Leadership Mistakes That Cost Serene Clean $120K

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Introduction

Hello, everyone. Welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I am your host, Stephanie from Serene Clean. And in today’s solo episode, I am going to be sharing with you guys the results of my accountability reflection on myself as a leader over the past year 2025.

And as we all do, hopefully in January, we do a lot of reflection and looking back on the previous year and really digging critically into the behaviors and actions or lack thereof that we took as people, as owners of our businesses that contributed to the positive and negative outcomes of that year.

And as you guys know, as I have shared through this past year and in the past several episodes, things did not go as planned in 2025. Things didn’t go as I had hoped. And I have shared with you guys tactically what we expect to do or what we are going to do to switch gears and really turn the boat around when it comes to Serene Clean, growing again instead of shrinking as it did.

And I wanted to dig a little bit further and I wanted to look at myself as a leader. And if you guys watched Chelsea Withers episode a few weeks back, great interview, highly recommend. You know, we talk about Extreme Ownership in that episode, that book, if you haven’t read by Jocko Willink, highly recommend.

And I really wanted to take that to heart and think about what is it that I did that caused the issues that Serene Clean experienced? Why did this happen? And not just why in the business, but what can I do? Because all we can control is us and our actions, right?

And so I really was able to narrow it down to three main behaviors or mistakes. Now looking back that I myself did that I want to share with you guys as a cautionary tale, but also as some accountability for myself of, okay, these are the things that need to change.

And in no way am I really feeling bad, honestly, at all. This is not a shame thing. This is a, all right, this is what I did. And just being very calculating and not very emotional about it at all, honestly. And feeling just such a fire under my ass right now to just go so much harder on Serene Clean.

And I’m really excited about Serene Clean. I feel I have a new lease on life when it comes to the business. And I think that these three areas are exactly what I did wrong. And I want to talk about each with you.

So all of that rambling to be said, these are the three areas that I messed up in and that I need to readjust going into 2026 and beyond just so that Serene Clean continues to stay strong. It turns around, it does what it needs to do, and that is all going to come from me, the leader, right?

Mistake Number One: Loss of Focus Through Fragmentation

Okay, so mistake number one is going to be loss of focus through fragmentation. So as you all know, this podcast is a year old now. We are over 100 episodes in. And as my career has grown from being the owner of Serene Clean and all of this awesome opportunity that has come from me being the owner of Serene Clean, me sharing my story with you guys, and just our industry at large, a lot of opportunities have came my way because of that things that I would never expect.

Literally me sitting right here and talking to you guys right now is not anything that I ever anticipated. When I opened Serene Clean, it was never with the intention of anything other than having a side hustle, right? So I certainly did not anticipate all of these other opportunities as I have seen success with the business to come my way, right?

All of the freelance work, the consulting, selling bundles, sharing documentation with you guys, working with ZenMaid. All of these things I never anticipated happening, right? And so as these opportunities came my way, and let me make this clear, I am so happy and have zero regrets when it comes to taking on these opportunities and these new exciting career pathways, right?

What that has done, though, the unintended side effect is fragmentation of my focus as the founder and leader of Serene Clean, right? And so my attention started splitting this year way more than it ever has in this way. This is all very new to me, right? This career trajectory, though very exciting, is completely new. I’ve never done this before, guys.

And so I really am noticing now looking back, I took my energy and I took my focus and I put it in these other things. So consulting, podcasts, ZenMaid work, and then Serene Clean, right? I have all these things that are going on along with on a personal level, a lot of personal turmoil in my life, right? A lot of family issues, relationship things. A lot of things have changed in my life in this past year.

And a lot of things were taking up my time, attention, focus, and just bandwidth in general. There’s a reason Stephanie got a Phoenix tattoo this year, let me tell you. So all of that to be said, none of this is really judging me. Again, I don’t feel ashamed. It makes sense why this happened, but I need to realize that something needs to change if Serene Clean is going to reach its potential.

So I really, in my subconscious and conscious, I said, you know, Serene Clean is stable. It doesn’t need me like it used to, right. And so especially coming off of two years where we hit, you know, higher and higher revenue or really the business grew, right. The business continued to grow. This is the first year that it ever shrunk in revenue.

That was not because of the big Fort McCoy job, right. I’m taking that out of there because from a high revenue perspective, we did make more in year four than we did year five. But that’s because there was that extra unexpected income that we can’t replicate, right? But in the normal side of the business, we have grown year over year with residential commercial, right? That revenue has grown every single year.

And so with 2025 being the first year that that hasn’t happened, I think me losing focus has been one of the leading indicators and not protecting against that, right? It just was, yeah, it’s good. It’s good. It doesn’t need me. It can kind of run on what I felt was autopilot. You know, I’ve even bragged about how little I have to work in Serene Clean, that it’s pretty much passive income, right?

