Would You Rather (Cleaning Business Owner Edition), with Stephanie, Amar, and Maria

Introduction

Hello, everyone. Welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I’m your host, Stephanie from Serene Clean, and as you can see, things are slightly different than our typical episode. I’m here on site in Barcelona, Spain, with my friends Maria and Amar from ZenMaid. We are officially three days into our ZenMaid work retreat here where we are brainstorming and working together very collaboratively on a variety of topics to make the ZenMaid product better for you and I wanted to take an opportunity and have a fun little conversation with Amar and Maria, share some of our best stories that we have experienced as cleaning business owners over the past several years, and just have a good time, have a glass of wine and have a bit more of a relaxed setting for our podcast. So thank you guys for joining me as always.

Amar: Thank you for joining us in Spain. It’s very surreal to be seeing you again in person. I think that everyone sees all of the stuff going on in ZenMaid, but we don’t actually see each other in person that often. This is the second time, right? It was last year’s retreat and this year’s retreat, and it’s like hanging out with old friends. So it’s a lot of fun.

Stephanie: Yeah, 100%. It’s like I feel like I know both of you so well. And it’s crazy that this is the only second time physically in the same room together.

Maria: You bring a great energy to the team that we love.

Incredible Cleaner vs Drama-Free Average

Stephanie: What I thought would be really fun is answering some would you rathers that I had ChatGPT come up with, and you know, prompt some fun stories and whatnot. So we’ll get started see where this takes us. The first one is, would you rather have an incredible cleaner who’s a drama magnet or an average cleaner who’s drama free forever?

Maria: I think a drama magnet who’s an amazing cleaner. I feel like I can probably manage the drama magnet, for example, send her to clean homes on her own, maybe have her clean more make-readies, but I can count on her to have consistent quality outcome, and I can deal with a little bit of drama.

Stephanie: That’s really interesting. What about you Amar?

Amar: I definitely optimize life for convenience. That’s the big thing for me, above all else. I would much rather make 20% less money with relative ease than maximize the amount of money that I’m making and maximizing the amount of effort necessary to do that. So to me, the average cleaner that’s drama free. What I want is consistency. I just want to know what to expect. And with drama, I know what to expect with the cleaning, but I don’t know what to expect on the other side. And that’s something that’s not going to sit with me. We’ve talked about this before, though, for me, where I’m at in the stage of my career and running ZenMaid, I wouldn’t want to be managing cleaners. If I was doing this, I would have a much more hands off approach than how you guys have approached your cultures.

Stephanie: 100% and I almost feel like maybe I would answer this particular question differently five years ago versus now. I think in the beginning I would be okay with the drama, because I clearly was okay. That’s exactly what I tolerated, because at least the job was getting done and they were full of nonsense. Now I think I would lean this way and choose average cleaning performance and drama free, because it’s such a stressor.

Maria: Yeah, but at the same time, it’s almost like the same side of the coin, especially if you have teams, right? So if you have somebody who’s causing drama, you’re gonna get complaints from your internal clients, your cleaners, but you’re probably not going to get complaints from your customers.

Stephanie: You’re so right. It’s like, which one do you want to deal with – internal problems or external problems?

Amar: For me, though, I’m definitely a believer that happy team members make happy clients, and hopefully you guys see that in the culture here at ZenMaid. To me, this is the team, this is the crew, and I’ve obviously been a bit abrasive in the industry in the past, but for the team, it’s like I’m always an ear for the team, and I’m going to be very protective of that. So to me, I would much prefer to have a happy team and then to work on finding those clients, than to be dealing with internal crap so my clients are happy. To me that’s not a trade off that I’m gonna make, especially because I want to choose my hard. I don’t feel gratified solving that problem and solving it again and again and again. I guarantee that they can invent more drama than I can document and fix.

Stephanie: One thing I saw one time that’s always stuck with me is, even in your dream job or your dream life, it’s about choosing what flavor of shit sandwich you want to eat every day. And so that kind of applies to what we’re talking about right now. We’re talking about two different flavors of shit. Which one do we want?

Amar: I think all of these are going to be picking your pain. Generally, in life, you’re going to experience pain one way or the other. It’s just a question of which pain you want to choose. Everything’s going to be hard.

Losing Your Best Employee vs Keeping a Mediocre One

Stephanie: Would you rather lose your best employee suddenly with no notice, or keep a mediocre employee for another full year?

Maria: Lose the employee without notice, suddenly. Just to rip the band aid off. Just to rip the band aid off, because I know that usually, after something bad happens, something good is going to come out of it. We’re going to hire a better cleaner. We might have to deal with short term rescheduled, pissed off clients, but in the end, that problem is gonna be solved.

Stephanie: That’s so funny. I think a lot of our listeners, because I know where they’re at, would choose a mediocre hands down, because it’s about warm body and being terrified. But I 100% agree with you. Lose them without notice. It’s done and over with. And also every single time something bad like that’s happened, where I’ve lost a kick ass cleaner, it always works out. It always, every time.

