{"id":17391,"date":"2026-06-02T13:32:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T13:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/?p=17391"},"modified":"2026-06-02T13:32:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T13:32:17","slug":"how-kristas-family-run-cleaning-business-grew-30-a-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/how-kristas-family-run-cleaning-business-grew-30-a-year\/","title":{"rendered":"How Krista&#8217;s Family-Run Cleaning Business Grew 30% a Year"},"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 Scwap 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 class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Listen on: <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/144-how-kristas-family-run-cleaning-business-grew-30-a-year\/id1791590022?i=1000770757127\">Apple Podcasts<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/episode\/2EdlwYZFKzNMFhgfhMCkgc?si=aa3ad69e7c8240f3\">Spotify<\/a>, or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=w-Bbadq_YZU&amp;lc=Ugw-pm-5yDMcju1tkJZ4AaABAg\">YouTube<\/a><\/p>\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: #144: How Krista&amp;apos;s Family-Run Cleaning Business Grew 30% a Year\" 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\/2EdlwYZFKzNMFhgfhMCkgc?si=aa3ad69e7c8240f3&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 class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Hello everyone, welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I am your host, Stephanie from Serene Clean, and today&#8217;s lovely guest is Mrs. Krista Radau. She and her husband own Extreme Clean Solutions in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Krista and I have been in contact now for well over a year, just connecting over email, her filling me in on her cleaning business, different big opportunities that she has had. And I asked her to be on the podcast because I think her journey is incredible and something that I want everybody to hear. So Krista, thank you for joining me. When did you start your business? You run it with your husband, which is amazing. Tell us how this all came to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-2\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Starting a Cleaning Business in 2019 (and Surviving COVID)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> I actually started Extreme Clean Solutions in November of 2019, which we all know, shortly after that we had the COVID scare. So we had gotten started. Actually, when I started, I had maybe a handful of houses and I was just trying to help make ends meet. My husband owned a window cleaning company. He actually was a high rise window cleaner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Wow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> He had started his own window cleaning company and that was our main source of income. So I did house cleaning just to kind of make ends meet, with my daughter-in-law, who was actually pregnant with my fourth grandchild at the time. We started in November of 2019 and in about February or April is when COVID happened. So we all know everything shut down for a while. It was about four weeks, I believe, that we were home. The window cleaning business went completely \u2014 it was almost non-existent because at that time nobody wanted to get their windows cleaned. It was not a big deal. And then they did say that house cleaners were essential workers, I believe is what they said. So we were able to go back to work. I was able to talk the few customers that I had into allowing me to clean. We did all the precautions. They stayed in the office while I cleaned the rest of the house, or we stayed away from each other and did the masks and all that. And I don&#8217;t know, I really don&#8217;t know what happened, but all of a sudden my phone just started ringing off the hook. I was getting phone calls like, &#8220;Our house cleaner refuses to come.&#8221; Everybody shut down. And I guess I was the only one in the city at that time that was willing to get out and continue cleaning. So I got a lot of business that way and we just grew. It became so much so fast for us in the beginning that \u2014 well, my daughter-in-law had the baby so she was unable to help anymore. So I thought, &#8220;Well, why not have my husband come and just help me out a little bit until I find someone else?&#8221; And we&#8217;ve been working together for six years now and it&#8217;s been the best decision I ever made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> That&#8217;s incredible. I love to hear \u2014 I mean, I opened in 2019 too. So what a parallel experience of going into COVID as a new owner. And I mean, what do you do? It was so difficult. There was so much unease around decision-making because you so desperately do not want to make the wrong decision, but how do you know what the right decision is?