{"id":17128,"date":"2026-04-07T17:09:48","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T17:09:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/?p=17128"},"modified":"2026-04-07T18:57:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T18:57:28","slug":"how-jonathan-berger-runs-a-nyc-cleaning-empire-remotely-from-southeast-asia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/how-jonathan-berger-runs-a-nyc-cleaning-empire-remotely-from-southeast-asia\/","title":{"rendered":"How Jonathan Berger Runs a NYC Cleaning Empire Remotely From Southeast Asia"},"content":{"rendered":"    <div class=\"zm-post-first-section mb-24\">\n        <div class=\"first-section-img-wrapper\">\n            <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/themes\/zm-theme\/assets\/images\/first-section-img.png\" alt=\"first-section-img\" width=\"40px\">\n        <\/div>\n        <h3 class=\"zm-post-first-section-title mb-10 w-80 w-md-100\">Brought to you by expert maid service owners<\/h3>\n        <div class=\"zm-post-first-section-text-wrapper fs-16 mb-10\">\n            <div>\n                <i class=\"ph-bold ph-check text-primary\"><\/i>\n            <\/div>\n            <div>\n                <div class=\"zm-post-first-section-text\">\n                    <strong>\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        <div class=\"zm-post-first-section-text-wrapper fs-16 mb-10\">\n            <div>\n                <i class=\"ph-bold ph-check text-primary\"><\/i>\n            <\/div>\n            <div>\n                <div class=\"zm-post-first-section-text\">\n                    <strong>\n                        We partner with amazing leaders in the cleaning industry like Debbie Sardone,\n                    <\/strong>\n                    Angela Brown, Courtney Wisely and Chris Schwab and more, to provide you with the latest industry insights.\n                <\/div>\n            <\/div>\n        <\/div>\n        <div class=\"zm-post-first-section-text-wrapper fs-16 mb-10\">\n            <div>\n                <i class=\"ph-bold ph-check text-primary\"><\/i>\n            <\/div>\n            <div>\n                <div class=\"zm-post-first-section-text\">\n                    <strong>\n                        We\u2019ve built the easiest-to-use scheduling software, built specifically for maid service owners!\n                    <\/strong>\n                    <a class=\"text-primary2 text-decoration-underline\" href=\"https:\/\/zenmaid.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Check out ZenMaid<\/a>\n                <\/div>\n            <\/div>\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-block-embed-spotify wp-embed-aspect-21-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: #128: How Jonathan Berger Runs a NYC Cleaning Empire Remotely From Southeast Asia\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/6HGvT444FPnbcIT46ao0UR?utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Listen on:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/125-when-to-fight-for-a-client-and-when-to-fire-them\/id1791590022?i=1000757482951\">Apple<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/126-episode-ii-sean-parry-seo-conversation\/id1791590022?i=1000758410031\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/128-how-jonathan-berger-runs-a-nyc-cleaning-empire\/id1791590022?i=1000760025824\">Podcasts<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/episode\/6HGvT444FPnbcIT46ao0UR\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/episode\/6HGvT444FPnbcIT46ao0UR\">Spotify\u00a0<\/a>or\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/Cow1qNqMkA8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">YouTube<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-1\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Meeting Jonathan Berger<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: Hello everyone! Welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I&#8217;m your host, Stephanie, from Serene Clean, and today&#8217;s guide is Jonathan Berger, who is co-founder and co-manager of Cleanzilla in New York with his wife, Anna.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And he has an incredible travel and detail story that I can&#8217;t wait for you to hear. He actually started cleaning cars as a teenager, all the way up to now, having an incredibly successful cleaning business in the most populated city in America, which I&#8217;m super intrigued to get into for our city listeners. As you all know, I&#8217;m a rural manager and I know how to run a cleaning business in rural areas very well, but for a city like that, so populated and with so much competition, I can&#8217;t wait to get into this with you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, Jonathan, thank you so much for joining me. I&#8217;m really excited to hear from you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: Thank you for having me. I know we&#8217;ve been trying to get together for the past few months, but I&#8217;m very, very happy to be here and talk a little about us, and see if we can help others. I didn&#8217;t think&#8230; I didn&#8217;t want to lower your standards, you know? I don&#8217;t know. Everything breaks down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I thought you could have better people on, but I&#8217;m going to step up and see if I can help a couple of people, tell my story, and see where it can go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: Yeah, that&#8217;s what I love about the podcast, hearing so many diverse stories, owners from different backgrounds, different life experiences, and in different places in their business journey right now. And actually, you opened your business the same year as