Amar: This is another one where it’s gonna be personal preference, and maybe we’re not being harsh enough on the second option, but to me, mediocre means average right? I’m happy with an average team member. I want to build a company that is successful with average cleaners. I don’t want to have to employ the best cleaners in the area to deliver my service, because it is a far more difficult thing to do. And again, it doesn’t play personally to my skill set. I’m not good with the quality control, with that sort of stuff. So to me, losing my best cleaner with no notice sounds like a massive nightmare, whereas keeping a mediocre cleaner, who’s going to show up for a year, that’s just my opinion.

Stephanie: I could see what do we mean by mediocre? Are we getting a lot of complaints, or are they just average?

Maria: And it maybe doesn’t even necessarily mean that the client’s complaining. Let’s say you do a quality check on a client that is super happy, and you’re looking at the quality going, I don’t know how this client is not complaining. I think we all have that. It’s good enough for the client, and we solve that pain point for the client. Just good enough so we might call the cleaner average, but for the right client, that’s maybe all they need.

Client Following You vs Dog Humping You

Stephanie: This one’s funny, and it applies to what you told me yesterday. Would you rather clean a house where the dog won’t stop humping you, or clean while the client follows you around, giving real time feedback the entire appointment?

Maria: Give me the client who follows me around. I would not be okay with a dog. As much as I hate having a client follow me around, and I have had it happen to where I was telling Stephanie last night that I remember cleaning one house, and it was so intense that I had to tell the woman, okay, if you do not stop correcting my every move, I’m going to have to leave your home. It was just really tough. It’s like you go to wipe a mirror, and they’re like, you missed the spot a little bit higher. And you’re like, there’s just no trust. And so it makes you nervous and makes you just more prone to breakage. And it’s just not enjoyable, because I think we clean houses because it’s an art and it’s enjoyable. And so when you have somebody that’s following you around, it literally sucks the life out of you.

Stephanie: Prone to make mistakes. That’s how I feel. It’s like if somebody’s watching me type, all of a sudden it’s like my fingers are tied together and I can’t type.

Maria: For sure. And so in my case, what I told the lady was, and she was an older generation, so I probably can kind of get the psychology behind it. But I told her, if you want to watch me without correcting, and then when I’m done with this room, you can white glove it all day, every day, but stay out of my way.

Amar: You’ve got to set your boundaries. I think it’s the dog. I mean, first of all, I’m not likely to be cleaning in any situation anymore, not that I ever was. But I can’t imagine anything being worse than the client following you around. I would be very amused. I can’t imagine that a dog humping my leg is gonna be that annoying. Think about the content. Think about my maid service’s social media for the next three years after this experience.

Stephanie: When crazy, ridiculous things are happening, that’s immediately where my mind goes – this is gonna make a good story. I’m going for the dog humping too.

Amar: What makes a better story?

Maria: The dog humping sounds way worse.

No Systems vs Perfect Systems with Turnover

Stephanie: Would you rather have no systems but 10 dream employees or perfect systems, but constant turnover?

Maria: The first one, no systems but 10 perfect employees. Easy, because if you’ve got 10 perfect employees, you can build around what they’re doing, analyze what they’re doing well and build great systems around them.

Stephanie: I feel like this one’s pretty easy.

Amar: Same page, absolutely.

Bathrooms vs Kitchens

Stephanie: We can do this one, and then we can alter it too, based on what we talked about yesterday. Would you rather only be allowed to clean bathrooms or only be allowed to clean kitchens?

Amar: Kitchens. I don’t have that much experience cleaning. I would just be more comfortable cleaning in the kitchen. I’m a very good cook, so I’d be more comfortable there.

Stephanie: Me and Maria have already discussed this. We’re both bathrooms. We hate cleaning kitchens. It’s my least favorite room to clean. I just loathe it. Give me a terrible dirty bathroom.

Amar: I guess I could see kitchens being considerably more unique, with considerably more things around, and bathrooms just being very consistent. Once you get good, it’s probably very easy to go through bathrooms.

Maria: You can systemize. And it’s a small, condensed space, too. And I was telling Stephanie last night, I have this thing with microwaves. I cannot clean a microwave. It physically makes me gag. So in all my 14 years of cleaning, I’ve never been able to clean a microwave. You give me a dirty toilet, I will clean that all day, every day, without batting an eye. But even just talking about a microwave right now can probably make me gag.

Amar: And that’s how I feel about yogurt. Weirdly, I actually like yogurt, but it’s the smell of it. I have a gag reflex to it, but I don’t know why, because I don’t have any trauma with it. I used to like yogurt as a kid, just all of a sudden.

Stephanie: Bathrooms, 100% of the way. Chime in. What’s your answer, bathrooms or kitchens? Put it in the comments below.

One Star Review vs Three Star Review

Stephanie: Would you rather get a one star review from a literal troll or a three star review from a long time client who says they’ve changed?

Maria: The three star. I feel like with the one star review, even if it was a troll, I would feel like I would have zero control. I have no control. What can I do about a one star who I know is a troll? But with a three star review, first of all, I know who to contact. I know who to contact. I know where they live. But let’s say that they didn’t remove that review, I still have power and control over that, because then I know what I can fix to prevent the negative reviews going forward. I can change something, whether it’s a person or a system. I have control over that.

