{"id":17277,"date":"2026-04-28T12:11:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T12:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/?p=17277"},"modified":"2026-04-28T12:11:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T12:11:13","slug":"how-natalies-15-clean-built-a-15-year-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/how-natalies-15-clean-built-a-15-year-business\/","title":{"rendered":"How Natalie&#8217;s $15 Clean Built a 15-Year Business"},"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<p>Listen on: <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/134-how-natalies-%2415-clean-built-a-15-year-business\/id1791590022?i=1000764094191\">Apple Podcasts<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/episode\/69w8Zrsr7WLtsnX0TWNhEC?si=d1f67f3251084d5a\">Spotify<\/a>, or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vxGSELd-d3A\">YouTube<\/a><\/p>\n\n\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: #134: How Natalie\u2019s $15 Clean Built a 15-Year Business\" 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\/69w8Zrsr7WLtsnX0TWNhEC?si=d1f67f3251084d5a&amp;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-1\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Introduction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Hello everyone, welcome \u2014 or welcome back \u2014 to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I am your host Stephanie from Serene Clean. My lovely guest today I met at CleanCon. We were seated at the same round table, and I was like, I have to have you on my podcast. Natalie, will you join me? And she so graciously said yes. We have Natalie Mikishko, and she is the Chief Domestic at Majestic Domestics in Colorado. She has quite the extraordinary story that I cannot wait for you guys to hear. I&#8217;m so grateful that you agreed to this, Natalie. Thank you so much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> Thank you. I&#8217;m happy to be here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> And we really connected at CleanCon. As I mentioned, we were seated at the same table \u2014 it was the last panel of the entire conference, where everybody was kind of in a mastermind situation. We sat with companies who were similar in revenue size, which I found really helpful to work through problems and connect with owners at similar stages. So that was definitely a win. I thought CleanCon did a great job setting it up that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> I loved it. They were so smart to do that. I loved everybody at the table. It was a great conference and a great round table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Absolutely. I hope to make it to the one in Texas in September. I don&#8217;t know if you&#8217;re planning to go to any more conferences this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> I wanted to, but I&#8217;m taking my husband on a cruise for our anniversary and it&#8217;s at the same time, so I&#8217;ll have to pass on that one until the next one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh my gosh. How many years have you guys been married?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> It will be 11 in September. He was a confirmed bachelor for 28 years and I hooked him. He was married once before, but it&#8217;s really a miracle to meet somebody as you get older because you&#8217;re in your groove.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Now I have to ask \u2014 how did you guys meet?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> Oh, it&#8217;s a good story. We met the good old-fashioned way \u2014 in person, salsa dancing at a hotel in Boulder called the St. Julian. They have different types of bands that come in on Friday and Saturday nights. He&#8217;s a great salsa dancer and I&#8217;m not that great, but I&#8217;m okay. He knew my friends from the higher-up classes they&#8217;d taken together, and I met him there and we just danced and danced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh my gosh, that is like a movie or something. That&#8217;s really romantic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> It&#8217;s so sweet. I was not his type because I&#8217;m very curvy. He really likes the athletic women \u2014 like my friend, but he didn&#8217;t like her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Well, there you go. Every pot has a lid, right? Curvy women are fabulous. What does he know?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> They always change their minds. Yes, one day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-2\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Career Before Cleaning<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Well, obviously we&#8217;re here to talk about our cleaning businesses, but you have not always been in the cleaning industry. Tell me what your career trajectory was like before you opened your cleaning business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> Okay, I have to preface this with \u2014 I get bored very fast. I actually started in the human resources training area. I was living in Los Angeles and worked for a company called Smart and Final in their training department. This was way back in the day when not everybody had personal computers on their desk in a work environment. It was our job in this training department to teach people how to use email and PowerPoint and Excel, and to fight the resistance of the old guard \u2014 people who didn&#8217;t want to learn those things and hated you for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s where I started. But then I was really bored, and I was fortunate enough to have a mentor. She was vice president of both the HR training department and purchasing. She recruited me over, saying she didn&#8217;t really have a role for me but she&#8217;d keep me very busy. And she did. I cross-trained in the grocery industry until I became a category manager for purchasing commodities and so forth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I realized that the vendors at that time were making way more money and not working 80 hours a week. So I left and went into the vendor broker side of grocery selling. I repped companies like Pedigree, C&amp;H sugar, coffee companies \u2014 I had multiple brands I was managing for their marketing and advertising in the grocery industry. I did that for a while until I became bored of that too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My brother lives here in Boulder, Colorado. He&#8217;s a master craftsman \u2014 a really amazing furniture maker and custom home designer. Him and his wife are an amazing team, but my brother does not have sales ability or patience to deal with clients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, he&#8217;s like, I just want to do what I&#8217;m good at.