me, in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I&#8217;d love to know why you opened the business? What were you doing before? As I mentioned, you were cleaning cars when you were young, you had cleaning experience, so talk to me about the main stages and the decision for you two, as a couple, to make this business decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Filthy Rich Cleaners \u2014 E128: How Jonathan Berger Runs a NYC Cleaning Empire From Southeast Asia\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Cow1qNqMkA8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-2\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Growing Up Without a Roadmap<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: Well, let&#8217;s start with school, right? I dropped out of school, got my GED, and then ended up taking college courses in criminal justice. I didn&#8217;t know if I wanted to become an officer, follow in my uncle&#8217;s footsteps, because he was someone I looked up to. He was very involved with the NYPD, very deep in there, and was a very high-ranking officer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But yeah, now I look down at him because he&#8217;s very short for me, but yeah, I looked up to him. He was one of my mentors in life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: You got a police button, Jonathan!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: Yeah, yeah, I looked up to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I didn&#8217;t have many mentors in my life. I came from a broken family, right? My mom and dad weren&#8217;t really there, I lived with my grandmother, went back and forth, sometimes I&#8217;d go to my mom&#8217;s in Long Island, but I was mainly stationed in Brooklyn, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Later in life, I had more of a mentor \u2014 it was my grandfather, his name was Mark, with a very deep accent, from St. Petersburg. I used to help him on his fishing route, very, very nice. One thing that always stuck with me, every time I called him, he had a very positive feeling, a very positive way of looking at things. &#8220;How are you, Mark? How&#8217;s everything today?&#8221; &#8220;Life is beautiful,&#8221; every time, every time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Life is beautiful,&#8221; no matter what&#8230; and he lost his wife, lost everything, &#8220;life is beautiful.&#8221; It&#8217;s like having that perspective. And it&#8217;s funny, because you go to all these places, I went to Southeast Asia, and you see these signs that say &#8220;life is beautiful,&#8221; you see this sign, and it keeps hitting me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It brings me back to reality that life is short and life is beautiful. So I take that and I carry on with it. I put down the phone and say life is beautiful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I want to start with that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: I love that, because my first tattoo was song lyrics, and &#8220;Life is Beautiful&#8221; by Nikki Sixx was one of the choices \u2014 it didn&#8217;t make the cut, but that&#8217;s really crazy, because I feel the same way, that&#8217;s incredible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: Yeah, yeah, exactly, that&#8217;s fantastic. It&#8217;s a good thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-3\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">From Odd Jobs to Entrepreneurship<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: I started with the cleaning business, did car detailing for a bit, but I used to buy and sell motorcycles and cars. Then I did a bunch of pizza deliveries, did Uber \u2014 I didn&#8217;t want to work for someone, right? I was always trying to figure out how I could make money on the side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Uber was a big gift for me, because I could work on my own terms and then build something on the side, right? I learned from the people who are in business, because in New York City, you pick people up from, say, the airports in the morning, and it&#8217;s all elevator conversation, you hear them talking on the phone, and you&#8217;re really trying to listen to people. And I think that&#8217;s a superpower these days, just listening to people. A lot of people always try to say what they think, what they want to say, and it&#8217;s like bouncing off a conversation, so listening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And that&#8217;s all I did, and if they wanted my conversation, I would give it. So that&#8217;s how it started. I never thought I&#8217;d get into the cleaning world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My room was always a mess. I never thought about it. But it&#8217;s easier to hire a cleaning service, especially when people are shy or busy these days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So a service business was something that was on the horizon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: And actually, you met Anna while driving an Uber!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: I actually met Anna while driving an Uber.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: Oh my God! That&#8217;s so romantic! And when you got married, you got into an Uber to the&#8230; Uber should have sponsored that damn wedding! Uber, are you listening? You owe them a reward! That&#8217;s incredible!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-4\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Starting Cleanzilla During COVID<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: COVID came, right? Before COVID we had the idea, we were doing it a little here and there, and then COVID came and we both lost our jobs. Anna was working for a high-end cleaning service \u2014 she cleaned Jimmy Fallon&#8217;s house, NFL players&#8217; homes, a high-end cleaning service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We were both sitting on the couch, my mom hit me in the head and told me, &#8220;You have to find something, you have to do something.