And I’m the one who says that that never should be the case. And I’m the one who did that, right? How many times have I bashed that mindset on this actual podcast? And I did that, right? And even though I was still involved, I was on a weekly basis checking in with my managers, I was running my team meetings. I was paying attention to it, but I didn’t have that focus and drive that I had had in previous years because it just felt so stable. It’s, it’s doing its thing. It doesn’t need me. It doesn’t need my attention like it did before, right.

Where it’s, you know what caused Serene Clean to do what it did is Stephanie’s laser psychotic obsessive attention. That is what has made it what it is. And so when I removed that, because I had all these other fabulous opportunities come my way, well, the side effect is this going south, right?

And so I want you guys to know that as you grow and as you continue to find success in your business, things are going to come your way that are going to seem really enticing and being able to say no to good opportunities in order to only say yes to the great, right? That’s a quote. I don’t know who said it. I did not make that up, right? So I’m just repeating what I’ve heard.

But it takes a lot of discernment and discipline to be able to say no. I also did, you know, a couple of speaking engagements that took me away. And I think for me, just being very aware of my, you know, kind of former people pleasing tendencies of I’m just flattered that people even think of me. And so I jumped to say yes to every opportunity that comes my way.

And I know I have to work on that because my time and energy cannot be split even more along with all of these other things. I can’t add more because something is going to have to suffer. And one of the best things I ever did for myself was get my executive assistant, Veronica, who is just incredible. There was absolutely no way that I could have done all of these new things without her helping and assisting and pretty much taking over a ton of labor that I was doing. So, so grateful for that.

The Danger of Fragmented Focus

But the lesson I want you guys to take away is this can be really insidious. You start saying yes to new things, right? And a lot of you, you got kids, you got families, you got all of these other responsibilities that you’re caring for. Your focus is already fragmented.

And what I will say is a lot of people that I talk to, what they’re doing is, you know, they’re adding a bunch of, for example, in our businesses, right? You may be adding a lot of different packages or services and things. Obviously, we’ve talked about carpet cleaning. We’ve talked about pressure washing. We’ve talked about these things on this podcast. And they are good things to consider.

But I want you to caution. Do not jump into just all of these things and being, I can do everything because that’s more money, right? Well, every time you fragment that focus and have to split it amongst all of these things, or if you’re trying to run multiple small businesses, well, guess what’s going to suffer? All of them, right?

I want you guys to be laser focused. And that is what allowed me to be so successful for years and something I need to come back to. And so I now am in this particular area so aware of that. This has been a problem. And now it’s Serene Clean is top priority for me now again.

And the thing is Serene Clean doing what it needs to do and me being the leader there, it is going to feed into all of these other things, right? I do not want for you guys for me to be a passive owner because that is not helpful to you guys. I want me to be the one on the, not the front line, but I want to be leading and trying new things so that I can share those things with you and tell you what works so you know what to expect as you continue to grow.

Because a lot of you guys, I would say that most of the listeners here are under probably $500,000 in yearly revenue. Our typical listener of Filthy Rich Cleaners is under that revenue mark. So I want you guys to know what to do to get from zero to 500,000, 500,000 to a million.

But I want you guys to hear from the horse’s mouth, me being the horse, what to expect and what mistakes that I have made along the way so that you can correct and notice those things in yourself. So you can correct that long before it’s actually a huge problem.

So focus is going to be one of the biggest struggles. And I think just as people and as business owners, being focused is so hard, guys. It is so hard. You have a million things coming your way. So don’t make it harder on yourself by opening up to all of these seemingly good opportunities or things that sound shiny and delicious, right?

We don’t need to be doing everything. Focus in on what you do really well and solving the problems there, right? Residential or commercial, vacation rental. There’s a reason that we have limited even more. So one thing we have done is we have focused our services of we do commercial, we do residential, move outs, of course, we don’t really do post construction, very, very few.

And vacation rentals have just been grandfathered in. But as you know, we stopped. We don’t take on any more vacation rentals, we just want to get really, really, really good at these two things. And you know, I thought about, okay, again, sometime I want to add back in carpet cleaning, that’s not going to be this year. All right, I need to learn about that.

And I want to be really, really good at that and invest in the proper equipment and things like that before I just jump in like I did. That was a huge mistake I made was I thought, let me just add this on really nonchalant. It’s not that hard, right? Mistake.

And so please heed my warning guys is one thing that can happen as you continue to grow and your attention is dragged into different areas is the business is going to suffer. And you may not realize it immediately right now, but I’m showing you after a year of this happening. And again, I’m so grateful for all of the opportunities. Don’t take that as me not being grateful for all of the amazing things.

But I need to level up if I’m going to be able to handle all of this. And I really can’t say yes to anything else big, right. And so I just have to be very aware of that now of don’t just let the little things sneak in because you want to please everybody. You want to be seen as, you know, Johnny on the spot.

