The Week Everything Went to Sh*t — And What Makes You a Real Leader

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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 this episode is going to be pretty loosely organized. Mostly it’s going to be being vulnerable and sharing that this past week of work at Serene Clean has been one of the most challenging for us in probably the history of the company.

The Perfect Storm: Losing Four Full-Time Cleaners in 10 Days

I’ll go into why we lost four full-time cleaners in the past 10 days, three of them being this week – Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, bam, bam, bam. This has never happened before, and it has been very emotionally challenging on all of us. I’m feeling a lot better today. I’m feeling much more positive today, but I’m not gonna lie, guys – Monday and Tuesday, I was struggling emotionally and just feeling incredibly dejected.

I’m sharing that to let you know that even I, the beacon of positivity that I am, can get down about the state of my business and things that feel very much out of my control. I think that’s the hardest part of this all – when we hire and we are not just depending on us, but we’re depending on others. That loss of control can be incredibly scary.

I’ve talked about so many times before on how easy it is to fall into cynicism and wanting to not trust other people, because it feels like they’re just going to screw you over. I know every single one of you has experienced this. I know you have gotten screwed over, or somebody did something incredibly unexpected, and you had to either make hard decisions, you had to go back out in the field, whatever.

When Physical Demands Became Too Much

Let me go into it. So last week, we had somebody quit without notice, and all of these cleaners are full-time cleaners. All of them are out of training. All of them have full schedules. That’s another thing – it’s not unusual for somebody who just got out of training to realize this isn’t for me or whatever. So that makes this 10 times harder.

First cleaner, she quit specifically because of the physicality of the job. She had been calling in a lot, and we kind of saw it. Really, these first three, we saw it coming. The fourth one that happened yesterday that we had to fire – totally unexpected. I cannot try not to get emotional about it, because she worked for me for four years, and we had to fire her yesterday.

She quit because of the physicality of the job, and she had been calling in a lot. As a management team we were like, “ooh,” not feeling good because of calling in. And then it was like, “this job is too physical. I can’t do this.” We asked, obviously, for a notice, even through the end of the week. And she was like, “No, I want to spend the time looking for a new job.” None of these staff members had had prior – well, actually, that’s not true. This particular staff member did not have prior any issues when it comes to performance or attitude or anything like that. So it was quite disheartening. But we’re like, okay, we’re okay. It’s fine.

Monday Meltdown: When Boundaries Get Crossed

On Monday of this week – so today is Thursday when I am recording this – we had a cleaner who had been on her two weeks notice. She did give a notice, and she has been having a lot of issues over the past couple months. I might have mentioned it before. I can’t remember if I talked about this particular cleaner on any episodes before. She has got a lot of issues, and we tried to help her the best we could from an emotional standpoint, but there was a lot of boundary crossing and a lot of calling out last minute and putting things on the management team that was very inappropriate to do so – accusing us of things as well, of gossiping or anything, digging for things.

Come Monday, she’s at our team meeting. Everything is fine. Immediately after, she calls out, and this is all over Slack. So this is over message, and she starts just going off in very nonsensical ways, saying just, frankly, crazy things, guys. Crazy things.

My Breaking Point: A Leadership Lesson in What NOT to Do

So I start typing a response, saying, “Hey, this is not appropriate. This is a workplace. You cannot speak to us this way,” basically. And then she says, “Yeah, keep fucking typing,” or something along those lines, but using the F word, and that’s where Stephanie snapped. Not proud of it.

Don’t do what I’m about to say, guys. We all have our limits. And I wish I hadn’t sent this. I said something along the lines of quote, “Oh, you want a fucking phone call.” I lost my temper. I lost my temper. My heart was absolutely racing. I start crying. Again, this is I’m alone here in my office, obviously, and I’m just so mad. I’m so mad because I know the history of this staff member and what she’s saying is absolutely insane.

Right now, looking back, it was very much intentional, I think. Anyway, in the manager chat, Crystal, who you just saw last week, Voice of Reason is like, “Stephanie, stop.” And I’m like, “okay, okay.” I need to walk away from my phone. I need to cry. This is a lot. And so Crystal’s like, “Are we all good? Schedules fucked anyway, are we good to fire her?” And I’m like, “yeah, get her out of here.”

Documentation Saves the Day

So we fire her. Obviously, for insubordination, disrespect and all of the above. There’s so many policies broken when it came to that. She had mentioned in her rant something about not getting withholding unemployment, and fear of retaliation, and just all of these types of words that one would use if they are looking to get unemployment.