&#8221; It was like three months, and we were thinking, and I said, alright, I&#8217;m good with people, I have sales experience, let me write something up about the family business. And I genuinely care about this project we&#8217;re doing, and I have the best person in the world by my side, which is Anna. She&#8217;s incredible \u2014 if you talk to the Brazilian community, the connections she&#8217;s made, the people who follow her, it&#8217;s amazing to see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We were both in a situation where I was in a lot of debt, my credit score was bad, I was gambling a while back, I was living in my car doing Uber for three months \u2014 it was the lowest of the lows. And when she was in Brazil, she was making $200 a month. So we met at the right time, built something from the ground up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was outside on the first business call while she cleaned a house for $60, for eight hours, just to get our foot in the door. And that person is still with us \u2014 first client ever. I called her about three weeks ago. We hadn&#8217;t seen her in a while, she&#8217;s from Great Neck. But it&#8217;s incredible where we started, and how Anna always gives back. It&#8217;s very inspiring. What she does is contagious. She worked in Brazil for 10 days helping malnourished children, went to church, and she brought that here to Cleanzilla. She helps everyone, and I&#8217;m there, and I feel good helping our team, their kids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-5\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Wins That Matter Most<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: People talk about wins \u2014 the biggest wins. I know that&#8217;s a question people may have, but I&#8217;ll get into it now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: Sure, yeah, I want to hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: The biggest wins \u2014 taking our team to a professional soccer game, the whole team. Having big parties for them. Having lunch with them randomly on a Tuesday at noon, going to the pizzeria, and telling them they don&#8217;t have to go to the afternoon appointment, and we meet up and eat pizza, and we feel really good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s been a little rough the past six months \u2014 we haven&#8217;t been as involved, but we&#8217;re building it back up so we can get more involved again, because we have goals and aspirations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: That&#8217;s incredible. Obviously, building through COVID and alongside your wife, I&#8217;m sure you two were getting into a lot of things. Despite your experience, she had cleaned before, you had a background in sales. You had all these different skills coming together, and then you started hiring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-6\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Hiring Through Word of Mouth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: I&#8217;d love to know what hiring was like, especially in such a populated area. I&#8217;m very intrigued by hiring, getting clients, the variety of products. How do you handle operations when you&#8217;re in such a congested area?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: Definitely. I had other odd jobs too, like sales, calling people for financial systems. I did a lot with that, but I didn&#8217;t like it. First of all, I was working for someone, and second, it was a learning experience. Take the skill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: Yeah, exactly. Even what you mentioned about being a driver \u2014 what it made me think is that you were in a situation where many people thought it was a dead-end job. It reminds me of when I was working as a lawyer, and when I remember all the skills I picked up in business, and when you were listening to people, you were being a sponge in every situation you were in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That translates directly into your success in business. And the reason I&#8217;m driving this point home is that, while you listen, think about every job you&#8217;ve had and the skills that should be applied to your business. So I&#8217;d love for you to give it the attention, and not just respond, but learn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: Definitely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: Tell us a bit about hiring someone for the first time. It wasn&#8217;t easy for me \u2014 what was it like for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: Hiring is Anna&#8217;s part of the business, but I&#8217;m always there, always listening to her, she always asks me things, and the most important thing is word of mouth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Word of mouth \u2014 we tried Facebook, we tried many different things. The most important thing is that when Anna worked for the cleaning company, this lady had been in the business for 20 or 30 years. She has a big business in the city, a big client base, she&#8217;s famous and all that, and she doesn&#8217;t use the internet at all. Nothing is on the internet. No CRM, nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don&#8217;t know how she does it. We started with Google Calendar until the point where we had to find ZenMaid, and that helped us flourish our business. That was one of the big winners for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And Amar \u2014 we met Amar a couple of times. I started with the business. I mean, how we treat our team and the community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>People would just say, &#8220;Hey, I want to work for Cleanzilla.