The Cell Phone Problem

That’s one of my biggest mistakes is, or I would say one of the biggest traits that I am trying to leave behind in 2025 is being Miss Johnny on the spot or Juanita on the spot. I don’t know what the female equivalent of Johnny on the spot is. But meaning when people say jump, I ask how high and I trip over myself to get to them because that’s what led me to having a lot of success in Serene Clean in the business in the beginning was I just very speed, speed of responsiveness, speed of action. And that is fantastic.

But I need to learn now in my personal life and me as everything else that I’m kind of doing things. It can’t always be that way, right. And Serene Clean needs to be my number one priority because Serene Clean is what feeds all of the other stuff. It’s what provides me knowledge and real life know how so that I can teach you guys and talk about this.

I never want to be a podcast host who I had a successful business or I built a business five, six years ago. And now I just sit on the beach and I talk about what worked back then, right? I need to stay in it and I need to stay hungry for more.

So yeah, I just, I really, my focus and my clarity about what needs to happen is so laser sharp right now. And I think I just needed a really big wake up call in the form of Serene Clean shrunk $120,000 last year from the previous year, right? That’s my wake up call of something needs to change and it’s going to come from me, right? I’m the one who needs to lead that.

So I just, I’m, I’m excited saying that of I have the control, I have the power and I want you guys to hear that I’m not miss perfect. All right. And just, and Stephanie just is this entity that you all should, you know, kiss my feet kind of thing. I absolutely fall prey to these things that we all do.

And yeah, I just, I don’t want to continue to fragment my focus. It’s, no, nothing more. And if, if an opportunity comes my way this year, I guarantee several cool things are going to happen in the next year that I’m, oh my God, yes. Or somebody’s going to, things are going to come to me because that’s what happens as you continue to get success is opportunities come your way.

And so I just really want to be very discerning. And don’t just say yes all the time, because as you might can understand or get from me, I’m a very excitable person. And when something sounds cool, and awesome, I want to say yes, of course I do. But I have to consider my current responsibilities of, okay, if I go to that thing, that’s going to take away four days from my other work.

You know what that means, you’re going to have to work twice as hard two weeks prior to make sure everything is on track. And you’re going to have to do this, you’re going to have to do that. So I just really want to be a lot more discerning in 2026 about the things I say yes to and the things I allow to take away my focus from what I am currently doing, right?

I don’t want to just do these podcast episodes to get them recorded, right? I want them to be useful. I don’t ever want them to be fluffy because I’m, yep, we need a, we need an episode. Let me just talk about something fluffy for 40 minutes and try to motivate you guys. That is not what I want to do here.

I want to be in it, in Serene Clean so that I can be, hey, guys, I just did this. This is what worked. This is what not worked. This blah, blah, blah, blah, right? So I really want to just focus on being focused and not let myself to get so distracted and having a lot of boundaries around this motherfucker right here, okay?

This guy is probably one of the biggest reasons that the focus was an issue and just being really, really hard on myself when it comes to the cell phone and the social media. The amount of hours that I spent passively scrolling on this is disgusting, disgusting. And so that is an area that I really want to improve upon.

And just think about is that scrolling worth what it’s taking away from me and worth all of the good things that I could be doing with that time. And using scrolling as a form of procrastination because I do not want to go do the work that I need to do. And I don’t want to be the kind of person who procrastinates.

I want to be a proactive person. I want to be somebody that at the end of the day, I can look in the mirror and be, hell yeah, you worked so hard today. You earned that Instagram scroll time, right? I don’t want to be the person who spent four hours on my phone scrolling and not getting the things that I know I need to accomplish done.

And it’s not just what other people are wanting from me or needing from me. It’s I have things that I want to work on. And so I hope none of you guys are feeling particularly attacked, but we all are spending way too much time on our phones. So if I’m going to talk about focus, I have to talk about the elephant in the room, which is in all of our hands right now, probably.

And just don’t allow myself to get sucked into that. And having really hard look in the mirror moments of you wasted two hours today on your phone. You could have been doing all of these other things, you could have been getting ahead on this, you could be doing this audit, you could be doing this.

And so I just, again, none of this is to feel bad. It’s just I know I am capable of excellence. I have proven that to myself time and time again. And right now, I know in 2025, I did not, I did not reach what I could have. And I know a lot of you guys are, gosh, you’re being so hard on yourself. No, I’m not. I’m not being hard on myself, guys.

I know what I am capable of. And I did not do that in 2025. And again, I can legitimately point to why that did not happen. I understand. And I have done many, many things to remove people and things and situations from my life that I can now be laser focused on what my purpose is, which is to run and grow Serene Clean to the best of my ability to have a kick-ass podcast and to provide as much value as possible in my consulting work, right?

That, that is what my purpose is and nothing else needs to be taking away from that. And if anything is taking away from that, I need to look very critically at why that’s in my life, right? So I’m not trying to be all motivational speaker right now. I’m just so, oh my gosh, I need, I need to make these improvements.