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Right, right, yeah. It was scary, it was intimidating, but I did see the potential. My poor husband though \u2014 I trained him and I had to train him fast and I had to teach him everything that I knew in a very short period of time. So he didn&#8217;t really get the adequate training, but he got more of the, &#8220;You do this or you do that, or you do it this way,&#8221; kind of training. And he was a fast learner, he picked up really well. He even does a lot of the cleaning and stuff without me now. Like, he goes off and does it. We also employ our son and my niece. So it&#8217;s a small family owned business, but it&#8217;s been great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-3\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Running a Family Business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh my gosh, that&#8217;s incredible. I didn&#8217;t even know that, that your family worked with you in that capacity. I knew your husband did, but that&#8217;s fantastic. How rewarding that must be for you to be able to provide jobs for your actual family members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> I&#8217;m really proud of that, being able to pay them and pay them well, and to be able to keep them going. And they&#8217;re wonderful. My son is a Virgo. So he does everything exactly like I tell him. He doesn&#8217;t stray off and try to do his own thing, which is wonderful, takes great direction. The only time I think he&#8217;s ever missed anything is when I didn&#8217;t tell him. I forgot to tell him something like the hand towels. I think he struggled in the beginning with fixing all the hand towels, and I hadn&#8217;t told him that. So it&#8217;s been really good. It&#8217;s been fun, it&#8217;s trying \u2014 it&#8217;s not the easiest thing to work with your husband every single day and then you come home together and you&#8217;re together all the time. But we&#8217;ve done really well, we figured it out and it works really well for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> You know, I talk to a lot of owners who work with their spouses, their partners, their siblings, their best friends. So for those listening who are considering, or perhaps are having struggles with working with a close loved one, let&#8217;s just call it \u2014 obviously your partner being probably the most difficult, right? What&#8217;s a job, or your parents? I&#8217;ve had ones where they work with their parents and I&#8217;m like \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> My mother actually works with us as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh my gosh, that&#8217;s amazing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> In fact, it&#8217;s a funny story. She recently moved back to Oklahoma from Texas and just about two weeks ago I introduced her to ZenMaid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh my gosh, that&#8217;s awesome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Yes, I said, okay, now I want you to learn this because I&#8217;m struggling, I&#8217;m still cleaning full time. So the emails and the bookings and the estimates and all that, I&#8217;m doing that on the way to the next house or while I&#8217;m in the middle of cleaning, and it&#8217;s been a struggle for me. And so my mom is going to learn ZenMaid and she&#8217;s gonna start helping me with that area as well. So I mean, we are a family owned business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Okay, the motto is going to be: so easy, a great grandmother can do it \u2014 because she literally is a great grandmother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Yeah, I love that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh, how exciting, that is fantastic. And I can so relate to that. I would be at a client&#8217;s house and I&#8217;d be in their bathroom, like ferociously texting back other potential leads, like, I promise I&#8217;ll get you an estimate later today or whatever. It&#8217;s just tough. It is so tough when you are the operator and the person who&#8217;s responsible for all of the administrative work. Even with software in place, that communication still has to happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Yes, absolutely, the follow-up emails or the text messages, yeah, definitely. I even did a podcast \u2014 not a video podcast once, but just over the phone \u2014 and I did it cleaning a master bathroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh my gosh, that&#8217;s so awesome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> I&#8217;m sure I was out of breath and sounded a little weird at times, but yeah, you learn, you adapt when you&#8217;re the business owner and you&#8217;re having to work full time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, I totally agree. I feel like business ownership has really shown me how far off my capacity is from what I thought it was \u2014 what I&#8217;m actually capable of, &#8217;cause you simply must, right? I think it&#8217;s probably very similar to being a parent. I would imagine \u2014 I&#8217;m not a parent yet, but I would imagine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-4\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Building Systems and Checklists<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Yeah. One of the things I believe in \u2014 it was Angela Brown, the owner of Savvy Cleaner. She said something one time, or posted a post on social media, that was, &#8220;Have systems in place so that you&#8217;re not reinventing the wheel every time.&#8221; And I took that advice seriously. And you, I think, preach about checklists and protocols and different things. So I just sat down and brainstormed everything \u2014 policies and procedures, things that I expect from my customers and what they can expect from me. They get emails with all that, and I have checklists in place. And I believe that having procedures and things like that helps with everything a lot, because I&#8217;m not really having to tell them all the time, like, do this, do that, or don&#8217;t do this. We have our checklists, we go by our checklist, we check our checklists, and everybody just kind of knows what&#8217;s expected of them. And I think that makes things work a whole lot easier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, it&#8217;s so true. Regardless of whether you&#8217;re related to who is cleaning for you or not, having something to point