bucket list item for me, guys. I did not think I was ever in my entire life going to be speaking to Alex Hormozi. So that was insane. I was shaking. If you watched the video, you can hear my voice — like I’m so nervous, I’m just like really monotone and down here, because I’m just trying to modulate myself. I was freaking out.

So that was really crazy. I still can’t believe — and now that clip has gone completely viral, which is crazy. That posted like two days ago, and it’s already across all of the platforms, going to hit two million views.

What It’s Like to Go Viral

Stephanie: And that has been its own can of worms, because the comments have just been really insane. Because it’s a one-minute clip without any context. So that’s been pretty wild to see just how people behave — how the internet behaves. I’ve never experienced anything like that.

And it was just shocking. Just like all of these things of, oh, well, maybe if you didn’t pay slave wages, and why would I — you know, like all of these things. And I’m just like, you know, or they’re doing the math incorrectly, where they’re like, oh, her revenue’s this, and she has this many techs, so this is barely anything to pay them. Where it’s like, they’re doing it at full-time hours, and most of my techs are part-time.

So there was just a lot of things that, for me, was an exercise of, I’m not in control of this right now. And it would be fruitless to try to get in there and be like, well, you don’t understand this, this, and this. Because it doesn’t matter. These people aren’t my customers. They are not my listeners. They’re not you guys who know all of this context and understand. And so they’re just strangers on the internet shouting into the void. So I’m not going to shout back. But it was really shocking to have that experience.

Like, you guys, if you look through the comments — men are disgusting. Not all men, but anonymous men on the internet are like the most despicable creatures I’ve ever seen. I’ve just never experienced anything like it. I’m like, Jesus Christ. That was crazy to experience.

And also ones who are like, oh, she’s a plant, she’s clearly an actor. He hired her to ask that question. I’m like, dear lord, I wish I was paid for that. I paid to ask that question. So, yo, where’s my cut, Alex? Jesus.

So anyways, all of that to be said, that was kind of a wild experience. So I’ve just been dealing with that for the past couple days. But all in all, I want to share some of these takeaways and the advice that we were given, and what we are going to be implementing in Serene Clean.

Takeaway #1: Introducing a Career Path for Our Cleaners

Stephanie: Alright, number one is going to be introducing a career path for our cleaners. So in the hiring group session, we asked if they felt that not having a career path and room to go up in title is hurting us. And they said, absolutely, this is a must. You need to introduce a career path for your cleaning techs.

And so they said that that stagnation and people churning, one of the reasons is going to be because they have nowhere to go up. And you guys have heard me describe this in the past — that I’m like, I got cleaners and I got managers, and I don’t need to add a bunch of managers. So I — it was kind of the thing of, I don’t know what else to do with them. Like, where else do I go without just making stuff up?

And so that is one of the things that we are going to be introducing June 1st, 2026. We are having a career path. Of course, I’m going to make a full video on this describing what that career path is. If you have any questions, definitely put them down in the comments below specifically on what that career path is going to look like. But of course I’ll describe everything, I just want to make sure I answer your questions.

I’m super excited about this because I think that this is going to help that churn. Because a lot of our people churn like a year to two years in. Basically nobody makes it to two years. Very few people do. And if they make it past three years, they’re staying for the long haul. Because that’s what we see is our employee spread. It’s all over, like three to four years plus. We’re up to like seven years. And then everybody else is in that one year range. But really, two years is kind of like they jump off.

So we’re like, how can we make it so that they have somewhere to go upward and something to strive for? Because, as you guys know, if you are listeners, we have a very set out compensation trajectory for them, where every single year they are eligible to receive raises. And we lay that all out for 10 years. So that is good. They’re getting raises, but there’s no title change. There’s no responsibility change at all. Somebody who comes in next week is the same title as somebody who’s been with me for six years, seven years. And that doesn’t feel good. And I understand that that stagnation is not good. But we’ve just never been really sure how to solve that, or what to do without making up things or making it all a logistical nightmare for us.

Because we’re not going to have team leads. We don’t run teams. We’re not changing the structure of that. That doesn’t make sense for my business. In your business, team leads may make perfect sense. Doesn’t make sense for us. So team leads are not on this career path at all.

So it was really interesting to hear that. And it’s always been like a nagging hunch of mine. But to hear from them, this is a major issue, this is why you’re having churn. And one of the things that they said was, your vision has to be big enough that they can see themselves long-term in that vision. It’s big enough to fit in their career trajectory. So it makes perfect sense that they need room to grow from a title perspective too, and that that’s important. More responsibility, things like that.