Stephanie: That’s a really interesting take, and I can understand that viewpoint. I would go 100% the opposite, and go one star from a troll all the way. And the reason being is thinking of when somebody’s coming to read our reviews. What are they going to take more seriously? And I don’t think if it’s a troll, and it’s just one star, you expect one stars, you know, there’s gotta be at least a couple, but if it’s a three star, I’m gonna take that way more seriously, especially if they’ve been a long time client. So I’m almost thinking of when they come in and are viewing and trying to make a decision on if they should reach out to us. I take the one star over the three because of the credibility of that client’s perspective.

Maria: I’ll add one more thing too. Depending on which review site you’re using, like Yelp, for example, that algorithm will weigh more on that one star review.

Stephanie: That’s a good point.

Amar: I am unbelievably strongly in the one star camp. I could not care less about a one star review from a troll. Maria’s talking about control. I don’t care about control because the one star review, what do I do? I move on with my life, and it’s no longer a problem. The three star review is actually a problem. And I have no interest in Maria finding it very gratifying to put in all of the work to turn the three star review into a five star review. I get zero gratification from that, and especially if the review is unfair, if the review is unfair, that person’s dead to me. You want to not pay my business. Now you’re attacking my business. The troll, it’s just nobody’s going to take it seriously. Nobody believes the perfect five star rating anyways. I don’t care if there’s a couple one star ratings that are very clearly from some clowns. There’s no nobility in making somebody that doesn’t want to be happy, happy. I don’t want to have to work hard for my money. I like easy money. The easiest money that I can get that’s legal is the best money that I can get, as long as it’s fulfilling.

Fully Staffed but 80 Hour Weeks vs Short Staffed but 25 Hours

Stephanie: Would you rather have your team fully staffed, but you’re working 80 hour weeks, or work 25 hours a week, but constantly be short staffed?

Maria: First one. If I’m fully staffed, first of all, chances are we’re servicing homes. And then if I’m having to work 80 hours a week, I know that there is an end. There’s an end to it.

Amar: I think that maid services are essentially hiring agencies. Eventually you get to the point where it’s entirely staffing. So I definitely take the latter, because to me, that sounds like an operational maid service, where I spent 25 hours a week hiring, or hiring and training, and that’s a constant thing.

Maria: That’s a terrible place to be. It sucks.

Six Months Off vs Never Take a Vacation

Stephanie: Would you rather take six months off and come back to chaos in your business, or never take a vacation, but everything runs smoothly?

Amar: Am I still married? I feel like the latter option will result in divorce. Working all the time is a surefire way to end up in divorce. If I was in my 20s and didn’t have people reliant on me, would probably be the first option. Now, probably the second. I think if you’re in your 20s, you kind of need that mentality. I think as you get older, hopefully you earn it with some success. Going back to my 20s, I would definitely be all about it. And I think there’s a lot of evidence that I was when it comes to ZenMaid. I barely took any time off, and now I’m married, but now I have to take time off or I won’t stay married.

Stephanie: So for me, it’s definitely never take a vacation, everything runs smoothly. Just move to a cool spot, you know? Living in Spain, I’m like, I’m happy to live there.

Amar: Six months off, coming back to chaos doesn’t sound good.

Maria: Never take a vacation. Long term thinking. It’s like, how much are you hurting yourself, whereas if you’re working, you know, and when you mentioned yesterday something about you were in San Diego.

The San Diego Meth Cleaner Story

Maria: So one time we went to San Diego, it was first time I ever been to San Diego, and I remember my entire family went to visit the wave pools, and I was back at my hotel, but I remember trying to concentrate on these really cool wave pools, and I’m getting phone calls of just chaos and I remember telling my family, if I get one more phone call, y’all can stay. I’m getting on a plane and I’m going back. So that’s not worth it to me. I’d rather just work, work, work.

Amar: Tell us a little bit more about that situation. Maybe the learning experience for the audience. What was kind of the setup? Who was in charge? And were you off for a couple weeks? Or what kind of led you to even being a plane ride away from your place, and then having everything fall apart?

Maria: This is really cool though. This was before I even knew what a system and process was. It was just me that was working their butts off. And then I finally got to this place where I can even afford a vacation. And so no team leads. I think it was team of four, and you just left one person in charge, who then I was getting calls from the other cleaners going, hey, the person you left in charge? We think she’s on meth. Let me tell you some of the things that are happening that are really, really weird. But that is when that was my litmus test, okay, I should be able to go one time, take a vacation. So what systems and processes do I now need to start putting in place that way I can go on vacation? And it’s really cool, though, is when bad stuff like that happens, because then you can look back and go, okay, I remember that San Diego story. But then fast forward to years later, when all those systems and processes were in place, we were able to go to New Zealand and Australia for almost two months. Heard from the office one time over a silly little question.

Stephanie: Ironic, I feel like for most of our listeners, that really is most likely the goal. They just want to be able to take vacations and everything not fall apart. It’s not even necessarily being remote or being completely absentee. It may be long term that’s the goal, but oftentimes it’s like, I just want to be able to have an actual life outside of this at some point.

Maria: You know what you’re working for exactly. It’s not just always the shit.

Stephanie: Obviously you mentioned it. And so let’s tell the meth cleaner story.

Amar: For the viewers right now, drop a comment below and try to one up, Maria, if you guys have done anything worse than putting a meth head in charge of your maid service, we’d like to hear about it.