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> Right. So I ended up going to work for a high-end cabinet company in Southern California. No experience doing this \u2014 I learned how to sell cabinetry. I sold a lot of high-end cabinetry to developers in California, which I really liked. Fortunately, I was recruited into commercial construction project management and sales right before the housing bubble burst. So I was still working through that, in the nick of time. And then I worked with all men on the commercial side, calling on general contractors. We remodeled airports and bars and hotels, like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I had a midlife crisis \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> The best kind of crisis, I would argue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> Right, right. My brother said, &#8220;I think it&#8217;s time for you to move to Boulder before I see you on World News Tonight going postal in Los Angeles,&#8221; you know, because of the traffic. I kind of tended to agree with him that was the best course for me. I ended up in Boulder, Colorado in September of 2010, and I took a year off trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I was burnt out with sales and project management. I wanted to start a company but didn&#8217;t know what. And I liked cleaning. I liked having my house cleaned when I was working so hard. So I thought, just try this out. And that&#8217;s how I started in the cleaning business \u2014 just these two hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-3\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Taking the Leap<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> That&#8217;s incredible. Especially coming from such a corporate professional background \u2014 such an extreme pivot. When you announced this to your family, what were their reactions? Were they supportive, or was anybody like, what the heck are you doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> My mom is an entrepreneur. She&#8217;s had four different businesses. Her first one was as a hairstylist \u2014 she had her own beauty shop. Then she went into general contracting in Chicago. She&#8217;s this little Latina, very mighty \u2014 I call her Mighty Mouse. She used my dad&#8217;s name for her business, but she was really the brains behind it. She&#8217;s had a cleaning business too. She&#8217;s had numerous businesses, and she told me, &#8220;You just need to make your own money instead of making everybody else rich.&#8221; My brother was the same way. He&#8217;s had his own company since he was 26, and he&#8217;d say, &#8220;You need to make your own money. Stop making everybody else rich.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So they were all for it. I joke around with my mom \u2014 I&#8217;ve apprenticed under her from age three until I was 19. She taught me all the proper ways about cleaning, what is really clean versus a promise clean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> So you had lots of entrepreneurial influences throughout your life. But until this moment, this was when it made sense to take the leap. Do you think you would&#8217;ve ever done this if you stayed in LA?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> No. First of all, cleaning companies in LA have so many taxes, so many rules, so much competition that it would&#8217;ve been very difficult to run a serious cleaning business. I say good on you to the people who do it and are able to make a living in California, but I just couldn&#8217;t pull that off there. I would&#8217;ve stayed in the same field where everybody knew me and it was very comfortable. I was ready for a change and a challenge. And I like the fact that even at 42, you can start completely over and see what you build. It&#8217;s exciting. I encourage anybody who&#8217;s on the fence about that to take the leap \u2014 as long as you&#8217;re working hard, putting your honest effort in, and keeping your integrity in place, good things will happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I so agree. When it comes to entrepreneurship, it is never too late, and you can always start again. Most successful entrepreneurs have actually failed at previous endeavors. A previous failure doesn&#8217;t mean you&#8217;re going to fail at this one \u2014 it might just not have been the right fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And speaking of California \u2014 I just had a consulting call yesterday with a lovely client who had a cleaning company in California. It was horrific in a lot of ways. She just moved to Tyler, Texas and restarted, and she is absolutely loving it. It&#8217;s been such a complete game changer, especially when it comes to the laws and regulations. So any of our California listeners \u2014 I feel for you, because I cannot fathom running a business there with all of those taxes and regulations. It reminds me of some of our listeners who are out of the country as well, in the UK or Australia. When I talk to them it&#8217;s like, oh my gosh. It makes me really grateful to be in America because it&#8217;s probably the most business-friendly place in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> I agree. We are very, very lucky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-4\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Starting Majestic Domestics<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Talk me through that first year. What year did you start the business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> I did not start until December 1st, 2011. I took a good year off to figure out where I was going in Colorado. I left Los Angeles with zero friends and no job. I was so burnt out that the thought of going back into sales made me kind of throw