So I will be describing all of that fully in detail. Maybe I will wait until June to record that, guys, so that you can hear how it was taken and what the response was from our techs, or if we’ve changed anything. Because it’s still not even — I just had my ops meeting this morning where we got through all of the other details that we’re going to have there. So it’s not even written up yet, but I have to tell you obviously that this is one of the biggest takeaways. So that was huge for us to learn that that is a significant problem for sure. And so we are on the case, and that is going to be announced by June 1st. So I’m very excited about that.

Takeaway #2: Group Training

Stephanie: And then one of the other pieces of advice that was from Alex, as you guys saw in the clip if you watched it, is group training. And group training is something that I never even — no — I’ve never even heard anybody talk about doing, despite having larger owners on the podcast. I’ve had larger owners and I don’t remember anybody mentioning group training. Maybe it’s been said and I just didn’t hear it.

So this was something that we had kind of discussed when we were revamping our training program of, is this something we want to try? And we just dismissed it because we’re like, it’s going to be way too overwhelming for Hannah, my trainer. And let’s not do that. There’s no way to do this.

And so hearing it from him, and all of us hearing that from him of, we need to group train because of the costs associated with it — alright. And so the week after — we literally the Monday after we got back, we had two people who were starting and who Hannah had to train. At the same time, just because of circumstances. It was what worked out. And so Hannah went and did it. It was on commercial, so she was training on commercial.

And I’ll definitely talk about group training and how we’re implementing that, because that is literally in the works right now. We will be doing that next week. We will be training two on residential at once. And I will share how we’re implementing that, how that’s adjusting our current training to accommodate that, and how we logistically do it.

Because if you watch the clip, he’s like, oh, just, you know, do this, do this, do this. And I think in a lot of ways that works well for knowledge workers, or like if you’re doing sales calls, or something on a computer. But it’s like, okay, how do you apply that for cleaning toilets or cleaning houses? And so we’re working through the areas of confusion still with that. But I think the concept is sound, that group training is the way to go.

So I’m really excited about that because of the cost savings and the time savings. Because if we spread it out one-on-one, what takes one week now turns into multiple weeks with Hannah. And if that person doesn’t work out — which a lot of people don’t work out, they make it through training and then they drop off or whatever — if that’s the case, then we just invested all of that time and money and that opportunity cost of Hannah’s time, of she can’t be on call, she can’t be filling in last minute or getting more cleans or doing quality checks when she’s training. So it makes a lot of sense, and we are literally implementing that right away, because we have a bunch of people starting in the next couple weeks. So very excited about that.

Takeaway #3: Better Interview Questions About Physicality

Stephanie: He also suggested — you can’t see it in the little clip that they did — but he also suggested asking more questions in the interview process about being on their feet. Because that is one of the biggest reasons people don’t make it through, or they start training and they drop off. They say they can do the work and that they’re physically able to do the work and it’s not going to be a problem. And then they start cleaning and they’re like, oh crap, this is way more than I expected.

And so one of the things that we’re going to be asking more about is, how do they physically stay active right now, and is their job physically demanding? So if they’re saying, I want to do this job because I think it’s going to be good for me and get me on my feet more — well, I’m not saying we’re not going to discount somebody like that, but if somebody is currently on their feet all the time for their work, like a lot of people in healthcare or serving jobs or things like that, well, they’re used to being on their feet, they’re used to moving all day. Whereas if they’re coming from a sedentary job, this may be a huge shock to their system. Because, as you guys know, it’s incredibly physically demanding. So that is definitely going to be more questions related to the physicality of the work, for sure. So that was useful to clarify on that.

Takeaway #4: Spend More on Indeed

Stephanie: And then finally, for me, the biggest takeaway is just spend more on Indeed. It’s not something that I ever thought I would be saying to you guys ever, because I have made a lot of content related to how to spend as little as possible and get applicants. It’s like, well, that doesn’t make sense if this is our biggest constraint. If your biggest constraint could be solved by just spending more money, and every single tech is going to make you this amount of money in a year — and if they’re full time, it should be 70 to 80,000, if they’re part time less obviously — but it is worth it because the value we’re going to get out of that investment, if they stay, is so high.