Maria: So really, a lot of it was just inexperience on my end, because I had no idea what characteristics of someone who is on meth, what that looks like. Some of the reports I got were like, hey, she told, I didn’t tell you this, but she told two cleaners to stay home. She decided she wanted all the hours, so she cleaned four houses on her own. We already had clients saying that was the best cleaning ever. And I’m thinking, oh my gosh, she cleaned four houses on her own. Amazing. However, we were also getting reports of she cleaned really fast and with lots of detail, but there’s some odd stuff happening, like losing it, for example. Everything was perfect, but she forgot to take the trash out. She left all of the trash in the middle of the living room, or she had her bottle of orange glow when she left it on a pillow, or something crazy like that. Just super weird. And so at the time it was just kind of chaos. And then I’ve got, how do I deal with a meth head? That’s kind of cool about it – you can clean fast, but no, no, we don’t.

Stephanie: Unfortunately, if morals and ethics were removed from everything, just get all of your cleaners addicted. Most productive cleaner ever. That would be a would you rather of if your entire staff had to be on drugs, which drug would it be that we would choose?

Amar: Study drugs considerably. Caffeine’s technically a drug. If it’s between meth and weed, I’m not answering this, because I’ve never smoked meth.

Maria: Yeah, of course. Do not want any drugs.

Stephanie: That’s where this was suspected, but confirmed later, was mine that left an Airbnb cleaning in the middle of it to go chop firewood for the client and bring it back the next day. They didn’t ask for that. He just noticed they were low on firewood.

Team That Follows Checklists vs Team Clients Love

Stephanie: Would you rather have a team that follows every checklist but never communicates, or one that the clients love from a personality perspective, but skips steps constantly?

Amar: My question is, never communicates with who? If it’s internal, then that’s going to be a big problem for me. If it’s with the client, I don’t care. Most clients, they want to know that there’s somebody trustworthy in their house. They’re not hiring your cleaner for the cleaner’s personality. Of course, a good personality is going to be better, but ultimately, when push comes to shove, as long as my office manager is likable and shows well, the cleaners are there to get the job done.

Maria: If it’s internal communication, that could be really problematic. If a customer says, hey, can you ask the office to add the inside of the oven next time. Well, cleaner doesn’t communicate that, and then we show up without oven cleaner, or if it’s a reschedule request, that’s gonna make us ultimately look bad.

Amar: To me, that can be solved by a process, whatever. Maybe it’s not even for the cleaner. Maybe it’s letting the clients know. If it’s hey, all requests go through, anything that you ask the cleaner for, if you ask the cleaner, you cannot count on getting back to the office. And we take no responsibility. You can’t just say something to our cleaner, that’s not what they do.

Maria: That’s a great point, because when you think about it, it doesn’t sound hard in theory, but imagine the cleaner’s in there.

Stephanie: This is an established system in Serene Clean that clients constantly break. Why can’t I just tell my cleaner?

Maria: That sounds so easy, but first house of the day, you really think the cleaner, half the time, they’re just busy focused on getting the job done. It’s just another job.

Stephanie: It’s not their job to pass that type of information on. We want to take the mental load off of them as much as possible. That’s an operations thing. And also, coming back to this point of number two, I have had cleaners, I think, very intentionally focus on having personal connections with the clients so that they can get away with shitty work. So that the client likes them so much on purpose, because they’re a lot less likely to complain about a cleaner that they like, which is great, but then that means they can get away with being lazy.

Maria: Obviously, we had tons of employees that I don’t know if they had that mindset, but they definitely tuned in on that fact.

Amar: What it is is the more personal you are, the more leeway that you get. If you’re not pleasant to be around, you have to do a very good job. And so it just buys them which is fine. I think we all would rather have a highly personable cleaner than a non highly personable cleaner. But ultimately, they’re there to clean, and if they don’t do a good job cleaning, then they don’t belong, no matter how they interact with the clients.

Stephanie: So true, and honestly, I’ve seen it more so on the commercial side because there’s so many employees that they’re interacting with that could be basically influencers as to if a complaint occurs. If they like your commercial cleaner, your janitor, whatever you want to call them, and they don’t do a great job on the bathrooms, they’re not gonna tattle on them, but if they don’t get along with my cleaner, or they just have no connection, they’re much more likely to complain. So then we miss the fact that the quality has not been good until we’re doing that QC, it’s like, how the hell has this not been reported?

Amar: That’s an interesting one. I feel like when it comes to commercial, you can get away with more because obviously there’s so many more people in the space, so it’s like there’s only one person that comes in and is looking at the clean place, and they may not even know if they’re the first ones in. So your natural assumption is, oh, there’s a little bit of a mess in the kitchen. Somebody must have gotten in here at 5:30 this morning. I’m in at 6:30 or whatever. Honestly, that’s why I have so much respect for residential maid services, specifically because there’s no hiding when it comes to residential cleaning. The homeowner is coming back and is evaluating the cleanliness.

Stephanie: So high. And this is my personal philosophy at Serene Clean. I know people are completely opposite, and that’s fine. That’s why I run individual cleaners as much as possible, so that there is no finger pointing within that particular cleaning. There’s no one else to blame except themselves, and it just eradicates that potential for it. And even if there were finger pointing, honestly, I’d probably fire somebody over that, because it’s like, if you’re trying to blame your co worker, or pass the buck like that is just disgusting to me. Take accountability.