up a little in my mouth. So I was figuring things out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I had this internal wrestle \u2014 like: you should try cleaning. And I was like, no, I have all this education and experience and resume. Then the other voice: you should try cleaning. It was just this internal battle. You&#8217;re supposed to do what you love. You love cleaning, you love tidiness. You love the feeling when you came home after a very busy work week and your house was perfect because you had a person who cleaned it just like you would&#8217;ve cleaned it yourself. And you could relax, have a nice meal, enjoy the week, go places with your friends and family. I love that feeling, and I wanted to give that feeling to other women and men who work so hard in their day-to-day life and just need that little help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was actually going to do more of a cleaning and food service business \u2014 bringing over a handmade lasagna or casserole, because I like to cook. So they would come home from work, pop in their casserole, have a salad ready, house is clean, dinner is ready. But that took a whole other turn when I had to have a commercial kitchen and all these rules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Interesting. I never thought about that side of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> Right. So I read those books that say be an expert at one thing. I knew I was good at cleaning, so I just stayed with the cleaning portion of my business idea, and it all came together really fast. I have one friend in tech marketing \u2014 she helped me come up with the name Majestic Domestics. Another friend did graphic art and worked for print shops, so she created my logo on her break. I knew my favorite colors were turquoise, and it just all kind of came together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Boulder they have the Boulder Camera, which is the daily newspaper. They had started a program kind of like Groupon, where they would feature your logo and your offer in the upper right-hand corner of their newspaper every day. The very first ad I ever put out was three hours for $29.99.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oof. That&#8217;s a good offer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> Yes. Because I didn&#8217;t have any clients and I needed to get my schedule filled fast \u2014 and being that it was the Christmas season, it came together quickly. I sold a hundred packages. I had to limit it because I knew I was not going to be able to do a thousand. They were sold out by 10:30 in the morning because they also did an email blast. I picked up clients from that point that I still have to this day, and it&#8217;s 15 years later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh my God. I just have to pause here. Everybody, marinate on what just was said. Three hundred hours of cleaning given away at \u2014 what&#8217;d you say, $29.99 for three hours? And the newspaper got half of that, so you got $15 a cleaning. For all intents and purposes, three hundred hours of free labor. But from what you&#8217;re telling me, the payoff was astronomical \u2014 when you think about having clients this many years later, tens of thousands of dollars have come from that, if not more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> Yes. And those initial clients were at my wedding. We&#8217;ve been on vacations together. They became girlfriends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> That&#8217;s incredible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> It was an amazing loss leader. Of course, I couldn&#8217;t raise my arms by New Year&#8217;s Eve \u2014 my shoulders were frozen \u2014 but it worked out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I just love that that was your strategy and your hunch. Same thing when I opened \u2014 I did free cleans to get the word out and get some social proof and traction. I cried at several of those cleanings because I&#8217;d never done it before and I was squeezing it in around my full-time job. I was like, what am I doing? But it paid off for sure. Moral of the story, everybody listening: here is yet another example of free cleans explosively working and getting you that traction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> Right. I sucked it up. I wanted to get my schedule filled and it was gonna happen one way or another. I was not gonna wait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-5\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Building a Team and Implementing ZenMaid<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Amazing. So tell me \u2014 obviously you have a staff now and you&#8217;re well over a million dollars in revenue. Let&#8217;s talk about the in-between: staffing and what that looked like. You&#8217;d never had employees before. What made you decide to go with W2 instead of IC?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> You know, every level you want to go to, you don&#8217;t realize what it&#8217;s going to take. I thought being in Boulder, being in a college town, it was going to be like when I was in college, where everybody&#8217;s fighting for a job to have extra spending money while they&#8217;re in school. Oh no. Not in Boulder, Colorado. They&#8217;re not needing spending money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> These are rich kids, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> Yes. They don&#8217;t need to get jobs. So I was like, what is this? I really never thought it was going to be a problem to get people to work with me, and that&#8217;s what really blew my mind. That was the hardest part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I did have a couple in the beginning who were dedicated to growing my business with me. And then there were a lot of frogs I kissed. You really learn how to deal with certain age groups \u2014 big kid gloves with some, others are fine with minimal managing. You learn what works for each age group. Being the oldest out of everybody, and from Chicago, I have a little bit thicker skin than the average.