&#8221; And it&#8217;s because Anna is very good with the team. It was all word of mouth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So from there on, you have to figure out how to maintain the community, maintain the friendship. It&#8217;s not a corporate environment \u2014 you don&#8217;t want to keep it that way, you want to keep it more friendly. &#8220;How are your kids today? How is your family? How is everything? What are we doing next weekend? Are we having this party? Are we having a barbecue at the end of the month? Are we dancing?&#8221; We&#8217;re doing all that, right? That&#8217;s the most important thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I really believe that&#8217;s the most important thing. The core is your team. The core is the people who work for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m just the pretty face of all this. Just a total bimbo. Bimbo, I guess that would be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-7\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">NYC Logistics: Transit, Supplies, and Small Spaces<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: I want to speed up a little bit on the logistics because my brain is going, and I&#8217;m sure our listeners are asking the same things. So I assume there&#8217;s a lot of public transit, right? Or all public transit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: Yeah, the thing is in Manhattan it&#8217;s easy to get around with the train system, but we try to condense the cleanings to just three boroughs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: What boroughs do you service?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: When it comes to the trains, do you give them metro cards? I don&#8217;t know how it works. How do you pay for your cleaners to move between jobs?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: When you live in New York City, you can receive a certain amount of payment for metro cards, so the city takes care of you \u2014 to a certain point. So we have that, and then we occasionally provide additional metro cards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: You talked about leaving vacuums in clients&#8217; homes for recurring cleans. Does the client offer that vacuum or do you provide it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: That&#8217;s something we&#8217;re still working on. There are many biweekly and weekly clients where we&#8217;ve taken a vacuum, left it there, and said, &#8220;Hey, this is yours for now. It&#8217;s going to make it easier for our team.&#8221; So we buy a Miele or a Shark vacuum or whatever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: That&#8217;s expensive to do for all your clients! Oh my God!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: Yeah, Shark. Right now we have 400 recurring clients. But that&#8217;s just weekly and biweekly. There are people who come back every three weeks, two weeks, weekly \u2014 it&#8217;s not just set in the schedule, they come back every two months. But just 400 that I see in ZenMaid right now. Maybe we have about 30 vacuums that are out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Other people have their own vacuums and other team members bring vacuums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: So it&#8217;s really a very minor number that you&#8217;re providing to clients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: Yeah, yeah. But Anna wants to expand that. I&#8217;m trying to find a better option.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: Don&#8217;t the clients have vacuums? Because that&#8217;s very typical. For most cleaning companies, I thought they had to provide the vacuum. Is that not a thing in New York?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: Yeah. The most important thing is growth \u2014 having new clients. Many of our clients, how we push our business, is we have all the products and supplies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: Yeah, that makes sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: It&#8217;s a selling tool. But also, for first-time deep cleans, we&#8217;re trying to get into the house. We&#8217;re going to bring everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: I understand. Now, I assume it&#8217;s a lot of&#8230; I&#8217;d love to know what your typical home size is. Again, this is my country bumpkin looking at you and asking \u2014 are these mostly apartments and smaller spaces? Or houses too?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-8\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Narrowing the Service Area and Market<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: Yeah. When we started, we took everything and anything. We were everywhere. We were in Jersey. We were cleaning boats. Yeah, people lived on boats. They&#8217;d come to Florida and live on boats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We were everywhere. Now, when you grow and figure out the demographics and where the money is, where you want to be, where there&#8217;s less stress, to figure everything out \u2014 to be honest, then you move towards that. You replace yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We&#8217;ve probably replaced ourselves four times. We still try to modify things. Do we like this? Do we like that? We&#8217;re not going to reinvent the wheel. We&#8217;re going to make it ours, but if we see something we like, we&#8217;re going to change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When we started, we had everything. We were in Long Island, had big houses, and then decided to focus on apartments from 600 to 1,500 square feet. One bedroom, two bedrooms, three bedrooms, two bathrooms \u2014 probably the most. We have big houses, but we&#8217;ll put two people on for the week, and if you want the price, you take it. That&#8217;s where we are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We know what market we&#8217;re in. We have the southeast part, we&#8217;re trying to push into SoHo, we&#8217;re trying to push into other bigger areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: 600 to 1,500 square feet, one bedroom, two bedrooms. So those are apartments. That&#8217;s incredible. In and out. Do you do solos or teams?