Being Copied vs Old Employee Starting Competition

Stephanie: This one is also what we talked about yesterday. Would you rather be copied word for word by a new competitor in your town, or have an old employee start a cleaning company down the street?

Amar: Probably the old cleaner. I would think the old cleaner, honestly. Somebody coming in and copying everything that I’m doing already is a lot more savvy than I think, as a general rule of thumb, the cleaners are not yet going to understand what it takes and all of the things that are involved to grow a maid service. And I’m sure that there’s lots of people watching this that maybe cleaned for other companies and then started their own maid service. That’s a natural part. Nobody starts knowing all of the things. You have to learn it along the way. There’s differences in how easy people think it’s going to be. But there’s a lot of cleaners that come in with rosy tinted glasses and just think, oh, all of this money is going now into my pocket. I don’t have to pay the business, and then they find out what the business actually pays for.

Stephanie: Not even a question. 100% agree on that. I have had many former employees start cleaning companies directly in competition with mine. I’m not worried, if you’re watching right now, I’m not fucking worried. And I’ll help you. You’re so right of that rosy colored glasses, they start cleaning for you. They’re like, they’re making all this money. I could do this. And as everybody’s watching right now, it’s so not as easy as it may appear.

Amar: If you are a former cleaner of Stephanie’s, who she’s obviously not threatened by, and you’re watching this video now, now is a perfect time for you to consider ZenMaid for your maid service. ZenMaid is the best scheduling software.

Website Theft Story

Maria: So I said, I would rather have somebody start a competing company. I have had somebody steal my website, page for page, and it was quite offensive. I took it to a lawyer, and he printed out all the pages that they thought were duplicates, and they spread it out on their big old lawyer table high rise in Austin. And then the lawyer I had originally talked to, where he’s spreading out all the pages, he’s like, hey, I’m gonna go get another one of my lawyer friends. And then there was six or seven people. They were looking at me. This is for IP lawyer, and they’re unbelievable, she stole it, even down to the graphics.

Stephanie: What was the name? I mean, was it a similar name, or was it a different business name?

Maria: No, completely different. But copying and literally copied and pasted all my words, and I was telling you what was really hard about it, besides the graphics. And I know people were like, oh, you should be honored that they. Let me tell you why. That’s crap. Because I remember being at dinner with my family one night, and as the conversation was winding down, I remember having an idea on content. I remember going and getting notepad and writing pieces. And so I’m like, that was my work. I was there. I wrote that for you to just go in and copy it. It just was really offensive.

Stephanie: And so how did it get resolved?

Maria: They ended up doing a cease and desist. The lady came back and said, oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know I wasn’t allowed to do it. She changed about 10%. They went back and said, yeah, 10% isn’t good enough. You’re gonna keep changing it until Maria feels comfortable and happy. And she ended up eventually changing it. Fast forward, two years later, I got a call from a broker, because she put her business up for sale. And my response to that broker was, I would not touch her business with a 10 foot pole. She was not in business for very long. I think maybe three, four years.

Amar: We had that with ZenMaid, actually we had one of our competitors, Madely, that if you guys are using Madely, you should know that they are copycats and don’t have an original thought in their lives. You should come over to the people that do the innovating. But they knocked off our blog, and it was the entire exact design. They went out and got the exact theme. It was literally the same tabs with the same sections. It was their content in their defense, they don’t take our content, but they completely copied the blog exactly. I sent, I think his name is Moni. I sent him a message and let him know what I thought of him. But this is what I’m saying. I was youthful, I was brash a little bit. Was I wrong? No.

Stephanie: 100% I understand, at the end of the day with a cleaning business, a website and everything like that. There’s only so many ways to skin the cat. We’re not asking for everybody to have something revolutionary. It’s all gonna be the basic format, but when it comes the content and the style and the things that make it unique, to copy those things, especially if it’s a local competitor, I mean, you guys are welcome to go steal things from Serene Clean, as long as you’re not in my area.

Maria: I’m not sure about this. But does it hurt when there’s copy like that? Does it hurt SEO?

Amar: It can. But when Madely tries to do it to ZenMaid, Madely gets crushed, because our SEO is that good. Google does not look at our assets and think, oh, maybe Madely came up with this design. They know that’s not the case. We’ve never seen any problem with that from any of the copycats. I did hear a really good podcast from Alex Hormozi about this, which was pretty much just there’s nothing that you can do about this. You can’t patent your headline on your website. You can’t patent the copy on the website. He just said that he just got used to people just steal his ads, and he’s gotten cease and desist from lawyers going, you’re using my client’s ad. And he sent back a screenshot, going, here’s me running the ad for years. First, should I be countersuing your guy? And so the whole thing for me is with the whole Madely thing, obviously, I’m naming them because I’m not scared of them in the slightest. And so if you guys are using them, come over to us, because they’re not good at what they do. If they were, they wouldn’t be copying us. But with that, it’s like I knew that there was nothing I could do. I sent a message that made me feel a little bit better to their CEO. And that was essentially it, but he has no, essentially, there’s absolutely nothing that I can do, nor would it be worth my effort to legally. The best thing that I can do is just get back to work on serving my clients best. And the other thing is, they can only copy the snapshot in time. They can’t copy all of the thinking that got you there. That’s a really big thing where we’ve already changed our blog, and since then, our previous version was good, and maybe Madely is getting good results with that. Our current thing is getting better. Are they going to take the time now to go and copy us again? Maybe? I mean, there’s startups out there, their entire business models are built around doing that to Silicon Valley startups, but they caught a snapshot of that. Imagine they’d done that right before we changed it again because we realized it wasn’t good. So you can be a fast follower, but you still have to execute very, very well if you want to win.