to that&#8217;s not just you telling them off the top of your head \u2014 like, no, this is thought out, this is how it works in this business. It allows for \u2014 I&#8217;ve always said it&#8217;s like you, me, and the policy. And I can be like, hey, this is the policy. It&#8217;s not a personal thing, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Yeah, that was the best decision I ever made, I think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-5\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Defining Success on Your Own Terms<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> So, do you plan to add to the staff? Is that the ultimate goal, or what do you envision for this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Well, my husband would tell you I envision 500 employees. The sky is the limit for me. So, you know, Oklahoma \u2014 when I started my business, Oklahoma was still a small town minded community. And we still are pretty much, but we&#8217;re growing so rapidly right now. I have had other employees working for me in the past. I&#8217;ve had up to six working for me at a time. I did kind of feel like I needed to step away and do office work for a while. So I had some extra people employed and I tried to do that. And that&#8217;s not who I am. I discovered I&#8217;m not really the one to sit in the office \u2014 not right now. Like I tell my husband, I still have 10 or 15 years left of cleaning in me. And I&#8217;m a hands-on type person. I enjoy getting to see and talk to my customers. And of course I don&#8217;t clean everybody. I can&#8217;t possibly clean all of the houses physically myself, but I do enjoy being out there and being in the middle of everything. So yes, growth is absolutely a thing of mine. I have toned it back a little. I&#8217;m going with organic more than really trying to rush things. We looked at our finances not too long ago and we&#8217;re growing at about 30% every year. And that&#8217;s with no advertising. It&#8217;s all just kind of organic word of mouth type growth. And so I&#8217;ll see where that takes me. I will do whatever I need to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh my gosh. You know what I really love and what I want to highlight is that you were talking about the business serves you and what you enjoy. And I think people see these examples \u2014 people we have on the podcast \u2014 of it&#8217;s like, oh, this is how big their business is, or X, Y, Z. And it&#8217;s like, that is for them and their dream. What I want with my business could be completely different. We may have very similar values and goals in certain areas, like, I want this to run smoothly, I want this to not be super stressful. But that can look like a million different things. And so I&#8217;m so glad that you&#8217;re saying that \u2014 like, hey, I like cleaning. I like being out in the field. I enjoy that face-to-face connection with my clients and nothing is forcing you to do that. I remember when things were going really explosively for me, I was being pushed to franchise. I had a business coach at the time and they&#8217;re like, okay, next step. It was like I was just on this path of them churning out, like, of course you&#8217;re going to franchise. And I had such resistance to it, because in the back of my head I&#8217;m like, I don&#8217;t want to do that. I even did a prototype one. I&#8217;m like, why am I doing this thing that I&#8217;m being told to do? Because other people are telling me that this is the dream, this is the path, right? And the point I&#8217;m bringing this up is, every single one of us gets to have a say, because it&#8217;s our business, of what that looks like. What is it that you enjoy doing? And you can still do that. You can technically outsource literally every aspect of your business. But it doesn&#8217;t have to be that way. It can be literally whatever you want. So I just love that you&#8217;re really just enjoying the process. And like you said, you got 10 to 15 more years of cleaning in you, if that is what you so choose. And maybe in five years, you totally pivot. And the fact is, you are outsourcing the things that you do not have capacity for and you&#8217;re choosing, right? Like you&#8217;re bringing your mom in to help with the administrative labor, because that&#8217;s got to get done, where a lot of people would take the opposite and be like, well, get me out of the field so I can do all the admin. But if you&#8217;re like, I don&#8217;t want to do all the admin, that&#8217;s not me \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Yeah, and I&#8217;ve definitely changed things up over the years. I know when I first found you two years ago, through ZenMaid, I was like, everything Stephanie. I was looking at your website and reading all of your material and listening to every podcast and all your videos. And so I do have a tendency sometimes to get wrapped up in, oh, maybe I&#8217;m not doing that, not growing fast enough, or I&#8217;m not doing what I need to do. And I do have to kind of pull myself back in sometimes. But I learned really quickly that right now, that&#8217;s where I want to be. I want to be out in the field and get to know my customers and be more hands-on right now. So I love that I have a family and a support that can help me in the other areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, and to be able to work so closely every day with them, and that you guys all get along \u2014 that&#8217;s a beautiful, beautiful thing. I love that you notice that influence of even hearing me. That&#8217;s why I always caution you guys \u2014 my life and my choices and my business is an example, but it doesn&#8217;t need to be the