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: We do solos, but there are some teams if it&#8217;s a larger location.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: Yeah, because I thought it&#8217;d be very straightforward to do solos with so many small ones. How many \u2014 if someone works an eight-hour day, how many maintenance cleans would you put on that person since they&#8217;re so small?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: Could be two to three.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: OK, I understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: Yeah, could be two to three. That&#8217;s crazy. We don&#8217;t travel with cars, first. We give them a lunch break. And also \u2014 if they finish a house in three hours, they still get paid for four hours. If they finish in two and a half hours, they still get paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s a full day, and if they go overtime, they rarely go overtime. But we have some office cleans too. We&#8217;re 95% residential, so the offices are early, early morning, before 8 AM, or after \u2014 so five or six in the morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So sometimes some team members do those at three or four, but the majority are two cleans per day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: OK. Well, you just mentioned pay. Let me ask \u2014 do you charge a flat rate and pay a percentage? Do you pay daily, or what&#8217;s the structure?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: Yeah, it&#8217;s a structure between that \u2014 so it&#8217;s a fixed rate, but daily, whether it&#8217;s overtime or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: OK, that makes a lot of sense. I imagine the routing is incredibly important for you, to make it as logistically efficient as possible. Do you have any tips, in general, for how you ensure it&#8217;s efficient?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: Yeah, so Anna takes care of the schedule, takes care of the team. Those are the two most important things she does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So the calendar \u2014 you know, when I did sales and I still do outside sales, I would put everything in the schedule. Anna would look at it the night before and she would know what&#8217;s happening, what makes sense. She mapped everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Actually, she created something through a Meta platform that&#8217;s AI, where you can just type in your team, you know, the address of the place, the two addresses \u2014 it&#8217;s related to, I mean, it&#8217;s related to ZenMaid. I&#8217;m not sure if it&#8217;s related to ZenMaid, but she would know that if it&#8217;s Team A, Team B, or Team C, it&#8217;s easier for our schedule at the moment to see all this data, and the address is much easier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: Interesting. So, correct me if I&#8217;m wrong \u2014 are you giving clients the same cleaners, the same consistent cleaners?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: Yeah, consistency is what we promise to everyone. So it&#8217;s monthly, monthly, monthly. We always tell the client we can&#8217;t change because it doesn&#8217;t work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: OK, I&#8217;m trying to think. I&#8217;m curious if there&#8217;s something that comes to the top of your mind when you say, you know, you keep evolving and modifying your setup to be as efficient as possible. Do you have a couple of things you&#8217;ve changed about the equipment since the beginning, or even in the last few years, to improve? Any specific recommendations? People love to hear tool and supply ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: Yeah, definitely. So, like I said, we were growing rapidly when we started, and we started to learn what to really do. We dropped our egos and thought we knew what we were doing until, you know, we hit a kind of wall and couldn&#8217;t go anywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then, we got on the internet trying to figure some things out, went to Facebook and found all these groups, and then we joined CBF for a year or two. CBF helped us because \u2014 I don&#8217;t think we followed everything, we haven&#8217;t even gone through all the&#8230; speed cleaning, yeah, all of that. Yeah, I haven&#8217;t gone through everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The most important part was the Facebook group. Everybody was open, everybody was there to help. The connections we made with CBF were incredible because the people were serious. It wasn&#8217;t just a regular Facebook group where people joke around or aren&#8217;t serious or aren&#8217;t doing things. It was real, and we saw it, took advantage of the situation, and grew from there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-9\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Tools, Software, and Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: We found our specialists. We moved around a bit \u2014 SEO didn&#8217;t work for us at first, so we dropped it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We had a period, we were spending $8,000 on ads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: Oh my God!