Maria: That’s a really good point. I think that’s a good point with anything. It’s like, you can try to duplicate something, but your systems are gonna support that thing? You’ve such a good point.

Amar: How much ownership you wanna take? How much do you want something to take ownership of your happiness, and how much do you want to dominate your headspace. That’s the one star review from the troll. That’s an easy one for me to just move on from. That’s what I want. I just want to move on to the next easy money. I don’t want to spend a bunch of time fighting that three star customer as the exact same principle.

Philosophy on Competition

Stephanie: Well, and honestly, this just kind of encompasses, I feel like our philosophy, or at least my philosophy on competition is, I’m aware of competition in my area. And a lot of you guys have way more competition than I do at Serene Clean that is the luxury of being in a rural area. We don’t even have franchises that we’re competing against, but every time I do see a competitor that they’re doing well, they’re getting the reviews, they’re growing, that panic does, it’ll hit me. I feel that constriction, and then I just remind myself, focusing on them is not really the move for me. It’s more so, what can Serene Clean do? What is the thing that we can do so good that it doesn’t matter what other competition. Just focus on ourselves, because there’s no action I can take towards them. And if I’m just putting all my energy into what are they doing, being with my binoculars, staring at them through their window, versus just focusing on excellence at Serene Clean, and just pouring that energy into make Serene Clean better. So using it as fuel of you can never get complacent. So I know I joked former employees or whatever. But however, that’s not said with I can sit back and relax. I never feel that way. You have to continue innovating in your business and making it better.

Amar: You’re not threatened because you’re doing the work. That’s the thing. It’s not that you’re not threatened because you think that you’re better. It’s just you’re doing the work. And you are confident that you will continue to stay ahead. The other thing that I think it’s important to note is something that really is applicable to both local maid services and to software companies like ZenMaid is in no location, anywhere or no industry. Is it a winner take all. Not the things that we’re talking about. There is no product that I could release to the world that would get every single maid service owner to just blindly sign up for. That will never happen. And so an interesting thing here is that what we are all looking for creating these businesses, whether it’s cleaning businesses, whether it’s a software business, etc, is we’re looking for our piece of the pie, and that’s a really big thing in terms of focusing on the competition, versus focusing on yourself. If you’re Uber you might focus on the competition, because it’s winner take all. They did some very, very dirty things against Lyft that genuinely helped them to win a global economic battle. There’s nothing that I could do to any of my competitors if I did something that just critically, took down one of our competitors, which somehow people have accused me of doing in the past with Booking Koala. That’s another one guys, they went down for nine days and blamed some boogeyman named Amar. I can’t even code. But the whole thing there is that if, for example, that was true when I had taken down Booking Koala, all the Booking Koala customers just dispersed to the rest of the industry. Maybe ZenMaid gets a couple of but I would literally have to kneecap every single one of our competitors. So we were the only option, including Google Calendar and burning all the paper in the world and destroying all the whiteboards. And so I think that’s a really big thing here is that we don’t, I don’t want to say we don’t have to be the best, but we just need to be the best for a certain subset within our markets. And when it comes to competition, it’s about getting our piece of the pie, and we can push to get a bigger piece. But it’s not a winner take all. Your former cleaners can be massive winners here without it actually taking away from you.

Stephanie: In a rural area. And most likely, they’re going to stay individual cleaners, they will get 20 houses, 20 to 30 houses, maybe that they can fit in, because most likely, they’re quitting to have more time off, potentially, or whatever is going to work for their life. So it’s like I can afford not having 20 whatever. And honestly, even the flip side of this conversation, what it’s making me think of, is how people view employees and kind of having a really big scarcity mindset of the whole, nobody wants to work, or it’s impossible to hire. Well, to be a cleaning business the size of your wildest dreams, and to be a filthy rich cleaner, we’re talking about having 15 people, 15 to 20 people, depending on how you run things. So you don’t need unlimited people. You need 15. When you limit it to that’s this finite thing. It’s like, well, there’s, we have thousands of people in my community.

Amar: 15 cleaning clients, like a solo cleaner?

Maria: 15 cleaners.

Amar: For me, in your area of, let’s say a couple hundred thousand people, you’re looking for 15 ticket players or whatever.

Stephanie: You’re gonna have turnover, so it’s not 15 static, but that’s what I mean. If we’re talking about making good money and a good living, you don’t, it’s not this crazy thing.

Maria: But the temptation is, there’s some reason to focus on the wrong thing, and it’s easy to focus on, oh, there’s somebody over there that’s doing it well, and it’s okay to go, okay, let’s see from the outset, what can we see? But I agree with focusing internal energy and refocusing 100%.