end all be all, right? We all have our own paths and what we enjoy doing and what that&#8217;s going to look like for every single one of us. When I look back at my business, it grew \u2014 it felt like an out of control train running down the tracks at times. It just kind of happened that way, even though I was doing things to make it happen. Like I had a lot of crazy shit put into my lap, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> I&#8217;ve heard your stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-6\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Walking Away From a Government Contract<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> The reason I bring it up is, you had reached out a couple of months ago, because you had a crazy opportunity to bid a huge job fall into your lap, and we talked about it. So I&#8217;d love for you to share \u2014 one, how did that come to be? And how did your decision-making process evolve throughout that process?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Well, actually you were the deciding factor. My emails with you and your advice was really what helped me make the decision, because you had done government jobs \u2014 probably more than one. I&#8217;ve heard stories of all the stuff that you&#8217;ve done. And so that&#8217;s why I chose to reach out to you whenever this opportunity became a thing. It was for our local Air Force base here in Oklahoma City and they wanted us to do the move out cleans. So we had the opportunity to bid the contract, and it would be a five-year contract. There was a lot that went into this, and you had cautioned me on that. You&#8217;re like, once you get the job and you accept the job, then know firsthand that there&#8217;s gonna be a lot of things that are gonna come out. They&#8217;re gonna want redos and they&#8217;re gonna want perfection and all these things. And they&#8217;re probably not gonna wanna pay a lot of money. They&#8217;re gonna want the lowest bidder. So I went, I used AI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, heck yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> I used AI a lot in everything. It was my first time to ever bid. I&#8217;m really proud of myself that I did the bid and it sounded very professional. But I put it together and I sent it over, and then they kept coming back and emailing back and forth about lowering the price. And the more emails back and forth, and the lower they wanted me to get the price, I just didn&#8217;t feel comfortable with that. And I&#8217;d heard your advice playing back in my head, and I thought, this just doesn&#8217;t seem right. I had a gut feeling that this is gonna be something. And I&#8217;m not the type of person \u2014 I tend to be a perfectionist and kind of overthink things anyways \u2014 I&#8217;m not the type of person that wants to sign up for something that I don&#8217;t feel that I can do. So I just had a really bad feeling about it and I opted out of the bid and told them, you know, I wish them luck, but I was gonna have to retract my bid. And I did, and I feel good about it. I really feel like if we had done that, we probably wouldn&#8217;t have been able to do the job \u2014 it would have been a lot more than what we are capable of doing right now. So staying with the residential and small commercial cleaning, that keeps us busy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Honestly, I&#8217;m just so proud of you making that decision, because in these types of situations, you really have to listen to your gut. And I caution everybody listening with these government contracts. A lot of times they push for a lot of things that you would just constantly concede on, until \u2014 you know, Yadi, who we had on the podcast, she had a large bid too. It was kind of the same thing, where the price just kept \u2014 and in her situation it was giant apartment complexes or something, as opposed to \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Oh yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> And they did not include anything about all of the common spaces, right? The hallways, the hangout areas, whatever. They just wanted a price per apartment, right? And then when she \u2014 I was like, what about these spaces? And she pushed them on it and they&#8217;re like, oh, we&#8217;re not \u2014 you have to do it, but we&#8217;re not gonna pay extra for it. And so those are all of the little details. You have to comb through the bids so psychotically, because it could be one sentence that you are beholden to that if you miss it, you gotta do it. And that could eat away your profit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Right, right, yeah. And yes, this contract would have been a lot of money for us, but in the long run, it&#8217;s not always about the money. So we decided to just not do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> No, it&#8217;s so true. And when you get into them going back and forth on price and nitpicking \u2014 and the reason I said about them wanting a lot of callbacks is, that&#8217;s been our experience with military house flipping, or turnover cleans I should call it. Because our local military base, we used to do turnover cleans on their off base housing. And they literally told us, like, we&#8217;re gonna find something and you will be coming back. So account for that. And so we did account for that. Luckily, we were able to bid at each one individually. It wasn&#8217;t like your situation where, I&#8217;m assuming, were they looking for a per unit price? Is that what it was?