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: A month, a month, yeah, because we were in full growth mode. And I talked to Olivia about this, you know \u2014 I always pick her brain a couple times and she&#8217;s a very smart woman. I get a little anxiety when I see her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: Yeah, we saw her last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: Yeah, yeah, very intense. She&#8217;s very smart. When I asked her about marketing, it was like, if you&#8217;re in growth mode, what percentage of your revenue should you spend? And she says 12%. And I said, OK, so I should spend that much money, you know, like I was doing almost a million in revenue at the time&#8230; and it made sense that to continue growing, we had to do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But then, down the line, I thought maybe I could spend a little less. I went back to these Facebook forums and someone&#8230; there&#8217;s always people who message you saying, &#8220;Oh, I can do SEO, I can do this, I&#8217;m from Bangladesh, I got you, don&#8217;t worry.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I&#8217;m like, no, I got this, don&#8217;t worry. I don&#8217;t know who&#8217;s scamming who, I don&#8217;t know what&#8217;s going on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: Yeah, exactly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-10\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">The SEO Game-Changer<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: OK. Finally, I gave this person a chance, right? And I told them a little information, how much we were spending on ads. And it was a game-changer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The SEO was a game-changer. I was nervous because at first I&#8217;d been scammed with SEO twice. I was spending $2,000, $3,000 a month, and it wasn&#8217;t doing anything for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Obviously it&#8217;s a waiting game, it&#8217;s a waiting game. You have to wait, but I was there for six months and nothing happened. So I never wanted to give it another chance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now I spend, I don&#8217;t know, $1,500, $2,000 on SEO. I don&#8217;t spend a dime on ads since last year. So going from $8,000 in ads down to $1,500 on SEO and getting the same amount of leads organically \u2014 15 to 20 leads a day \u2014 it&#8217;s incredible. It was a game-changer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-11\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Rebranding and Standing Out in a Competitive Market<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: But SEO is not a magic pill. You have to rebrand your presence. You have to make people like your look. You have to put on the makeup. You have to do what you need to do so that people align with your products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s something we try to teach or try to tell people. Because if someone tells you that so-and-so is going to fix your business, that&#8217;s false. They&#8217;re going to help you, but they&#8217;ll tell you the same thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are small details for everything to work. And also, we&#8217;re in an urban environment and we have so many people in New York. So from here to, say, Wyoming, it&#8217;s going to be different too. The traffic is different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But from Google Calendar we went to ZenMaid and that helped us tremendously. Then we started getting into management software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now we&#8217;re on Notion. We were on Monday trying to find the best fit. We have a lot of data and Notion helps us because there&#8217;s a lot of built-in intelligence that can build projects for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We have Cuo, which was formerly OpenPhone. We have Cuo OpenPhone now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: Cuo OpenPhone, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: I still call it OpenPhone. They changed it to yellow. Cuo \u2014 what a terrible name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: It&#8217;s an incredible software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: Yeah, it&#8217;s an incredible software. We worked with RingCentral and Ameter. Cuo is so good. And so affordable too. Really very open considering how robust it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: And I don&#8217;t have any money here. Cuo OpenPhone is not sponsoring us, guys. But I&#8217;m sure ZenMaid has a code to give you a discount. And if you&#8217;re wondering what we&#8217;re talking about, we&#8217;re talking about a phone system you can install on your computer or make calls from your computer or anywhere and you can set up texting. It&#8217;s fabulous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: It&#8217;s incredible, really incredible. We&#8217;re always trying to figure things out. Obviously we use a lot of artificial intelligence with ChatGPT. And Anna is taking a lot of courses. I&#8217;m about to take some courses in AI too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We use Stripe, we use WhatsApp for our team during the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: Want to know my banks? Yeah, I love you. Social Security number. And your mother&#8217;s maiden email. What else? I love hearing the stack. What do you use for books? QuickBooks?