This is a lesson here guys – this is why it is so important to document everything that staff members do when it comes to call ins. Did they follow your call out procedure? Are they behaving in ways that are against any of your policies? You have to have every staff member sign onboarding documentation. So we have, I don’t even know, 20 documents or something like that, for our new staff members to hire. She was in clear violation of several different things that she had signed and agreed to. So she will not be getting unemployment over my dead body, frankly, because she was being very disrespectful.

We think she did not want to quit. She wanted to get fired. Because when you quit, you can’t get unemployment, but if you get fired, you can. This is also the staff member that a couple months ago, when I was up in Wisconsin, approached me about opening a Serene Clean in a different area. She wanted to partner with me, and then from there, it went downhill. So I don’t know if that’s correlated or whatever, but I think she was acting very volatile in an effort to get fired.

Tuesday’s Last-Minute Abandonment

Tuesday rolls around and another staff member who was on her two weeks notice – so again, we already had, we knew these people were leaving, but we thought we had time, and the schedule was going to be fine because we have new folks starting and they’re in training, but training takes time, and we can’t just send them in.

Tuesday rolls around, and another cleaner – she was supposed to work through next week, she moved, and so that’s why she was leaving – and she said, “Hey,” literally 20 minutes before her first appointment is supposed to start, “the drive isn’t worth it for me. I’m done. I’m done today. I’m not going to these cleanings today.” So again, full-time cleaner that was supposed to work through next week.

I’m like, “Hey, is there anything we could do financially to make it worth your time? Even through the rest of the week?” Left on read, didn’t even respond. This is a real thing, guys. This is exactly, unfortunately, what you’re going to deal with, especially when somebody is on their notice – they really don’t give a shit. They don’t give a shit. They’re out the door.

The Hardest Decision: When Integrity is Non-Negotiable

Yesterday’s situation started on Friday, and I’m not I don’t think I’m gonna go into full details right now. I’m not really ready to share, and I also do want to respect some privacy as well, but one of my staff members who’s been with me for four years got caught in dishonesty – deep dishonesty around a topic that we cannot be dishonest about. It’s the most important thing in our industry, which is items being picked up and not returned, specifically monetary items.

A lot of denial, things caught on camera. This has been – I mean, my whole weekend was just, I quit. The emotional toll. This was so hard. This is when I am – and I’ll talk about this more when I’m ready – but this has been one of the pivotal decisions that I’ve ever made in the history of my business. Was yesterday of saying, we have to, we have to terminate employment.

If I did not do that, I cannot claim integrity as a core value. If I did not do what we had to do yesterday, knowing it’s going to absolutely fuck us on schedule, knowing the finances are going to be potentially heavily affected, we are going to have to skip cleanings. Managers are all cleaning today. The consequences of our decision was very real, and it came at the worst time.

Wrestling with the Right Decision

Of course, bad things never happen when it’s a great time for a bad thing. But considering, bam, bam, bam, three full-time cleaners done, and then this to happen, that was all in our decision making process. I’m not gonna lie, there was a lot of back and forth on the management team on is there any way that we could overlook this or come back from it? Is there any way that it could be forgiven and trust could be rebuilt? And just no.

If we did not let this person go, then how can we be leaders? How can we say that we do the hard things? How can we say that we make the decisions that are right for the business and the entire team? If the reason we’re not – we would keep this person on is because it would temporarily screw up the schedule, or we really like them. That’s not – when it comes to the morals and hard decisions, it does not matter how much you like a person, because this is one of my long-term favorite staff members.

She might even be watching this right now, because I know she watches the podcast. So we’re going to talk about it on Monday as a team, and we’ll share that we let this person go. I feel a knife in my chest on this one.

The Emotional Reality of Leadership

I want to reiterate to you guys – it is okay to be incredibly disappointed. I am. It is okay to be hurt. We can all say, “this is just business,” that does not take out that you become incredibly connected to these people. I know a lot of you have been betrayed or had situations by people you became very close with in your business. And that’s exactly what I’m dealing with right now.

You are seeing my raw shit feelings and just on top of all of the other things that happened this week when it came to staffing and the frustrations that I am feeling. I’m just hurt. I’m really, really hurt, and I know that they’re hurting too, and that they made a poor choice, and they know they wish that they could take it back, but they can’t.

You can love somebody – doesn’t mean you don’t let them go, kind of thing. And in our business, you will develop a lot of love and care for your staff, but you have to protect the sanctity of what makes you a leader, what makes you a business that people can trust and count on. And that sometimes, and I’m feeling that right now, includes making incredibly difficult decisions that you do not want to make.