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Yeah. So what they did was they gave me different size homes. We have some that are 1400 square foot and then some that are like 2200 square feet. And then for the higher up military people, there were a few that were like 4500 square feet. So we had to bid those \u2014 each square footage across the board. And they did tell us too that they&#8217;re very picky and that they&#8217;ll be coming and walking through and that there will be redos, there will be touch ups. I mean, they were honest about it. So that was good. But yeah, it was pretty much a base price across the board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, and I remember at the ones that we would do, they&#8217;d come in, they&#8217;d put little pieces of tape all over \u2014 on the ceiling, on the outside of the windows. And for us, Wisconsin&#8217;s freezing, and they&#8217;d be like, yeah, you need to use, what is it, antifreeze or something to make sure there&#8217;s no \u2014 I don&#8217;t know, it was crazy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Oh yeah. We know about that from my husband being a window cleaner. There&#8217;s certain products that you put in to clean windows in the winter time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, and we&#8217;re not window cleaners. So we are not very knowledgeable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-7\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Adding Window Cleaning as an Upsell<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Not at all. So what we did do with my husband and his window cleaning, we didn&#8217;t just cancel that out. We joined it together. So we offer window cleaning as well. And, you know, I have a TikTok and I&#8217;m always preaching to everybody on there about learning the squeegee method \u2014 for mirrors and glass and windows and doors and things like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Well, can you describe the squeegee method? Is that something you can describe, or at least \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Well, yeah. I believe a lot of house cleaners nowadays do carry a squeegee with them, so we can squeegee out the showers and different things. But what we do for the glass is Dawn dish soap in a water bottle with water, spray it on. If it&#8217;s heavy buildup or dirty, we scrub it with a non-scratch scrub pad. Sometimes it&#8217;s the Scrub Mommy, the softer one. And then just squeegee it off, and it looks perfect, and there&#8217;s no need for spray away or any kind of glass cleaner. But yeah, I&#8217;m always preaching that on TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh yeah, every single kit should have a squeegee. If you guys don&#8217;t have a squeegee in your kit \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Yeah, I use it even on countertops, like so many uses, it&#8217;s amazing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, every bag that we send out has a squeegee in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> I love that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> And I love that you combined the window cleaning with the residential side, because for any of you that are doing a husband, wife, or whatever partnership duo that you&#8217;re considering, it is really advantageous and it also allows you to stay in your lane a little bit. Just like our friend Cheryl in Boston \u2014 her husband does pressure washing, right? So she does the cleaning, he offers the pressure washing. And the nice thing is, you can sell more to the same clients, right? Because all your clients have windows, I would imagine. They don&#8217;t just live in a house with holes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Especially like in a deep clean or something, they might not pay for all the windows to get done, but we absolutely will include some windows in that. And so it&#8217;s always an upcharge for us. Window cleaning is a separate charge. Even in our move out cleans \u2014 I know a lot of house cleaners will add windows into their price. We don&#8217;t do that. It&#8217;s an upcharge for us and it makes us a lot of money. I can be inside with a team cleaning the inside of the house, and my husband&#8217;s outside cleaning windows, making as much money as, or more than, we are on the inside of the house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Hell yeah. If you can \u2014 you don&#8217;t have to share, but if you can go into pricing a little bit on the window cleaning side \u2014 any Oklahoma City listeners just hop right off so we don&#8217;t tell your competitors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> No, hey, we&#8217;re open, we&#8217;re an open book. So actually our window cleaning is $20 per window.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Just flat, every window?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Well, $20 per window \u2014 it&#8217;s a standard window. Not every pane, but every window. So it has a top glass and a bottom glass. If it&#8217;s a larger window, of course, the price may double. And then if it&#8217;s smaller windows, we might put a couple of windows together as one window. We try to keep it fair to everybody, but an average is about $20 per window. And that includes interior, exterior, plus we clean out the tracks and the windowsill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Do you take the screens out? Is that something that&#8217;s included?