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: Yeah, we use QuickBooks. We&#8217;re about to move to a different bank soon. They say the third bank is the best. So we went through two banks. And I always asked people I was close to, &#8220;Who&#8217;s your bank? Do they love you? Is this the one?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And when people said they were fine, I wanted someone to say &#8220;this is the most incredible person.&#8221; It&#8217;s really fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My accountant, Angie \u2014 I love her. She&#8217;s my third. The first and second screwed me up because they messed everything up with my F.E.I.N. So number two was bad, number one wasn&#8217;t a good person, and number three is my angel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: Incredible! We align. That&#8217;s why I like your podcast. There&#8217;s no filter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: Are you from Brooklyn?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie: Just from Wisconsin, right? But we&#8217;re the same, for sure. My grandma is from there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: That&#8217;s fabulous! Well, I&#8217;m curious \u2014 obviously, you had to get into the groove with marketing and you were really struggling. So I imagine, as you mentioned, SEO is good, but it doesn&#8217;t close the deal. It can get eyes on you, but if what they&#8217;re looking at is attractive, that&#8217;s another battle you have to fight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You mentioned the rebrand. Do you do anything specific? I&#8217;m thinking about staying competitive in that kind of market. Probably a lot of cheap competition too, I imagine. How do you stay ahead? How do you sell to clients when they&#8217;re looking at all these options?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan: I&#8217;ve always thought about guerrilla marketing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Resources Mentioned in This Episode<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cleaningbusinessfundamentals.com\/\">CBF (Cleaning Business Fundamentals)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/get.zenmaid.com\/\">ZenMaid<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.openphone.com\/\">Cuo (formerly OpenPhone)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.notion.so\/\">Notion<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/stripe.com\/\">Stripe<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/chatgpt.com\/\">ChatGPT<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/quickbooks.intuit.com\/online\/\">QuickBooks<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n    <div class=\"zm-quick-tip d-flex flex-column flex-md-row mb-24 mt-24\">\n        <div class=\"zm-quick-tip-content-wrapper\">\n            <h4 class=\"zm-quick-tip-title mb-12 text-dark2\">QUICK TIP FROM THE AUTHOR<\/h4>\n            <div class=\"zm-quick-tip-image d-block d-md-none\">\n                <img decoding=\"async\" width=\"200px\" src=\"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/themes\/zm-theme\/assets\/cta_images\/zm_trial_cta.png\" alt=\"quick-tip-image\">\n            <\/div>\n            <h5 class=\"zm-quick-tip-sub-title mb-12\">Simplify and enjoy your scheduling with a scheduling software made for maid services<\/h5>\n            <div>\n                <ul>\n                    <li>Have a beautiful calendar that's full but never stressful.<\/li>\n                    <li>Make your cleaners happy and provide all the information they need at their fingertips.<\/li>\n                    <li>Convert more website visitors into leads and get new cleanings in your inbox with high-converting booking forms.<\/li>\n                    <li>Become part of a community of 8000+ cheering maid service owners just like you.<\/li>\n                <\/ul>\n                <p>Start your FREE ZenMaid trial today and discover the freedom and clarity that ZenMaid can bring to your maid service! <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/app.zenmaid.com\/sign-up\">Start your FREE trial today<\/a><\/p>\n            <\/div>\n        <\/div>\n        <div class=\"zm-quick-tip-image d-none d-md-block\">\n            <img decoding=\"async\" width=\"200px\" src=\"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/themes\/zm-theme\/assets\/cta_images\/zm_trial_cta.png\" alt=\"quick-tip-image\">\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Listen on:\u00a0ApplePodcasts,\u00a0Spotify\u00a0or\u00a0YouTube Meeting Jonathan Berger Stephanie: Hello everyone! Welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I&#8217;m your host, Stephanie, from Serene Clean, and today&#8217;s guide is Jonathan Berger, who is co-founder and co-manager of Cleanzilla in New York with his wife, Anna. And he has an incredible travel and detail story that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":17134,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"How Jonathan Berger Runs a NYC Cleaning Empire Remotely From Southeast Asia","_seopress_titles_desc":"Jonathan Berger, co-founder of Cleanzilla in NYC, shares how he cut ad spend from $8K\/month to $1,500\/month on SEO, lessons on hiring, logistics, and running a 400-client cleaning business.","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[125],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17128","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17128"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17131,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17128\/revisions\/17131"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}