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But anyway, that&#8217;s been really interesting because I could do the sales. I could do sales in my sleep. I could get people to commit to our pricing \u2014 and our pricing is not cheap. But I could not get the help. Just when you think you&#8217;re on the tracks and the train is moving forward, you hit a roadblock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, it feels like an atomic bomb sometimes goes off with turnover \u2014 could anything else go wrong? Could anybody else quit or do something stupid and need to get fired?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> I know. And one of the things about my company is that I know this industry has a lot of exploitation. There are a lot of people who are struggling \u2014 single moms, just financially having a hard time. I always wanted my techs to feel like this job is important, just as important as a teacher&#8217;s. Whether they want to see it that way or not, they are making a difference in people&#8217;s lives. So I always try to make it a place where people want to come to work, where they want to work really hard, and then on nights and weekends we&#8217;re all able to have our own free time with friends and family, do our hobbies, or relax.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I did everything on paper in the beginning \u2014 all the things \u2014 and you realize you&#8217;re going crazy with the schedule. So here comes the ZenMaid plug.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yes!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> ZenMaid was my very first scheduling software. I had seen it at a conference and they had just started at that time. It helped so much with scheduling and notifications, and it cut down on all the last-minute cancellations. And from there I had a contract that people would sign so they knew I needed to get paid on the day of, and then I was able to take credit cards. ZenMaid really got me to that next professional level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> How many staff did you have before you implemented ZenMaid? Do you remember what size you were at?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> I think I had a total of six. I was running two teams at that point because I had found a gal who was really good and we worked together, and then I trusted her to take a team. That became a team of three, and I had a team of three, and it just kind of grew from there. I love the fact that they could see their schedule, and clock in and out. I mean, I love the work orders \u2014 because I used to meet my team at a gas station every morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> I was like the ice cream truck of cleaning supplies. I&#8217;d fill up everybody&#8217;s bottles and hand-write the addresses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh my gosh. The amount of work \u2014 and you could never have a day off or miss a morning when you&#8217;re doing everything manually like that. It&#8217;s all on you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> Yes. It makes me laugh now. When I drive past that gas station where some of the girls would park their cars on the side, and we would all jump into each other&#8217;s cars and go \u2014 with bleach stains in my Tahoe from a toilet bowl cleaner spilling in the back. And then my dog Bogart had separation anxiety, so he always had to go to work with us. I called him the VP of Sales. He started the startup with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Aw, that&#8217;s so sweet. Oh my gosh, I love that. When I started, it was out of my little apartment. I had a yard tote \u2014 like the kind you put gardening supplies in \u2014 outside the door, and that&#8217;s where cleaners would come get their supplies. Luckily I got into an office before winter, because I was like, I&#8217;ll figure that out when it comes. I don&#8217;t know what I would&#8217;ve done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> I know, it&#8217;s hilarious. I was working out of my garage as well, and then I finally needed a storage unit. The cleaners could go pick up their supplies when needed and drop off dirty towels. That worked for a long time \u2014 from about 2018 to 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-6\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Acquiring Clean Conscience<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> And then in 2022, I bought Clean Conscience, which is the green cleaning company I also own, from a gentleman who retired. He was just tired. COVID hit and he lost half his business staff, and he was exhausted. He didn&#8217;t have the energy or the money to rebuild. He begged me to take it over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> You probably got a good deal, huh?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> I got a good deal. His business was actually for sale before COVID, and then after. I bought at the right time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> So what did that process entail? Was there a lot of negotiation or business valuation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> It had good bones. It had a sturdy management team. It had sales. It did not have profitability. And I knew something was off because once I bought it and got to talk to the management team \u2014 he would not let me talk to them prior. He didn&#8217;t even let them know it was for sale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Ooh, that&#8217;s unsettling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> It freaked me out a bit. I made him include a retention bonus for each of the women if they stayed a certain amount of time, which helped ensure they&#8217;d stick around. But yeah, he was an absentee owner who was really tired and didn&#8217;t want to raise prices. I think I bought it with 350 clients, and maybe a hundred of them were really profitable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Wow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> When I got there, I realized the foundation was completely cracked \u2014 it needed more than a paint job. So I had to start from the ground up. I cut the clients who weren&#8217;t profitable by just raising their rates. And then I worked with the women and retrained them to meet my standards \u2014 to take time, not just be quick and get out. I changed the whole culture. I still have cleaners from that initial purchase, and they are very, very happy. One of them was my cleaner of the year last year. One of them has become my field manager and trainer over the other trainers. That&#8217;s Gina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So it took a lot of tears. A lot of tears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> In hindsight, if you were to go through that process again, what information would you have forced his hand on before the purchase went through?