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Yes, we&#8217;ll take the screens out. And I probably wouldn&#8217;t have been able to do this without my husband, because a lot of times \u2014 I didn&#8217;t know this, and a lot of our customers that learn this from my husband didn&#8217;t know \u2014 but a lot of times you have to pull the window in instead of taking the screen off on the outside. You pull it in and take the screens off from the inside. So I&#8217;ve learned a lot of things from him, but him working alongside me makes it so much easier. We also have a screen cleaning machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Ooh, describe what that looks like. Is it like \u2014 I just imagine something, you like put it in the, I don&#8217;t know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Well, it&#8217;s the weirdest \u2014 it&#8217;s just like a long skinny thing that someone designed and he hooks it up to your water hose. And you just feed the screen in and it just washes it right off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh, I bet that&#8217;s satisfying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> And then of course with the window cleaning, when he was cleaning windows, he did the coach lighting outside. That is another upcharge that I like for people to think about, because that doesn&#8217;t take that long. You just take the lights apart, dust them out, clean them if they have glass, and you can make another $20 a light. There&#8217;s always different things that you can add on to make more money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> That is really fascinating. So that&#8217;s just like the external floodlights and things on people&#8217;s houses?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Yeah, like your lights out on your porch, or the ones that go across the garage. They get the cobwebs and the dirt. So he goes out and cleans those.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Talk me through the walkthrough process for him versus you. Are you always letting people know? If somebody reaches out for house cleaning, are you like, oh, by the way, we put this quote together for window cleaning if you&#8217;re interested? How does that look?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Well, like I said, when I put all of my systems in place, I went through and thought everything out in advance. So when someone reaches out to me for an estimate and I send the email to them, I have a template that I use, and it pretty much tells everything. It can be a little much maybe for some people, but it tells what we offer and that they can add the window cleaning. And I&#8217;ve just been really good about keeping it on my website, on social media, just letting people know. And then if you&#8217;re gonna clean someone&#8217;s house and you walk in and you see a dirty coach light, you can say, hey, by the way, we clean these.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh, I love that. And especially \u2014 that is the nice thing, because you&#8217;re on site a lot, or your son, your husband. So it&#8217;s so easy to be clocking those opportunities. Obviously for anybody listening, make sure your cleaners know about the add-ons that you offer and it just being natural. Like for us, our cleaners will put on the checklist, like, hey, by the way, I took a peek at the oven. If you want us to add on an oven cleaning, just let the office know. That type of thing of, in the moment saying, hey, you might need this, in the best way possible. Not being rude, but we&#8217;re there to clean, we notice these things \u2014 hey, it looks like you&#8217;re due for this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Yeah, absolutely. I can&#8217;t tell you how many times I&#8217;ve gotten oven cleanings, just because when you&#8217;re cleaning the outside of the oven, you wanna open it up and clean the rim. And I&#8217;m like, hey, this is a dirty oven, I can clean this for you. But I try to make sure that I cover a lot of things in our emails, in our little templates. And then of course I have my follow-up emails that detail a little more after they sign up and decide they like the quote. There&#8217;s always a follow-up email that tells a little bit more about us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-8\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Add-On Services and Pricing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I&#8217;d love to hear about your standard package versus your add-ons. Obviously we&#8217;re talking about add-ons externally of the house because of your husband&#8217;s business. What kind of add-ons are you offering at your business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Well, the inside refrigerator cleaning, the oven cleanings, everything that we&#8217;ve discussed. So we offer our standard cleaning. We offer move in, move out cleanings and deep cleanings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Okay, so pretty typical. For those who are trying to figure out add-on pricing for different items, can you just talk through your logic on how you came to the prices you did for things like fridges, off charges, that type of thing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> I guessed at it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Hell yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> I just took a wild guess at it. But do you want me to tell pricing? I can tell what I chose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Absolutely, yep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Okay, so inside of an oven is 50 and up. I usually don&#8217;t have to charge more than 50 for the ovens, but just in case \u2014 because we have come across some that were like, whoa, I&#8217;ve never seen an oven this dirty before. So we start at $50. And then for the inside of the refrigerator, we&#8217;re at 80. We take everything out, clean everything top to bottom, put everything back perfectly and neatly where you can see what all you have. And so that&#8217;s $80. I&#8217;ve told you the window cleaning prices. And then in the house cleaning, I&#8217;m a per square foot \u2014 I charge by the square footage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> So different rates for a move out versus a maintenance clean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Yes, absolutely. Different rates for all that. And in the beginning, the pricing was the absolute hardest thing for me, because not a lot of people wanna share.