Amar: I think my last note here, and I feel like this might be more applicable to software, but I do think that it’s definitely applicable to both is I don’t want anyone listening to this. I’m definitely not saying here that we ignore our competition. Obviously, I’ve mentioned multiple competitors here and mentioned very specific things, because I’m always plugged into those things. My competitors spend all day, every day, thinking about the same problems that I spend my time thinking about, and so I’m absolutely looking at our competitors, I never want to be copying our competitors. If the closest that we come to copying is we see something that we can do better or maybe even differently, sometimes that’s a really nice feature, we’re gonna pretty much take that but do a lighter version or a more expansive version, or whatever. But it’s always our version of the thing, and our competitor, our competition, does that to us as well, and that’s how innovation works. So to me, it’s not ignore your competition, and just focus on yourself. You should be aware, you should be taking inspiration, or be noticing what marketing campaigns are working for your competition. You don’t want to reinvent the wheel with everything that you’re doing in maid services, though, you can learn from people all over the country, in the ZenMaid mastermind and on this podcast and on all these different things. You don’t have to learn from your direct competition. You can look at what’s working for Stephanie and bring that to your area, but you should probably know what your competitors best marketing campaigns are.

Stephanie: A percent. Till this day. We track all of our competitors, the number of reviews on our competitors. Google My Business. We track that. That doesn’t make me a psycho. That makes me see, how are they doing? And it’s very motivating me. Oh, they’re doing multiple reviews a week. I need to stay ahead, because we still have more. We still have more, but I never can get complacent on continuing to get new reviews and also to see what our, if they get a negative review, what is it? It’s like, oh, they’re very bad at communicating, or that consistency, okay, that just solidifies again. What can we excel at that they cannot and really just focusing in on, what is our differentiating factor.

Maria: And to what Amar said, we have to know what our competitors charge. Where are we in the market? Are we way over evaluating? Are we under evaluating? It’s actually really good, I think, for the whole entire industry, for us to all maintain kind of prices. And I think lawyers, law offices have done a really nice job. You notice there’s no discount lawyers, they’re all, that’s what we want to be.

Stephanie: And that’s a good point too, because I definitely encourage you guys, secret shop your competitors, and that will give you, where am I? Because for me, it was always, I wanted to and this was, it was a challenge again. In a rural area, there was no businesses to call, it was all individual cleaner. So it was as hard for me to even know where to start with pricing. And I started way too low, as I’ve established before. And so I wish that I could have done that. But now, anytime I see a new business pop up. Hell yeah, we’re secret shopping that. I want to see.

Amar: I feel like this is a perfect time to say, Maria, sorry for throwing you under the bus here. But do as we say, not as we do, because I have firsthand knowledge that Maria had no idea about her competitors pricing for too long. So she is giving very, very good advice right here that hopefully she will follow.

Maria: In more ways than you will ever realize. Actually, I know I was actually telling this to Amar. That’s a really cool thing about having Amar, and just very different mindset is I think he pushes me in some ways, and we’ve got, I’ll push back. Obviously, I’m human, but I will always take it and internalize it and okay, how can I use, even if not in whole, how can I use in piece of it to better our businesses and to keep winning and moving forward?

Stephanie: That’s such a good point on having a differentiating mindset. Once you start bringing in, managers and things, obviously, I’ve beaten that dead horse of my managers being they think very differently than me, and that’s a strength. But we have the same values and same mission and things like that, but we see things from different angles and that, so you know your blind spot.

Best Cleaning Company vs Great Money

Stephanie: Okay, this is interesting. This could be an ego thing. Would you rather be known as the best cleaning company, but make average money, or make great money, but fly totally under the radar?

Maria: I’d be under the radar, but make great money. Yeah, it is an ego thing. Nobody knows my name, but I’m making what I want to make enough to afford the things in life and live the lifestyle that I want. But nobody knows my name. I will take that.

Stephanie: For me to be known that I built something fantastic, that’s important to me, and it gives me a lot of pride, and I take a lot. So I’m like, I don’t know I can make money otherwise.

Maria: You’re made building a legacy, and you want the world to know where I’m living, I’m making my legacy. And I’m just quiet about it.

Stephanie: I think that’s where it’s like, I don’t know if that’s healthy or not.

Amar: To me, it just has to do entirely with the industry, within cleaning, I’d take more money and no reputation. I prefer to be completely behind the scenes. Within software, I’d take less money, but be better known. And that’s just because, when I think about who I’m looking to connect with and who I’m trying to become in the future, being far better known or respected and having a great reputation in SaaS is going to take me a lot further than an extra $10,000, $20,000, $100,000 a year. That’s just not gonna matter in comparison to how valuable the potential network is. I can’t say that I’d feel the same about a local business.

Stephanie: That answer makes perfect sense for you where it’s like, my legacy being in a local area of Serene Clean is my legacy. So that influences my answer here. I think it’s not necessarily ego in a negative way. It’s more so this is my pride.

Amar: I get that I could see if I started a cleaning company that was going to be local to where I was living. And I really set in there, and the community side of it. In that case, I would prefer to actually be known. And I love the idea of being almost like a local kind of influencer. I think that that would really increase your quality of life. So I could see both sides. Just depends on what the goal is.

Paper Calendar vs In-Person Quoting

Stephanie: This is a good one, ZenMaid related. Would you rather be forced to use a paper calendar forever or go back to quoting every job in person. No exceptions.