So I was like, let’s spend more on Indeed and see what happens. And it’s working so far. And I can make more content about that, of how we’re handling that and how we’re making those decisions of how much to spend and everything. But I’m like, if this is our biggest constraint, we’re about to go into summer, guys. We are about to go into summer. And last year’s summer, we could basically not keep up with anything. We missed out on so much money because we were just dealing with the sickening turnover and all of these issues that I’ve described so many times on the podcast that happened last year.

So if this could just be solved by investing on the front end, then I’m going to do that. There’s all of these different recruiting systems out there that are marketed to you guys. Not really interested in trying anything outside of Indeed right now. If this doesn’t work, then I could see exploring that. But most people are coming to us from Indeed. There are other softwares that kind of manage this stuff, but we’re just sticking with straight up — we’re handling Indeed right now. So that’s allowed us to have more job listings, which is great, and be more specific of, we’re looking for commercial in this area, blah blah blah, that type of thing.

So spending more on Indeed was kind of solidified in me of just like, you need to spend money to solve this problem, Stephanie, and being cheap doesn’t make any sense. Which I already knew, but I was like, spend more, spend more. So that’s what we’re doing, and it’s working, because we’re having a ton of applicants when it comes to that. So that was incredibly useful.

Refocusing My Time on Serene Clean

Stephanie: All of that to be said, I think that this was really clarifying for us of what needs to happen. And I know it only sounds like a couple pieces of advice. There is more things obviously that I took away. I have pages and pages of notes on different things when it comes to marketing, et cetera, et cetera. But right now, considering this is our constraint and focus is at staffing, those are the things that for me are top of mind. Obviously I’m going to take some of the marketing concepts and apply it to marketing for staff, for sure. So I’m really ramping that up.

I will also say it gave me a lot of clarity. I guess my other big takeaway is that my focus and my time right now is one of the biggest problems, because of all of my extracurricular work that I do. And obviously I’m going to still create content for you guys here, but I am going to be backing down on consulting drastically, because it is taking up an entire day of my week, and that is something I need to refocus on for Serene Clean so that we can get where I want to go with that.

And even just — I just did my CEO report for April, doing all of the data, and April was killer, guys. We have improved so much. We blew our monthly recurring revenue goal out of the water, because our goal is $1,500 a month added. We ended up adding — un momento, sorry, I’ve got to look here — we ended up adding $3,693 in April in recurring revenue.

So I am so proud of us. Because we have these metrics that we’re just super focused on, we’re doing the damn thing. And I’m so proud of us, our management team. They’re killing it. But if we do not solve the staffing thing, we’re going to hit that wall. We’re about to hit that wall on availability. We were not able to get as many first times in in April as we were in March. So it’s like, we’re seeing it happen right now. And the demand is coming in and we’re not able to fulfill it necessarily.

So it’s like, we need to really do whatever it takes to get this staffing under control, and not have another summer pass us by that is not fully taking advantage of all of the leads and fitting them in, especially on those moveouts, those nice juicy one-time cleans, those types of things. So I’m really excited to focus on that.

I still am going to be offering consulting, but in a very limited capacity. And we may be introducing other ways related to the podcast where you guys can have some consulting, but it’d be a podcast episode. So potentially. So if that’s something that you’re interested in, leave a comment down below.

And by the way, guys, if you are not subscribed, please hit that subscribe right now if you’re enjoying this content. If you like me, if you even tolerate me, will you please just hit that subscribe, hit that like. And you know what else really helps us is hitting that hype button. When you scroll down, there is a button where you can say “hype this video.” This is really great for small creators because it pushes out to other people who would be interested and find our content helpful and useful. So if you can just hit those buttons, just start hitting buttons, guys, that would be really, really useful. And if you hit that bell, you’ll be notified on every new podcast episode that we have, and all of the fabulous content that we are dropping here at the ZenMaid channel. So please hit those buttons, guys. I would really appreciate it.

The Other Big Change: Switching to Flat Rate Pricing with Molly Moran

Stephanie: So I also wanted to mention that, before we went to Vegas, the Thursday before, I paid for a consulting call with Miss Molly Moran. And it was specifically on how to transition from hourly charging to flat rate charging. That’s right. Your girl is switching to flat rate. And we’ve already done it. We’ve switched to flat rate.