So that is my biggest mistake, number one, is loss of focus through fragmentation in the past year.

Mistake Number Two: Confusing Comfort With Safety

Mistake number two is related to being comfortable. So confusing comfort with safety when it comes to Serene Clean. So the comfort that we may be seeing in our businesses that can lure us into a false sense of safety is when staffing is stable, when clients feel steady, when you’re making a comfortable amount of money, if there’s no urgent fires and things seem to be going smoothly.

And let me tell you, I have been pretty comfortable for the past couple of years. And I have noticed a seismic shift once I started making a certain amount of money from Serene Clean in just being a hungry ass bitch. It went away. It really did. And it makes me miss the girl that I was when Serene Clean was growing.

It was almost high of more, more, more. And that sounds kind of messed up, I know. And that sounds unhealthy, perhaps. But I just know that that is when I am happiest is when I am pushing for more in Serene Clean. I’ve never been more happy and more fulfilled than when I am pushing the business to do better and to do more.

And I don’t want to apologize for that. I don’t want to feel bad about that. Honestly, many, many people, many partners have tried to make me feel bad about that of when is it going to be enough? And it’s, bitch, this is my passion. This is what I was put on this earth to do is to grow the best possible cleaning service in Western Wisconsin and grow it big and grow it to be just this amazing force to be reckoned with.

I want to hang my hat at the end of the day and say, I built that thing, right. And so I took such pride in that. And I do still take pride in that, of course. But I know at the end of the day that I became comfortable. And, you know, the whole, I know there’s a lot of sayings related to this, but of course I can’t think of any analogies, but it’s just I was being fed very well. And so I wasn’t very hungry anymore.

And so I want to caution you guys of when things seem to be going well and easy, that’s when we need to not sit back for too long. I’m not saying don’t take breaks. I’m not saying don’t enjoy yourself. Honestly, when I moved to Savannah, that was what, three years ago, you know, I worked very little at Serene Clean. I just, I worked very little because I’m, I don’t need to. I make plenty of money. It’s okay if the business doesn’t even grow.

But the problem, that literally was in my head. I’m, it’s okay if it doesn’t grow. We’re all happy here. We’re all making what we want to make. What’s the point of it all? And it’s, that is such a messed up mindset. I don’t know where that came from for me because that’s just not who I am.

And I think I just need to lean in heavily and be proud of the fact that it’s, no, I want it to keep growing. I want it to reach its full potential. And I have no idea what that even is. We’re only six and a half years in, right? I look at cleaning businesses that have been in business for 30 years and I’m, well, that’s going to happen someday for Serene Clean.

Do I want it to just be a, you know, whatever, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5 million dollar business for the next 30 years? No, I want it to be big, as big as I can in the, in the region that it is because that it’s just, it’s what I want to do. It’s just this intrinsic thing and that desire.

The Reality of Remote Ownership

And so what happened when I moved to Savannah and I had that distance from the business, and I’m just being real with you guys on the realities of remote ownership is that, you know, the problem seemed far away from me and it just, it ran smoothly, which is the goal, of course. I’m so happy and proud that we have done that, but that kind of made me sit back on my haunches and be, it’s all good. It’s all good. Nothing is that big of a deal, right.

And that is just not a good attitude to have. That is the time we’d be, all right, things are going smoothly. We need to keep pushing. We need to keep pushing. And so that way, when things did not go smoothly, I didn’t behave in the urgent way that I needed to.

So by me getting comfortable, my hunger faded, my urgency disappeared, and proactive behavior stopped. So I don’t think I was lazy necessarily. I was just slower. I was just a lot slower in my behavior because I was comfortable. And so I just now it took me this pain of this last year dropping that now I’m, all right, that comfort’s not guaranteed. That safety is not guaranteed.

You can lose a big commercial account. The government shutdown may take away tens of thousands of dollars of revenue that you thought was going to be steady and there for five years because it’s a five-year contract that we have, right? The real things that happen, you may not be able to keep staffing. You may lose trickling customers and not be able to replace them because of availability, right?

Safety is not guaranteed in this business. And so if you feel things are really stable and good right now, I’m not trying to scare you, but things are coming down the line. We have no idea. And that’s again, that’s not to freak you out. That’s just so that you stay hungry and never stop pushing because that person that’s worked for you for four years, they might steal from a church, right? That happened this year.

That account that you’ve had for years, that was the largest commercial account that you had for literal years for us. One of our commercial accounts that I got in the first year, they dropped, right? Because business has been bad for them. So tens of, you know, that happened before, let’s see, that happened late 2024.

So these big chunks getting eaten away, eaten away, eaten away. And me just being very nonchalant about it. I’m, oh, it’s okay. It’s okay. But not actually considering what that is doing to us as it’s us not replacing all of that monthly reoccurring revenue at the same pace. So it’s not you can just stay steady. A steady business that isn’t hungry, it’s going to start dying, right?