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> I really would have talked to management first. They told me the whole story of why things were the way they were. And then I had to deal with angry management because they weren&#8217;t even asked if they wanted to buy the business themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Maybe they would&#8217;ve been the ones who wanted to do that \u2014 and they weren&#8217;t even given the opportunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> Yeah, really. And because they&#8217;d had free reign of the office, they didn&#8217;t like the fact that I was there every day saying, &#8220;No, we can&#8217;t do that. Let&#8217;s change this.&#8221; They didn&#8217;t like reporting to me. They were used to setting their own hours. If they didn&#8217;t feel like answering the phones, they didn&#8217;t answer the phones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Those were things I had actually tested before buying. I had my friends call for quotes to see how fast the response time was \u2014 and sometimes they just did not respond. The general manager had moved from Colorado to Florida and was working Florida hours instead of Colorado hours. She&#8217;d start at seven Florida time, which is five Colorado time, so she&#8217;d be done by one and the phones would just be ringing with nobody answering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So talking to management would have been the main thing. I already knew he was not at the right price point for his numbers. But again, that was something he did to avoid taxes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> What a bizarre situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> I&#8217;m glad it happened the way it did \u2014 I did learn a lot. I think if I were to buy another company that&#8217;s successful and profitable, I would just leave it the way it is. It took a lot of money and energy to create a whole culture after a company&#8217;s been around for 15 years. I would buy a company with a good reputation that&#8217;s been around a long time and just keep it going, with maybe a few little tweaks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> So what was the mix \u2014 was it residential and commercial?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> It was all residential, a hundred percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> So when you took over with only about a hundred profitable clients out of 350, how many dropped when you raised prices?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> I got rid of all the monthly clients because they were paying the same as biweekly clients. When I tried to bump the rates \u2014 because monthlies generally take more time \u2014 they didn&#8217;t like it, and I was okay with that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another thing the management had convinced the owner of was that time-and-travel pay was acceptable at exorbitant levels. The girls were making more in time-and-travel pay than they were actually making cleaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> So they kind of bamboozled him a little.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> Oh yeah. They knew he didn&#8217;t care. When I switched that around \u2014 and they also had company cars, so the girls had to come in in the morning, grab a company car, and everything was printed out for them with the keys. Very archaic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> And mistake-prone too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> Yes. To get them weaned off the cars and using their own, I asked if they wanted to drive their own cars and gave them a flat-rate gas allowance. They went with it, and I didn&#8217;t lose any cleaners in that transition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Did you sell the cars?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> One had been sold right before I took over, and another had gotten totaled, so there were five and I got four. I kept three. One stays in front of my house \u2014 if anybody has car trouble, I&#8217;ll Uber them to me to pick it up. They&#8217;re little Priuses, great on gas. The other two I gave to my general manager and my field manager. They use those to go out in the field, do quality checks, commercial walkthroughs, that kind of thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I just don&#8217;t want the excuse that you can&#8217;t come to work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yes. That&#8217;s why we have two work cars for the exact same reason. We&#8217;d rather you get to work and we all make money. I love that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> And another thing we do to prevent that \u2014 since it does snow here and we have problems on the roads \u2014 everybody gets an AAA card for Christmas. So if they get stuck in a snowbank, call AAA. Battery&#8217;s dead, call AAA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Love it. Oh yeah, safety is always paramount. But in Wisconsin we know how to drive in snow. I remember one cleaner trying to call in and you go look up the road conditions and it was the lightest speckle of snowflakes \u2014 and she&#8217;s trying to call in. It sucks when you have to be like, send me a picture of the snow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> People, where do we live?