I know, I know. Shock. Awe. Surprise. Leave me a little fireworks emoji in the comments, please, if you are as excited about this as I am. Because, you know, every single one of you that’s a listener knows, I have been hourly from day one for residential. This is crazy. And it was always something — I’m like, yeah, like, you know, I’ve never shit-talked flat rate. The only one I’ve shit-talked is charging by the square footage, because I think a lot of people do that wrong. But flat rate, I’m like, yeah, there’s pros, but I’m like, you know, our ruler’s not broke. It’s simple. Blah blah blah blah blah.

But obviously we’re leaving profit on the table. And a lot of other things on the table. So we had a call with Molly. I had my managers with. And we’re like, you know, we’d like this idea, but we are so stuck on the what-ifs. What about, right? What about this side? What about this thing? How do we handle this? What if when they say this, how do we handle that?

And she walked us through it and kind of gave us some metrics. She looked at our estimating email and gave us some suggestions there too. And it was just so incredibly valuable. So I was like, alright, we’re going to Vegas. We can’t implement this till after we get back. But as soon as we got back, I flew up to Wisconsin. Literally that Monday we started working on this, and by Tuesday we started sending out flat rate pricing to new estimates and doing both a price increase and switching to flat rate on all of our current clients.

I am not kidding, guys. It’s been a crazy past — I still can’t believe that was only last week. Was that only last week? Holy shit. Like, it’s been insane.

So if you want to know how I did this, leave a comment down below, because I want to wait a little bit to see how many clients we lose due to the price increase. But spoiler alert: we are increasing all of our clients who are at $50 to $55 and changing them over to flat rate. And so far only two have dropped. Only two have dropped. So that’s right now. Obviously, knock on wood, all of the price increases have not been put into place yet, where we’ve been staggering and sending out emails to try to mitigate the effects. And there’s been a lot of back and forth sometimes. And so it’s been crazy.

I think this is totally warranting of an entire episode of, how and why have I done this transition at this size? And how are we rolling this out? How are we handling new clients? And get this, guys — we’re also doing flat rate first times. The shock, the horror. Who would have ever thought? Because that was one thing — I was like, oh, no, I’ll do the hybrid method. But we decided to do flat rate on first times too. So it’s brand new. There’s still a lot of things to figure out, but we’re doing the damn thing. We’re taking action.

Power is the Speed at Which You Make Thoughts Become Reality

Stephanie: And that was one of the things I wrote down. I can’t find it in my book here, but one of the quotes — oh, huh, that’s crazy, I turned to the exact right page where I wrote this. Power is the speed at which you make thoughts become reality.

So that really cemented. I should put that on a damn sticky note on my computer, of just like, I know this thing needs to change, we’re making this thing change. And the amount of stuff that we’ve been able to do and accomplish in the past couple weeks, and big structural changes — flat rate pricing, that’s crazy. That’s wild. I’m so excited about that.

Price increases — I did not think we were going to do a price increase right now. And Molly was like, yeah, do that. And so we’re like, okay. And so we did it. And so just, like, boom, boom, boom, boom. Career path, we’re doing it. Group training, we’re doing it.

And so I think it’s very important that you don’t just change things to change things. Obviously, as Hormozi says, like, why can’t we just do more? Why do we have to change or add things? Can we just do more and get the result? But in these cases, these structural changes needed to happen, because doing more was not working. Or it wasn’t working as well as changing it.

So it’s been an insane past couple of weeks. So that’s why if I have not gotten back to you recently, guys, it’s just been crazy. And I’ve been exhausted. And then I went and saw Bruno Mars, which was amazing too. So it’s been insane.

So a lot of structural changes. I of course want to make content on all of these topics. Let me know which one you’re most excited about, and I can kind of prioritize that.

But it’s pretty crazy around here. And so between our meeting with Molly and then going to the conference, I just feel like we’re on the — like, it newly — it’s like the Renaissance period of Serene Clean right now. I swear to God. Things are about to get crazy. I just know we’re going to bust through this plateau. I know we’re going to hit our goals, because I just feel so sure of it, because we’re doing the things that are actually going to move the needle. And our profitability is absolutely going to go up. I already can sense that, based on the numbers. So I’m just so excited about this.

I really do think it was worth our while. Of course, they’re going to try to sell you more things, guys. So just know that going in. There’s their roadmap plan that they sell. They’re going to try to sell you that. I wasn’t going to buy it. I went in knowing, I’m not going to buy this, I’m not going to buy anything else they sold. My managers were like, oh, we could really use this. So I bought it. So I’ll let you know how that goes. And that’s where they kind of lay out — they do a deep dive into all of your metrics, they look at all of your numbers and kind of come up with a game plan too.