If we’re not growing, we’re dying. And so I just want to be aware of any time I’m, okay, it’s good. We can, we can, you know, step off the gas a little bit. It’s, but why, why do I feel the need to step off the gas? Because that is not what we need to do.

Staying Ahead of the Competition

You never are safe. I don’t know the competitors that could be popping up tomorrow. I want to be so far ahead in the race because I never stopped hitting the gas that they have no ability to gain on me, right. They may cut, obviously I literally create content and how I grew my business, right. There is absolutely no secrets that I keep from this podcast when it comes to my business success.

I am giving my potential future competitors the blueprint of my success, right? And that is something I considered before opening this podcast of do I want to put this all out here? But it’s as long as I keep pushing and as long as I stay hungry, they are not going to catch up for me, even though they know exactly what we’ve done.

I want to be so far ahead in the race, the marathon that is business ownership. I want to be at mile 17 when they’re at mile one, right? And they have no ability to catch because if I just stop at, you know, tortoise and hare style, I’m, you know what? I’m good. I don’t need to push anymore. Here comes Mr. Tortoise, right?

So I need to just keep running, keep running, keep running. And it’s not in a frantic sort of way. It’s just this focused, you know, hungry effort that I need to always have as a leader of, well, why, why are you being so content right now? And contentness is something that we can have every day. I am content in my life. I am content in who I am. I am content in the business.

However, that does not mean today, right? I am happy. I feel fulfilled, all of these things, but that doesn’t mean that I should let off the gas and not reach the potential, right? I know I have so much potential more for Serene Clean and for everything else that I’m doing. So why am I letting off the gas?

And so again, I think I just, I’ve reached such clarity of I have not been doing enough when it comes to really every area, right? Of my life. And so, and, and I’m not, I don’t feel bad about that. I’m excited because it means I can do something about it, right?

Maintaining Urgency and Proactivity

So I just urge you guys, when things start to feel easy, don’t stop doing the things that you know you need to do. Don’t stop getting the reviews. Don’t stop doing the quality checks. Don’t stop pursuing the leads, right? Because you don’t know what tomorrow brings. You don’t know what client is about to drop. You do not know what employee is about to quit or that you need to fire because they do something crazy and unexpected.

Don’t stop interviewing. Do not stop doing the group interviews, right? We need to have all of the pipelines full of everything that we need leads and employees even if things feel comfortable even if you’re, I’m fully staffed right now. I don’t need anybody. I can tell you how many times I uttered the word those words in the past six years and then literally the next week something crazy happened or we need to fire somebody quit really unexpectedly and it’s, thank goodness we were doing group interviews through that time because otherwise we would have been set back on our growth because now we’re just trying to stay the same like we did this past year instead of absorbing that turnover and continuing to grow, right?

So the only reason we grew when it came to staffing is by doing the group interviews and always having a constant pipeline of hires even if right now we’re, we’re good we don’t need anybody but I guarantee in a month you’re going to need somebody in two months you’re going to need somebody.

So why would you wait until that emergency fire is happening? Let’s be more proactive instead of just reactive. Because when we’re just reacting to the turnover, well, then we can never get ahead because we’re just trying to keep our heads above water and tread water instead of grow and get that momentum, right?

So comfort, me, me mistaking comfort as safety in the business is a huge mistake. And I’m really happy that I am correcting that now and I’m not allowing it any longer, right? There is no such thing as safety, all right? It’s a total illusion when it comes to the business. And now is not the time to sit back. And I just, I just got corrected, right? I just got corrected because I got so comfortable.

And so no more, no more comfort. That is not, that is not the case at all. So I’m really happy that I’m taking this time to realize that and change my behavior going forward.

Mistake Number Three: Watching Lagging Indicators Instead of Leading Indicators

So the final mistake that I realized that I did as a leader, well, I did a lot of mistakes, but this is the one I’m talking about. I’m breaking it down in three areas. And this is because I, I listened to, I was listening to an Alex Hermosi video the other day and he mentioned this and I was, oh my God, that’s exactly what I did in 2025 this mistake.

And that mistake is watching lagging indicators instead of leading indicators. And you may not know what those things are. So I’m going to talk to you about it because I didn’t really understand either till I heard that episode. I’m, holy shit, this is exactly what I was doing in 2025.

So a lagging indicator is looking at what had already happened, right? And a leading indicator is actions that predict what is coming. So I was looking always in the past. As every month passed, I was looking at what went wrong, what went right, the numbers, the KPIs and metrics of last month. I not ever really looked towards what was happening, what things we were doing to set ourselves up for success in the future.

And as bad things kept happening in 2025, and things started to feel out of control, I just kept looking, oh, yeah, another bad month. Well, this happened, this happened, this happened. All right. And it’s not I wasn’t looking at certain things leading indicators, okay, do we have somebody hire that type of stuff.