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-7\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Running Two Brands<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Exactly. So you have two businesses. What made you decide to keep them as separate brands rather than combining them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> To be honest with you, I didn&#8217;t know if I was going to like having a green cleaning company \u2014 I&#8217;m such a pro-bleach, old-school, soft-scrub kind of company. Boulder is a little bit on the greener side, so I wanted to test and see if it was something worth keeping. Now I do have green products in Majestic Domestics, but some of my toilet bowl cleaner and things like that are not green. I kept it separate quite honestly because I didn&#8217;t know if I was going to like it \u2014 and if I didn&#8217;t, I was going to sell it off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> That&#8217;s a great answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> Yeah. And I&#8217;m going to keep it. I&#8217;m past the point of every month thinking, I&#8217;m selling this thing off as soon as I can. It&#8217;s like house flipping, right? Get in, get out. But no \u2014 it&#8217;s going smoothly, we have a great team, and I&#8217;m happy with it. And I wanted the commercial side to be separate from Majestic Domestics, so we placed that with Clean Conscience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> That makes a lot of sense. What kind of challenges have you faced running both companies?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> It causes some stress with the management team because they straddle both companies, and sometimes one company is more needy than the other and it throws off their day \u2014 and mine. It&#8217;s like having twins, right? When one&#8217;s crying, it wakes the other one up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> We just try to keep one happy while we work on the other one. It&#8217;s a constant flip-flop. But for the most part we are on track. We will have obstacles \u2014 like, why is the labor off on this job? Why are they taking so long when we quoted it this much? Why are they going over? Are we quoting it wrong? So we do a deep dive to see what&#8217;s going on and get that fixed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sometimes that rolls out to the whole company. That was the case this year \u2014 we ended up rolling out percentage pay instead of hourly pay. That was to incentivize the team. They know what our standards are, and they get rewarded if they keep those standards and get done in an efficient amount of time. Because I feel like a lot of cleaners were just milking the hourly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-8\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Transitioning to Percentage Pay<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> This is something I&#8217;m literally having a meeting about tomorrow. I pay hourly and I want to learn more about this. How did you transition from hourly to percentage, and how did you sell it to your cleaners?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> It was not a hard sell for the women who have been with me a long time, because they already worked efficiently within the hours of each job. They were actually excited because they were going to be giving themselves a pay raise. They know how to get through a house, and if they leave early, they&#8217;re making more money. As long as the client&#8217;s happy and they don&#8217;t have to go back, they&#8217;re giving themselves a pay raise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On the training side, newer people coming in are easy to sell it to because they have no prior experience with pay structure. We show them that they will always make at least $21.50 an hour after training \u2014 that&#8217;s their floor. But we show them the three-hour difference in what we charge. If you do this in three hours, you won&#8217;t make any less than $21.50, but you could make up to $30.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> What are your hourly rates on the client side?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> We&#8217;re $65 an hour for maintenance cleaning and $75 an hour for deep cleaning and move-outs. Saturdays we keep as a volunteer basis \u2014 if we have move-outs, we do pay a flat $30 an hour for Saturday cleaning, but we charge more for move-outs on Saturdays, so they make more too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For maintenance cleaning, after we do the first cleaning we see how many valuables, rugs, and pets they have and figure out their ongoing flat rate. Weekly is our best rate, biweekly is mid-rate, and every four weeks \u2014 our monthly cleaning \u2014 is the highest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So the ladies who want to work slow can still work slow, but they&#8217;re not going to get paid more than what the job pays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> And all of your staff can see the prices of the cleans, right? Have you had any issues with that \u2014 any cattiness about what the owner takes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> We don&#8217;t have a problem with us taking our share. Where the problems come in is when someone is late and a teammate says, &#8220;Why is she getting half of the percentage?&#8221; If it&#8217;s a team of two and they&#8217;re getting 35% for the job, they split the 35%. And they get mad when someone was late but still gets an equal share.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So we&#8217;ve had to say: if you&#8217;re later than 15 minutes, we&#8217;re docking you X amount, and that amount goes to the cleaner who was there on time. That has been the biggest issue. But they have not gotten mad at what my percentage is of the jobs, and I&#8217;m very happy about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think that goes back to the culture \u2014 they know that I give so much. I&#8217;ve given numerous loans to them without blinking an eye, and they know that comes from the profit portion of the business. Our office is beautiful, we have an extremely beautiful coffee bar, and we also have an artisan bar for cocktails when they want to come in after work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Ooh. Oh my gosh, I want to work for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> Yeah. We&#8217;re getting ready for First Friday happy hours and stuff like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I&#8217;d be out of business \u2014 because in Wisconsin, we can put them down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> Ha, we&#8217;re from the Midwest, you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, alcoholism