Stephanie: This is a shitty one. I’m gonna say, go in person quoting. I would rather in person quote it, then. That’s how valuable ZenMaid is to me and we do not do in person quoting for shit.

Maria: In person. Quote, I got rid of that within my first three months.

Stephanie: Well, yeah, me too. I’m saying other than commercial, there’s obviously caveat there. But hated it. For residential, we do not go in person, just the time wasted. I hate it, but I would hate doing paper calendar more. I can’t imagine the whole thing would break. You literally cannot grow. At least our sales would be good. I just have to pay for a salesperson, basically. With a paper calendar, you can’t.

Amar: Kind of reject the premise of the question. It’s kind of my life thing. Because, I mean, I guess if you’re saying that you could hire somebody to do the in person quotes, to me, both of those options mean you can’t run it remotely. And so if you can’t run it remotely, I’ll take option three, which is jumping off a bridge.

Stephanie: I’d rather close down. If you guys are doing either of these things, I hope you take note that we’d rather shut our business.

Amar: But thankfully, that’s not reality, and we don’t all have to use pen and paper schedules. We can all sign up for ZenMaid, link in the bio.

Vile Toilet vs Sticky House

Stephanie: Okay, this is a good one. Would you rather clean a toilet so vile it whispers threats to you, or clean a house where every surface is sticky and no one knows why?

Maria: Probably the first one. I’ll tell you why. Because the first thing I would do is probably take the mop bucket with half boiling water and then just dump the whole thing with bleach. Get it out in two seconds flat. Done and done.

Stephanie: So for me, the toilet 100%. One, I just sticky. I don’t like sticky things. Number two is there is nothing like a sickening before and after on a nasty toilet. You can’t get that from a sticky surface, so I know I’m gonna get the satisfaction, even if it’s just internally. Of all of my co workers giving me a pat on the back, on that shitty toilet transformation, then you can’t say sticky. So that’s my answer.

Amar: Pretty much the same thing. And I’d be looking at it more from the marketing perspective. Marketing is tending it tends to be where my mind goes. If you can’t tell that everything’s sticky, no one else is going to appreciate that. So what you said of the before and after of the toilet is a win in more ways than one. So that’s the kind of content that everybody should be putting on their Instagram. You want to remind your customers that you exist. Just keep posting the work that you’re doing. Just document the work that you’re doing in clients house that are comfortable with it. And keep collecting five star reviews. It’s very simple, you know, like, complicated marketing.

Lick Mop Bucket vs Rehire Worst Employee

Stephanie: Would you rather lick a mop bucket at the end of the day or rehire the worst employee you’ve ever had?

Maria: Mop bucket. Oh my gosh.

Stephanie: Give me that mop bucket.

Amar: I don’t know if I have a weak stomach, but yeah, I’m hiring that employee and then firing them immediately.

Mass Text vs Thirst Trap

Stephanie: Would you rather accidentally send a mass text saying, I hate this effing job to all your clients, or post a thirst trap from your business Instagram?

Amar: Instagram. First we have to explain to Maria what a thirst trap is.

Stephanie: A thirst trap is a sexy photo of yourself.

Maria: Well, I didn’t know what a thirst trap was, but I would take the second one anyway.

Three Cleaners vs Best Manager Starting Competition

Stephanie: Last question, would you rather have three cleaners every year, start a cleaning company to compete with in your area, or have your best manager start a cleaning business tomorrow?

Maria: Three a year. Three a year. Easier.

Amar: Easy. I think when you say the best manager, if you sound like the worst manager quits tomorrow, I’d be like, okay, that’s a little bit closer, but it’s more the best manager is a double whammy, because it takes away from your current ability to do good business, and it’s going to introduce, likely, a decent competitor that’s gonna have a much better understanding. I would go against three cleaners all day, all day long.

Maria: And especially if it’s the manager that is managing other employees, because they already know how to deal with people, which means that they can, the retention part.

Stephanie: The cleaner only knows how to clean. My managers, they know how to run a cleaning business.

Maria: So I can think of seven different past employees that all have cleaning services in the Austin area, and none of them are actually larger. I think one has maybe seven to eight employees. She was an old team lead. So just because a cleaner starts, I know that obviously it feels like the world at first. But I think our mindset constantly thinks, oh my gosh, they’re gonna grow as big as me, or they’re gonna take my clients. And that’s just not always true. A lot of times they’re looking for, there’s a cap, there’s a cap, but what they can do.

Stephanie: The reality of it. And so I hope that that tells you guys, when this happens. It’s not a big deal. Life goes on, but your manager is doing that to you, that’s different. It’s different, but yeah, it’s dinner time. It looks like guys. So I think this was excellent. Thank you guys for watching. I hope that this has been entertained to you. Hit that like, hit that subscribe. Go join the ZenMaid mastermind. If you’re not a member, it’s a great community. Totally free. You don’t have to be a ZenMaid customer. Find us on there, and you’ll find us there. So if you like us, then go do that. And that’s on Facebook. Thank you very much. That’s it, guys. We’ll see you on the next episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners, maybe from Barcelona as well. We’ll see.

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

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• ZenMaid
• ZenMaid Mastermind
• Cleaning for a Reason
• The Game with Alex Hormozi – Alex Hormozi’s podcast