{"id":15425,"date":"2025-06-23T03:04:43","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T03:04:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/?p=15425"},"modified":"2025-06-23T03:04:46","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T03:04:46","slug":"how-a-20-year-cleaning-business-drastically-increased-revenue-by-ditching-pen-and-paper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/how-a-20-year-cleaning-business-drastically-increased-revenue-by-ditching-pen-and-paper\/","title":{"rendered":"How a 20-Year Cleaning Business *Drastically* Increased Revenue by Ditching Pen and Paper"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Brought to you by expert maid service owners<\/h3>\n
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\n \n Tips and advice shared here, have helped us grow our own maid services.\n <\/strong>\n With eight current and former cleaning business owners in our team, including our CEO and founder Amar, we know the maid service industry inside and out.\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n
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When Victoria Alves said \u201cthe heck with this\u201d to her mentor\u2019s tech advice, she had no idea she was about to transform her entire business \u2014 and her confidence.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Victoria Alves had been running The Castle Keepers<\/em> for 20 years when she finally admitted something that scared her:
Her successful cleaning business was being held back by her fear of technology.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cI\u2019m not a very ‘techy’ person at all,\u201d Victoria says. \u201cWe were still on pen and paper. But we knew we needed better systems and a real change.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

She and her husband David had built their Massachusetts-based cleaning business the \u2018old-fashioned way\u2019: hustle, heart, handwritten calendars, and client info scribbled in notebooks. But after two decades in the field, their bodies were starting to feel the strain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And they realized something that became urgent\u2026
If either one of them got injured or had to step back, there was no backup plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cI didn\u2019t want to panic when it was too late,\u201d Victoria says. \u201cWe needed to get systems in place while we still had energy and control.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

They didn\u2019t just want a way to stay organized \u2014 they needed<\/em> a way to protect everything they had built. And, they wanted to create something that could grow beyond them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as self-proclaimed \u2018non-techies\u2019, they were both very nervous to make the switch to using software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So, Why Make the Switch?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Enter Cheryl Hajjar<\/em><\/a>, a cleaning business consultant and coach Victoria met through ZenMaid\u2019s community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe number one challenge for us to look for software \u2014 honestly \u2014 was our mentor Cheryl Hajjar,\u201d Victoria says. \u201cShe pushed and I pushed back. She pushed some more, and I… well, slowly my mindset started changing. Then one day I woke up and said, \u2018The heck with this! Cheryl\u2019s right! We are worth it!!!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That shift didn\u2019t happen overnight. Like many cleaning business owners used to pen and paper systems, Victoria was nervous about all of the unknowns. <\/p>\n\n\n\n