is a team sport there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> We have the office available to them so they can come and relax after they drop off the kids from school, have a cup of coffee, watch their reels, relax, and then go to work \u2014 or have lunch in between jobs. We encourage that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I have not had anybody call me a thief, which is good. I really think they know that out of the local competition, I give 125% every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-9\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Staff Numbers and a Tough January<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> How many staff do you have on each company right now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> Clean Conscience is a little low right now. We had our biggest loss in January \u2014 we lost seven cleaners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh my gosh, I&#8217;m so sorry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> Yeah. Seven cleaners who had been with me for three years. One was with me for eight years, another for three. One got pregnant and moved across the state with her husband. Another one \u2014 her sister got pregnant with her third child and is not coming back to work. A couple sisters decided they wanted to go work at a hospital. Another person did not like the percentage pay \u2014 she was a slow cleaner and she removed herself from that situation. And then another gal got into a car accident, totaled her car, and didn&#8217;t want to clean anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was a big chunk. We were at 28, and we&#8217;re at 21 now \u2014 eight with Clean Conscience and the rest with Majestic Domestics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> A lot of listeners have gone through something like this at various stages. Can you walk me through your mentality, how you recovered, and how you view things like that now versus when you started out?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> I used to take things so ultra personally \u2014 like I&#8217;m doing something wrong, or I&#8217;m not a good enough boss. And it&#8217;s just \u2014 I had to get to the point where I understand it is just life. These things happen. I always look for the best quality person to come work for us and think about what they&#8217;re going to bring to the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve had numerous cleaners leave me and I give them a big bouquet of flowers and tell them the door is always open when they want to come back. And they always do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> They always come back. The grass might look greener on the other side. They might be lured by better money or a promise. But in reality, it&#8217;s often a lot of broken promises. And when they look back at the years they worked for me, they know I always kept my word, supported them, and was in their corner with clients. I have fired clients for yelling at my cleaners. They know I am not worried about keeping a client \u2014 I&#8217;m more worried about their safety and health. And I think that pays off. I&#8217;ll be curious to see who comes back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-10\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Culture and the Management Team<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> When it comes to keeping your hiring funnel going after a loss like that \u2014 how are you handling the workload?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> Back to management. My general manager has been with me going on nine years, and her mom has been with me going on ten. I saw that Lori doesn&#8217;t drive, so her daughter was picking her up from a job one day when I was there. I said, &#8220;Is that your daughter? Can she drive? Does she want a job?&#8221; That&#8217;s how Liz got sucked in. She has been so loyal and wonderful. I threw her in the deep end with management \u2014 she went from cleaning to field manager and did amazing. She&#8217;s really helped develop the training programs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I also have Lisa Bowerly working with me now. She used to own a cleaning company up toward Fort Collins and has decided she wants to do VA work. But she also cleans. And that month, both Liz and Lisa, without me saying anything, jumped in to fill the holes and cleaned the areas where we were shorthanded until we got back up and running. I just love that dedication to make it work no matter what.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> That&#8217;s what good culture will do \u2014 you don&#8217;t have to say anything. Everybody just steps up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> It is. And I would understand if they said no, but they don&#8217;t. It&#8217;s just a beautiful thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So with that help, and with me running the office solo while they were out in the field, we hired really fast. We were lucky enough to get some really good quality people \u2014 four out of four new hires were keepers. I was like, oh, thank you. Because it came in the nick of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I just kept telling my team: stay calm. We&#8217;re going to get through this. This is not the first time, it won&#8217;t be the last, and we can only do the best we can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yes. For everybody listening \u2014 when you go through something like this, it doesn&#8217;t mean you&#8217;re failing. It also doesn&#8217;t mean you should quit. It happens to all of us, literally all of us. No matter how big or successful your business gets, this is going to happen. Expect it, so that when it does you can say, &#8220;Yes, I knew this was coming at some point.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> Right. It doesn&#8217;t do any good to melt into a puddle \u2014 that doesn&#8217;t help. You gotta be the girl with the pan. Handle it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Exactly. You can cry, do what you need to, and then get into gear and do something about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> Yeah. It&#8217;s not gonna kill you unless you let it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-11\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Cancer Survivorship and Cleaning for a Reason<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I would love to finish by talking about your work with Cleaning for a Reason. You are a two-time cancer survivor \u2014 correct?