So I’m very curious to hear what else they suggest from that. But that will be later in this year. So that’s kind of the nice thing — is we can see the effects of what we’re about to do, and then hopefully they can build upon that with more advice. So I’m kind of in the — I’m willing to invest right now, because clearly I’m chasing my tail right now at the size that we’re at, and I really want to get over the current size that we are at.

It’s Okay to Change Your Mind

Stephanie: So I’m so excited, guys. It’s kind of crazy. I’m so happy to be able to share this in real time with you guys, of like, you’ve seen what has been happening the past two years and my thoughts on things. And I just want to remind you guys, it’s okay to change your mind. I’ve never done flat rate for anything before except commercial, which obviously I know commercial, we’re good at that, all of that good stuff. I want more commercial. But on the residential side, this is a huge change, and it’s something that I was very afraid of. And so I’m just feeling really empowered right now that it’s like, no, we can change things, we can experiment, and if we make a mistake, we’ll learn from it.

And every time a client emails back asking something, it’s like, okay, add that to the bank of questions that people ask about this, and here are how we handle those objections. We have completely switched off — one of the biggest things from Molly, this one I’m super excited about, guys, is our sales email of the estimate. And what that has done for booking reoccurring is absolutely insane. The amount of people that are booking reoccurring right away from March to April has more than doubled, if not tripled, if I’m not mistaken — of how many people have booked reoccurring before the first time clean has even happened. That never happened before. And now we’re having people booking reoccurring before their first time. They just sign up for reoccurring right away. And that was one of the biggest pieces of advice on Molly’s part.

So I’ll dig into all of that. I just have so much to share with you guys. It’s almost overwhelming, of like, I don’t even know what to talk about first. But I wanted this episode to be all about, high level, all of the shit that’s coming down the pipeline for us, in the best of ways. And then we can deep dive into each area. But it’s all happening right now. So a lot of this is, I need more time to see the effects and to adjust, and then I can share with you guys of, this worked, this didn’t work, we had to readjust this, blah blah blah.

So I’m just so excited. This has just been a crazy past couple weeks. It was great to go back to Wisconsin. And I just feel so good about the future of Serene Clean. I feel very passionate about it again. Not that I wasn’t, but I just feel like I have this new zest for my business, and it’s really, really exciting.

Wrap-Up

Stephanie: So I can’t wait to share it all with you guys. Yeah, let me know what you’re most excited to hear about, what questions you have. I just threw a lot at you. So definitely ask anything down below, and I’m happy to share it.

For all of you new folks who have never seen me before, I make lots of content. We interview many, many owners. We do two episodes a week. So if you dig my style, definitely stick around, if you’re considering opening a cleaning business, you own a cleaning business, you’re cleaning right now. For those of you cleaning right now or driving between jobs, shout out to you especially — the ones who are listening, not watching, shout out to you. I know I’m a part of your routine oftentimes, and I do not take that for granted. It always makes me feel really happy to know that I’m in your ears, keeping you company while you’re working and driving between jobs. So I don’t take it for granted. You could be listening to a lot of things. So I just want to tell you guys how much I appreciate you. You are always giving me such love and support, and I just love hearing from you.

I’ve had some amazing calls this week — oh gosh, I almost burst into tears on one Tuesday because she was just being so sweet of the impact that this content has had on her and on her business. So thank you, guys. I am not an expert. I will not claim to be an expert. I’m just showing you what the hell is going on right now. And I hope that this has given you some ideas in these past 150 episodes, or wherever we’re at. That’s all I can ask, is that I’m making a positive impact on you guys in any way possible.

So if you’re new here, welcome. I’m happy to have you. Definitely leave any comments down below that I can answer. And, you know, I’ll just keep documenting things as they go on real time in Serene Clean. So I’m so excited. Let me know what you guys want to see next week, and I will get something together, because there’s just so many ideas, there’s so many things to talk about.

But I will leave it at that, guys. Give me a like, hit that subscribe, join the ZenMaid Mastermind on Facebook. You don’t have to be a ZenMaid customer to be in the mastermind, and that’s where I’m hanging out all the time when I can and answering questions. Definitely, the ZenMaid newsletter, go subscribe to that. It’s in the comments below. I think it’s ZenMaid.com/newsletter. We are putting out newsletters every single week with really great advice, free resources, all of that good stuff. So go there too, guys, and I’ll see you on the next episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners. Bye!