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Well, that&#8217;s why I appreciate your transparency right now. That&#8217;s why I&#8217;m asking, because this is really valuable for other folks to hear. That&#8217;s why I&#8217;m so transparent with my pricing \u2014 &#8217;cause nobody talks about this stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Yes, absolutely. And then in Oklahoma at the time, the cleaners \u2014 I found that a lot of house cleaners in this area were charging next to nothing. So for me to be able to put the price out there that I felt comfortable with was very challenging at first. I was afraid that no one was gonna sign up. And I do feel like for my area, I am a little higher than maybe most companies around me. But my advice on that is, if you want the people to pay the price, then you&#8217;ve gotta show them what they&#8217;re gonna get. And we do what we say we&#8217;re gonna do every time. We don&#8217;t cut corners. We show up when we say we&#8217;re gonna show up. We&#8217;re a very professional company. And I believe that that is more than anything when running a small business \u2014 showing them that you&#8217;re professional and that you&#8217;re dependable and trustworthy. And I&#8217;ve raised my prices over the years substantially. When I was starting out, I did have to have a little bit lower prices, but my expertise wasn&#8217;t what it is now either. So as I grow and as our knowledge grows, my price goes up a little bit as well. But like I said, we&#8217;re a lot of word of mouth, and that has been strong for us, especially in a small community like this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-9\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Word of Mouth and Local News Coverage<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> What&#8217;s the population of where you are?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> I wanna say like six or 700,000, but I&#8217;m not really sure. I know that we&#8217;ve grown so much recently and we&#8217;re just growing like crazy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, and I think it just highlights that regardless of city size, word of mouth \u2014 especially if you&#8217;re okay with growing at a slower quote unquote pace. If you don&#8217;t wanna push, is what I&#8217;m trying to say, that&#8217;s the \u2014 you want it to be an ease thing and just like whatever happens kind of flows, as opposed to, I am pushing for this. So yeah, absolutely, word of mouth is still like a cornerstone. Even when people come to us online, they found us, looked at our Google reviews, and they still \u2014 they&#8217;re like, I&#8217;ve heard good things about you. So it&#8217;s like in conjunction, you know what I mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Yeah. And we also have a local Fox News here \u2014 we have a local thing, it&#8217;s called Living Oklahoma. They put local companies and businesses on there and they highlight things in our community. So we had the opportunity about three years ago to work with them. And that really helped us, because when people go on our website and they see the video \u2014 we put together a little commercial \u2014 and they see that, it helps a lot. We&#8217;ve been out in the community, at one time we were doing the little yard signs, and people were like, I see you everywhere. And advertising on our vehicles. So it&#8217;s been great, it&#8217;s been fun. But that was definitely helpful to us, to be able to do that TV show with them. It was intimidating in the studio, but we did it. They actually had my husband clean a window in the studio. So that was very intimidating for him, but he did great. He was like, I need the perfect window, and then you have to have a dirty window. So we found, I believe it was a farmer or someone that had taken their windows out \u2014 I think he was on Facebook Marketplace \u2014 and he&#8217;s like, I need a dirty window. So he went and bought a window and set it up in the studio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh, that&#8217;s awesome. But you know, it&#8217;s so true. I actually \u2014 I don&#8217;t know if it&#8217;s this week&#8217;s episode that&#8217;s going live, so this is gonna be episode inception \u2014 there is an episode that is going live about local news coverage and how valuable it is, because local news is still so trusted in communities. People watch it and people trust it. It may feel old fashioned, but at the end of the day, the people who have money for house cleanings are still watching the local news.