When Leadership Requires Sacrifice

I did not want to do this. This past week, I can’t – I’ve told – I’ve said it I don’t even know how many times: fuck, I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do this, but I have to. And just having that conviction of we can do hard things, we can do the things that we never thought we would be capable or even have to do.

In my mind, I’ve always thought in my head, if something like that happened, it would be an easy decision, and it was a black and white decision of what needed to happen. It’s just actually doing it was so freaking hard.

I want you guys to know that even I, with all of my wisdom and years, I struggle deeply sometimes with these things, and you’re never, I think, going to – unless you turn into a billionaire sociopath like Elon Musk, or I don’t know, Amazon king or something where you can just shut it off. Maybe, I don’t know if you’ll ever turn that off, and maybe you just – it’s already very separate for you. That’s just not me.

Why We Care So Much (And Why That’s Both Good and Hard)

I know that a lot of us that get into this industry, specifically, we have very big hearts, and we care deeply, and we’re really empathetic, and we’re fixers. We like to fix people’s problems. That’s what makes us very good at what we do, and so that opens ourselves up to a lot of hurt and heartache. And again, coming back to what I opened up this conversation about – of trusting and being hurt, I know that that happened. I know that that choice has a lot of consequences.

I am not going to let any of the things that happened this week make me say I shouldn’t hire or people suck, or anything like that. These people made these decisions. That does not mean all people are like that.

Problem-Solving Mode: How We’re Handling the Crisis

What are we going to do? How are we actually going into problem-solving mode? Because that was one of the biggest things – God, we’re screwed, right? So, yeah, managers are cleaning. We have had to rearrange the schedule. We asked all of our staff members. We just said, “Hey, we are going into a lot of short staffing and a lot of appointments that need coverage. If anybody wants more hours, even on one particular day – we usually don’t do OT, because obviously our clients aren’t paying more just because we have to pay OT – if anybody’s open to more hours, please let us know. But no pressure.” We never want anybody to feel that. That’s our job as managers to feel that panic, not them.

Several folks reached out and said, “Yep, I can pick up this. I can pick up this.” And so our team is really stepping up, and they don’t even know what happened yet. They don’t know that we just went through all of this. I’m gonna obviously talk about this on Monday’s meeting, which, by the time this goes live, I’ll have had that meeting a couple days ago.

The Importance of Transparency with Your Team

I think it’s very important to respect your team with honesty. Obviously you need to respect privacy as well, but I think it’s really important to be very candid with why people are let go, or why people left, if it’s – and obviously, if it’s just personal reasons or whatever that’s kind of irrelevant. But I think do not leave your team in the dark.

Also, when you have to make a tough decision, like we did, this is a line in the sand of “Whoa, that happened to that person,” and the management are capable of making very tough decisions. Being respected by my team is incredibly important, and it should be important to you. It doesn’t mean you can’t be liked. It doesn’t mean you need to be feared, but they need to respect and trust that you have the best interest of the business at the forefront. And even when you’re scared, even when it’s tough, they need to be able to rely on you.

That was in my mind the whole time – this is for the rest of the team. We have to do the hard thing for the rest of the team.

Client Communication During Crisis

When it came to the clients, the accounts, we sent an email, and we were very honest, saying that, again, respecting privacy is forefront, of course, but this unexpected staffing change had to happen. This is the plan we have these days not covered. Obviously, we’re not going to charge you for those ones – these are commercial accounts. And just being very open and communicative. These accounts we’ve had for years.

It’s important to understand that they may cancel. That’s always a possibility. It’s a possibility at any time. And that was kind of – my managers were bringing that concern of what if they cancel because we don’t have coverage, we’re not being consistent. I’m like, well, what’s the alternative? It’s something that we can’t do. So just better to be honest. And we do have a lot of coverage. There’s just a couple days that we’re not going to.

We have new folks coming on again. Reiterating – go back to whatever two weeks ago or whenever we posted the group interview video, if you need to remember or understand how we handle the hiring. I mean, without constantly interviewing we would, I don’t even know – we’re just trying to cover our current stuff. That’s the biggest thing.

When Success and Crisis Collide

Yeah, managers are cleaning. I’m gonna head up there next month when I can, and I’ll be on call and available. By then it should be worked out. We should have new folks. So it’s gonna be a couple rough weeks when it comes to that, and then when people call in – we were good today, but we have two or three cleaners call in today. So it’s just when you’re at the scale, this is what happens, and we had zero wiggle room. So yeah, some folks are gonna get canceled.