But when it came to actually pushing to have the growth that we had have and had in previous years, I just wasn’t paying attention to those specific metrics. So the things that I was looking at, I was looking at last month’s revenue, I was looking at last month’s profit, I was looking at last month’s churn, I was looking at last month’s number of appointments, right? These all of these things that I had in the past.

Whereas the leading indicators, the actions that predict what is about to happen, what can we expect from revenue in the next month, the things that are about to happen. So how many first-time cleans are booked two to four weeks out, right? How many estimates are waiting on follow-up? How much protected availability exists?

Didn’t even talk about protected availability. As you guys know, in my past couple episodes, I’ve been talking about this is one of the biggest problems that we are going to now be paying attention to in 2026 is protecting availability so that we can fit in first times. Because if we can’t fit in first time cleans, we can’t fit in second time cleans. And if we can’t fit in second time cleans, then we can’t make a reoccurring service out of that person, right?

So we need to protect enough availability and buffer of large chunks of availability to get in the first time cleans. And so how many first time cleans do we have scheduled out over the next four weeks? I didn’t really ever pay attention to that. I did look at how many did we have? Again, I was just, I was paying attention. I’d be, great. If it was September, I’d be, great. We had two first time cleans in August, right.

I didn’t even pay attention to how many we had scheduled coming up because everything just felt so chaotic. And the whole focus was cover what we have, right? Make sure the appointments that we have now are covered because we had these crazy situations. And again, and I understand why that happened.

But it’s if we had if I had focused more heavily on, whoa, we do not have any first time clean scheduled over the next three weeks. That means we’re certainly not going to add any reoccurring revenue in two months because we need the first time cleans this month to happen to add the reoccurring revenue the next month, right.

So there just was no focus at all on that whatsoever. So I just kept reviewing the past instead of looking at the future and saying, what is about to happen? And is it what I want to happen? So we just kept repeatedly having, I need to get through this month feeling. And again, I understand why we felt that way. I understand why I felt that way. I understand why my management team felt that way, because things were just absolute chaos this year in a lot of ways.

And we learned so much from it. I’m very grateful that this year happened because I feel this is what I needed to happen in order to feel how I am feeling right now. To get my focus and hunger back, I needed 2025 to happen so that I would have this sense of urgency back. That just slapped me across the face and say, bitch, pay attention. Pay attention to what’s happening in Serene Clean. You are losing focus. You are feeling comfortable. Well, don’t feel that way.

Don’t get cocky because it could happen to any of us. And I get it. My business is still big. It’s still successful. All of these things. But that doesn’t mean it can’t fail, right? That doesn’t mean I don’t have 27, 28 families depending on my leadership to get things done and keep pushing for growth and success so that I can be the employer that they need me to be, right?

So I really am grateful that this happened. I have such clarity now of what needs to happen. So I don’t want to just focus on problems after the damage is done. I don’t want to allow the availability buffer to just go away because we are just blindly approving time off and not looking ahead of, all right, are we protecting this so that we can be really aggressive on marketing and sales?

The Reality of 2025’s Marketing and Sales

All of 2025, marketing and sales, it didn’t matter at all. It didn’t matter at all. It’s not something we even considered we can’t even cover our current schedule. Why the hell would I even be looking at adding new clients where now it’s, okay, time to shift gears and pursue because now we finally, okay, we got a good, good flow of hiring. We’ve got good candidates. They’ve all been working out really, really well. Well, now we finally have availability. It’s time to shift gears and be aggressive on pursuit, making sure our follow-up is in place, being enticing, just, just, yeah, aggressively pursuing all of our leads.

We got plenty of leads in the past year. In fact, let me look up. I know I have the numbers here. In 2025, I had 575 leads come in and we only closed 17% of them. We closed 98 of them. The previous year, 2024, we had 470 leads and we closed 143. 30.4% of the leads got closed total, you know, all leads, including commercial, residential, everybody, right?

So we closed far less leads because we did not have the availability, which means not only did that first time not happen, those reoccurring services does not occur, right? So even despite us having over 100 more leads come in in 2025, and we were not pushing any type of marketing hardly at all, was not really spending any money on that at all.

That was what was happening because we have these mountain of Google reviews that are bringing us leads, of course, which again, spoiler alert, Google reviews are really important if you want to just have this machine working for you in years to come. Clearly, we have good marketing, we have good branding, we have all of that in place. It’s just we didn’t have anywhere to put the appointments, right?

So this is not a problem. So now it’s, all right, 575 leads, only 98 closed, that means I have near 500 leads from the past year that I can be coming back to now and being, look, I want you. I want to be your service provider. Let me clean for you, right? That’s what I’m going to do.

So it’s not even focusing on this year, I need to bring in more leads than last year. That’s not the problem at all. It’s, I have all these people sitting here that I can do more with, right? It’s throwing money in the air and burning it because I did not have the capability to put them anywhere.