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> Yeah. It happened between 2021 and 2024. I had it twice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh my gosh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> Yeah. It can kill. So ladies, get your mammograms. It made me really aware about stress \u2014 how even if we don&#8217;t look outwardly like we&#8217;re stressed and we&#8217;re keeping it together, it just doesn&#8217;t do your health any good. And without your health, you really have nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was very fortunate to have such a great team in the office and ladies out in the field who knew this was the time to come together, work with each other. I&#8217;m so fortunate I had that support, so I could take the time to rest and recuperate through my many, many surgeries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I&#8217;m so grateful to hear that you&#8217;re doing well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> Thank you. I was a Q-ball for a couple stints in 2025, but now look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah. Luscious \u2014 very sophisticated. So had you already been working with Cleaning for a Reason before your diagnosis, or did that experience spur you to join?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> No, I have worked with Cleaning for a Reason since about 2017. I have a lot of family members affected \u2014 my sister had it when she was 29, my mother had it, my aunts have had it. It just runs in that side of the family. I wasn&#8217;t surprised when I had it, but I had hoped I could dodge that bullet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So yes, we give the two free cleanings that Cleaning for a Reason requires. We go over those hours when we need to. We also offer a very discounted rate for ongoing cleaning, because I know personally what it feels like to have a clean house when you&#8217;re sick. It&#8217;s the best feeling in the world. You don&#8217;t have to think about that. A lot of our patients need that help and support, and they don&#8217;t have cleaning businesses to call on. So we give that to them on top of what&#8217;s required by the nonprofit. We love to help families going through that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Love it. I definitely encourage anyone who&#8217;s not a member \u2014 it&#8217;s a wonderful way to give back and showcase that you care about your community. It doesn&#8217;t have to be thousands of dollars. Even if you&#8217;re small, it&#8217;s wonderful. And at CleanCon they had a booth there \u2014 she was lovely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> Yes. And our goal is \u2014 we&#8217;re a top hundred participant now, but I want to be top 10.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yes! That&#8217;s an amazing goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> I told my team when I came back from CleanCon: I want to be top 10.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-12\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Wrapping Up<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Natalie, this has been incredible. I&#8217;m so glad we got seated at the same table. I didn&#8217;t even know about the two cleaning companies until this conversation started \u2014 that&#8217;s amazing. I would love to have another conversation with you in the future because I could talk to you for hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Everybody, leave us some love in the comments if you enjoyed this. Any particular takeaways that really made you think \u2014 leave them down there. Hit that like and hit that subscribe. Natalie, if they want to follow along with your business, where can they find you on social media?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> We are on Facebook, and we&#8217;re getting there on more platforms. Because of our marketing conversation at CleanCon, I came back full steam and blazing \u2014 so that will be soon. You can reach me at <a href=\"mailto:majesticdomestics@gmail.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">majesticdomestics@gmail.com<\/a>, or visit majesticdomestics.com or cleanconscience.com.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> That&#8217;s amazing. We&#8217;ll definitely link those down below. This has been fantastic. Thank you so much for your time today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Natalie:<\/strong> Thank you. Anything you need, just let me know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Everybody, we will see you in the next episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners. Thanks for watching!<\/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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Listen on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube Introduction Stephanie: Hello everyone, welcome \u2014 or welcome back \u2014 to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I am your host Stephanie from Serene Clean. My lovely guest today I met at CleanCon. We were seated at the same round table, and I was like, I have to have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":17280,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"How Natalie's $15 Clean Built a 15-Year Business","_seopress_titles_desc":"Hear how Natalie Mikishko built two cleaning companies in Boulder, CO, survived two cancer diagnoses, and switched her team from hourly to percentage pay.","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[457],"class_list":{"0":"post-17277","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-podcast","8":"tag-filthy-rich-cleaners"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17277","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\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17277"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17282,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17277\/revisions\/17282"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}