Just being very discerning on have we canceled on this person? What is the cleaning? And looking at every single day and say, “Can this be rearranged?” The scheduling is such a Jenga puzzle, but especially in this situation of you have to cancel on somebody – what’s it gonna be, or who is very flexible, that type of stuff. And we’ll give them discounts as an apology for the inconvenience on their next cleaning. And again, just being appropriately transparent and explaining in a very professional manner. And again, this is where ChatGPT comes in, very helpful with how to word things when you’re not sure.

Again, when I was smaller, all of the appointments would have been covered. We wouldn’t have had so many appointments to cover. I would have been cleaning all the time. Obviously, that’s not possible. Yeah, I’m remote. So this is where we’re at.

Side note, a whole other episode to talk about. Last week, we hit our – last month, we had 88 leads come in. Already this month, we’ve had, I think, 26 leads, and it is the fifth of the month. This is record leads. I have thousands of dollars potentially available that we cannot grab because of staffing right now, and that is super frustrating. Again, in six years of business, I’ve never had 88 leads in a month. That’s crazy. That’s crazy, and to coincide with the staffing insanity is – yeah, it feels like ironic. Are you testing me right now?

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

It’s all going to work out. I have full faith that it is. It’s going to work out, and we will solve this, just like we always do. We always get through everything. This is just another challenge. And we’re gonna look back in a year and say, “Holy shit. Remember, remember June? Remember June in 2025, Armageddon.” But we made it through it.

I think that for me is very helpful from an emotional standpoint of thinking – looking forward to the future and thinking back to every single time we have had a situation where I’m like, “oh my god, this is the worst thing to ever happen.” I can look back and cast my view back to the past and say, “Oh, I felt like that there, I felt like that there, I felt like that there.” And look at me now – everything worked out as it should. Maybe things went awry for sure. Maybe it didn’t work out as I expected, but I’m still here. I’m still kicking, I’m still breathing, and so are you.

You’ve made it through every single thing that has ever happened to you until this point. So why is it that when we’re in the moment of the current crisis, we totally catastrophize and think that it’s just gonna all explode? I’m trying to put myself in the place of Stephanie a year from now, looking back at this very moment, so proud of herself that she, for the most part, kept it cool other than Monday. And I’m gonna regret that. And I already do – lesson learned.

Protecting Your Business Baby

But for the most part, I did what I needed to do to protect Serene Clean. That’s what this was. And that’s what some of these – this very hard decision was – I need to protect my baby, and that’s what this is. And so I just protected it, and I’m going to be really proud of myself in a year when I look back on this.

I invite you to also have that kind of mindset of is what I’m doing today something that in a year from now, I’m going to look back and say, “You did that damn thing. I am proud of you. I am proud of my younger self,” which is you today, “for what she did or what he did.” And yeah, I find that helpful.

Even just kind of verbalizing this – this is a therapy session. We’re 30 minutes into my personal therapy session right now. Even just I already feel better of you’re doing the right thing, even if it’s hard and it’s going to be okay. Revenue is going to turn around, it’s going to be okay. You are doing the right things. You’re 10 weeks in, or whatever it is, to zero complaints. You have new folks starting darn near every week to accommodate all of this scheduling loss. You’ve got great candidates coming down the pipeline. All of these things are good. You’ve got a great crew. You’ve got a great crew, and so it’s there’s so many things to be positive about. There’s so many things to be grateful for in this moment of it could always get worse, and we’re on the upswing. I know we are, and we will just take every challenge head on.

Your Challenge Will Pass Too

Whatever you think your challenge is right now, you’re gonna get through it, and you’re gonna look back on this time and be proud of yourself. And if you’re not proud of yourself, learn from the things that you’re disappointed in yourself for doing, just like I’m disappointed in how I acted on Monday. And I’m gonna learn and do better and keep all of my inside thoughts where they belong, and don’t let, you know, thug Stephanie come out because she’s angry.

Anyway, guys, that’s what’s going on with me. Do you have a situation right now that you are really catastrophizing? Leave it in the comments. Where are you at? What are you struggling with? This too shall pass. I promise. It always does. And it’s going to get better. So that’s my TED talk for today. I hope you have a great day, and I’ll 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

• ChatGPT
• ZenMaid
• Filthy Rich Cleaners episode 42 – The Secret to Hiring Cleaners Faster (and Smarter) with Group Interviews

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