So I’m really excited about looking at that number because I’m, oh my gosh, there’s a lot of money on the table that I can circle back to and see if they’re still interested, right? Because it’s not just because they reached out last March and we couldn’t fit them in that or, you know, they didn’t rebook or whatever because we didn’t have any room for reoccurring services or whatever the case is. I can still go talk to those people. I can still pursue them. They were interested in us at one point. There’s could possibly not be interested in us again.

So I’m going to be doing a lot of work, deep diving into that and just heavily pursuing all of these people that said that they were interested in 2025. Well, now it’s the time to actually go back and go hard on getting them to be customers and getting that reoccurring revenue.

Excitement for 2026

So yeah, I just, I, I feel so, I feel so excited about 2026. You guys, I feel rejuvenated and re-energized to pour into my business. I honestly kind of felt a little over Serene Clean because it felt it was running so smoothly. And that’s just being real right now with you guys. And this is a very privileged thought process to even say out loud, but I am saying it out loud of, it just felt, yeah, it runs, it’s good. It’s all good.

And so that arrogance is going to be the death of Serene Clean if I do not course correct and be, no, I cannot just set it and forget it. Things start to drift, right. So I just, I needed this. I’m, I’m really excited that all of this happened. And the thing is what you’re witnessing right now in real time is what, what mistakes do for you if you allow them to, right? You can learn from them. Don’t just move on, right.

I could just move on and not take this time to reflect with you guys. And honestly, that’s why I the podcast. It’s a really great reflection tool for me of am I doing what I need to do honestly, in order to keep pushing Serene Clean forward? And I did not in 2025. I just, I lost my focus. I lost my hunger, you know, and I just, I was just looking backwards way too much of, yeah, another rough month. Well, hopefully next month is better. I hope our revenue is better.

What is hope going to do? Right? What is it going to do for me? Nothing. I need to do something. I need to take action. And so I’m, I’m just kind of, I’m not surprised at myself. I understand why the slow decline in my, my behavior happened and it just, it just needs to be corrected and I’m the one to do it.

A Call to Self-Reflection

So yeah, I just want you guys to hear this and hear, listen, this is the level that I want each of you to do. I want you to take some time and reflect on what it is that you have been doing as the leader of your business, no matter how big or how small your business is. What have you been avoiding? What have you been half-assing? What have you not been just biting the bullet or eating the toad, whatever, saying you want and just not doing the thing because you dread it or because you label yourself bad at it?

Or, oh, I’m just bad at math. I’m bad at sales, blah, blah, blah. Whatever. We’re fully staffed. It’s fine. So therefore, I don’t need to set up a group interview process. Well, our quality issues, you know, we have decent quality. They know what they’re doing. So we’re not going to put checklists in place, right? Because we don’t need to do that.

I really want you to question assumptions. I want you to question what you tell yourself. I want you to look yourself in the mirror and be, am I doing everything that I need to be doing? Because I certainly was not. There is the, I mean, honestly, it would be sickening if I did, if I was able to go back and do a time audit of my year.

It’s, yeah, I did take on a lot more stuff this year. Absolutely. But I know I’m capable of it. I know I took on a very robust recording schedule with the podcast here, right? Two episodes a week. That’s a lot. That’s very uncommon for podcasts to be able to sustain this long.

And so, but it’s, I know I’m capable of it. And I know that that is what’s needed in our industry. We need, you guys need this frequent inspiration, motivation, and tactical advice. You need this. And you’re out cleaning right now or you’re driving or wherever you are right now. I, I want to be excellent in podcasting. I don’t want to just be once a month or something that. There’s so much to teach you guys. There’s so much to share. There’s so many stories to share.

All of our amazing guests that we’ve had this past year, there’s just so many more that we can learn from, right? So I know I added that on. I know I started doing a lot more consulting. I know I added all of these new, you know, unique opportunities for myself. I know that, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to use that as an excuse. Is just, listen, you said yes to this. You need to make it work, Stephanie. You can do it and you will do it. You just need to cut away at all the BS that you’re allowing to sneak into your life.

And that’s exactly what I did, especially at the end of this past year. The last quarter, I really took a long, hard look at where was I spending my time and energy and what could I take away? And it’s just, honestly, the past couple of weeks have been so productive, you guys. And I’ve worked out every day. I’m not drinking right now. I just need to cut out the things that are stealing my attention, my time and my focus and just lean into exactly what I need to focus on.

And there’s very few things that I need to focus on right now. This is it, right? Consulting, podcasting, Serene Clean and Serene Clean is top there, right? And taking care of myself and my health, taking care of my pets, taking care of what I need to take care of, right?

So it’s, I urge you to look at where you’re spending your time and energy and what the hell is sucking it all away from what you know your higher purpose is, right? So this was not intended to be a motivational podcast, guys. So I apologize and I’ll get off my soapbox right now. But I am just so fired up right now. I’m just so excited. And it’s just, I hope you can feel that excitement through the microphone right now.

And I want you to take some time and do some reflection. ChatGPT is awesome for this. It really is awesome. Just word vomit into there and it’ll help you organize your thoughts and give you a lot of clarity. I found that to be incredibly useful and helped me realize, yes, this is, this is what happened this past year. And so I need to cut the bullshit away. I just need to focus on my business, not get distracted, not just get comfortable because things are going well.

My Goals for 2026

I have told you guys what my goal is. My goal is by the end of 2026, that we are at 125 monthly revenue, 125,000. Let me clarify that, right? And we are at about average 105 this past year in 2025, right? So I need to add $20,000 a month in revenue in order to hit my goal. But what if we hit that goal in July? Well, do you think I’m just going to stop and be, okay, cool, we’re done.

No, we’re going to push harder and push harder. I want a $2 million cleaning business a year. I want $2 million a year in revenue. That is my big, big goal. That’s my big, big goal. And that may not get hit for years and years and years. I understand that, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to just slow down and take the easy route just because I start to hit the smaller, more modest goals.

I know we can hit 125K a month. I know we can because we have kissed it before in previous years with the same amount of employees. So it’s, what the hell’s going on that we’re not doing it now. And obviously I’ve done all that analysis and I understand why that’s happened and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the point is it’s not impossible, right?

It’s just the whole four minute mile thing. It’s not impossible. And once you start seeing other people doing it, you realize, and I hope you guys know that it’s what I’m describing right now to you, these numbers, it is not impossible because if I am doing it in rural Wisconsin, you can absolutely do it in your business, right?

It’s about skills. It’s about learning all the time what you’re doing by listening to the podcast. And it is about implementing and trying new things, making mistakes, learning from the mistakes as quickly as possible, adjusting and improving. And that’s exactly what we need to do here.

And so I’m just I’m so excited for 2026. It’s going to be I just know it’s going to be the best year ever. I’m so excited. And I just am really grateful for all of you guys for listening to me, for watching me have so many crash outs over the past year as things were happening.

But I, I’m not going to sit back, you know, on the couch and be, yep, I built this. I built this and this is done. We are far from finished. We are just getting started. And I want you guys to see and hear from me exactly what is going on, what I am doing to keep pushing forward and to hopefully teach you guys, not just inspire you guys, not just to motivate you guys, but to teach you.

So and encourage you to try, try more, try more, do more. Because I know you guys all can. I know you all have big goals for your businesses and just keep your why very front and center and do not allow yourself to lose focus from that. Because let me tell you, I just learned from experience. I just got burned. What I should have done is watch those early signs and snap myself out. But I apparently was not listening.

All right. I needed a big smack across the face. And that in this fall when the government shutdown happened and all of that money started to fall away. And I really saw clearly how much Serene Clean had shrunk. And I’m, oh my God, I, I didn’t know. I don’t know why I wasn’t paying attention. Well, I know why I wasn’t paying attention, but I had this just illusion that it was all okay. And that we just had to get through the next month. We just had to get through the next month.

I just wasn’t looking forward enough. I wasn’t being proactive. I was being very reactive and very, well, I guess, you know, another bad month. And no, that can’t be it. I had to, I should have course corrected so much sooner. And the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best is to plant it tomorrow, right? Or today or whatever the saying is. You guys know what I’m trying to say.

Also the whole F-bomb thing. I don’t think I can stop saying, I could stop saying the F word, but I don’t want to. So I’m sorry, guys. You guys know this is not a children’s show. So I don’t know what to tell you, right? If the F word offends you, you probably shouldn’t be in business, which is my hot take. It is just what it is. I’m not going to waste my energy trying to change my language, honestly. If that bothers you, I’m sorry, genuinely, but it’s just I’m not going to expend the energy to try to stop saying that.

Final Thoughts

But anyways, all right. This has been 51 minutes of just sheer chaos, but I am fired up. I hope you guys are fired up for a great year. I hope that you have taken some inspiration, but also go look yourself in the mirror, do some reflection, think about what you were doing as a leader that is affecting the business negatively. And what is it that you need to change about the way that you are behaving?

And there is no shame in this. This is what leaders do. All right. We need to constantly be growing and evolving. The you that got you here is not the you that’s going to get you to the next level. That’s exactly what has happened for me in this past year.

So I’m just so excited, guys. I know I just keep saying that, but it’s going to be a great year. If you have enjoyed this episode, leave me a little fire emoji down below. Hit that like, hit that subscribe if you are not subscribed. I would love to see you in the ZenMaid Mastermind on Facebook. You don’t need to be a ZenMaid customer to join.

And I am just happy to be on this journey with you guys. I will see you in the next episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners. Bye.

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

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink
• Alex Hormozi
• ChatGPT
• ZenMaid Mastermind Facebook Group
• Watch the episode featuring Chelsea Withers: Episode 97: Why Your Systems Determine Your Success (Not Your Experience)

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