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Right, yeah, absolutely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Like you said, you can put it on the website. It doesn&#8217;t have to just exist that one time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> That reminds me \u2014 the little coverage that I just got, I need to put on my website. I didn&#8217;t even think about that. I haven&#8217;t done it yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> That&#8217;s crazy. But point being, those types of things, they help you when it happens, but if you do it right, it can help you for years and years, build that trust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Yeah, I still put the commercial on my TikTok. Every so often I&#8217;ll bring it back up to the top of the TikTok. And I can&#8217;t tell you how many people have reached out to me through TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-10\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Growing on TikTok<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Tell me about that. I wanna hear about your TikTok. That&#8217;s crazy to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Sometimes I feel like a local celebrity, because I think I&#8217;m only up to like 6,000 something followers. I&#8217;ve had some videos go viral. Not always the easiest to deal with \u2014 comments and naysayers \u2014 but I&#8217;ve learned to have thicker skin. I&#8217;ve had quite a few TikToks go viral. And it helps. I&#8217;ve had lots of people hire me and say, oh yeah, I found you on TikTok. I&#8217;ve actually had people say \u2014 like one lady in particular, we cleaned her house and we were about to leave and I said something about a TikTok video. And she goes, oh yeah, she said, I actually just moved here from Washington and I&#8217;ve been following you for two years on TikTok. And when we found out we were moving back to Oklahoma, I said, I have to make this happen. Like, I have to get her to clean my house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Holy crap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> So I was like, wow, that felt good. And I&#8217;ve had other people reach out and say, I moved here from so-and-so and I&#8217;ve been following you on TikTok. I thought that was so strange, but yeah, I guess at least the word is getting out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Okay, so I am so curious about this, because as everybody knows, I&#8217;m very much like, we don&#8217;t put it on TikTok, because my audience is on Facebook. So this is really fascinating to me. And also I am simply not going to invest the time and resources it takes to have a good TikTok. It&#8217;s a shit ton of work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> It&#8217;s a lot of work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> So that is really cool to hear that that is getting you clients. Very, very cool. So I have to ask, what do you post? What is the content?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> If it&#8217;s a video that I make \u2014 like if I&#8217;m like, oh, I want to do a video on this, and I think it out and I plan it out and I have the perfect script and the perfect video in mind \u2014 it usually flops. Usually no views, nobody cares. It&#8217;s always the weird in the moment stuff that I think, oh, nobody&#8217;s going to care about this video, that just blows up and goes crazy. One video in particular that I got a lot of bad backlash on, like a lot of horrible comments \u2014 I noticed that when my husband was cleaning kitchens, he was taking forever. And when he was wiping the counters and all the crumbs, he was trying to keep all the crumbs off the floor and clean up. And I was like, no, honey, just knock that on the floor, we&#8217;re going to vacuum that up, just do it this way. And I thought, maybe people need to know this. So I did a video and I was like, for anybody that needs to hear this \u2014 but I didn&#8217;t do it as a professional cleaning. When you&#8217;re cleaning the kitchen, don&#8217;t worry about the crumbs, knock those to the ground, we&#8217;re going to vacuum those up later. And everybody was like, no, don&#8217;t. I swear if my kids threw crumbs on my floor, I would kill them. And I was like, oh wait, they think I&#8217;m talking to the average homeowner. So I got a lot of backlash on that. And I was like, no, I&#8217;m a professional house cleaner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> That&#8217;s crazy. And I think \u2014 well, TikTok in particular is like the cesspool of all of it. Like, it is the worst in my opinion, because it&#8217;s just being shown \u2014 I mean, they all can be bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Exactly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> So the people who are stumbling upon it are simply not like your audience necessarily. People that aren&#8217;t cleaning their own homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> No, exactly. And honestly, when I clean my own house, that&#8217;s exactly how I clean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> You know what I mean? That is how we teach all of our cleaners. It&#8217;s the most efficient thing. You&#8217;re going to clean the floors, knock all the stuff onto the floors. Like, of course. So that&#8217;s really funny. And it can be \u2014 I totally agree that that is the hardest part when people jump on it, especially people who are not even in your service area at all. Like, they&#8217;re not your potential customer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> No, no, I don&#8217;t think any of them were.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> No, the peanut gallery can be so frustrating, &#8217;cause you wanna correct, you wanna defend yourself. It&#8217;s very frustrating. We&#8217;ve had that happen where I will boost on Facebook our job listings \u2014 posts about a job that we have active, and it&#8217;ll link to Indeed or whatever. And we&#8217;ll have people in, I don&#8217;t know, San Francisco being like, these are slave wages, blah, blah, blah. And I&#8217;m just like, dude, we&#8217;re in rural Wisconsin. This is a very competitive wage. Like, trust me, we&#8217;re not having issues with people applying. It&#8217;s not about money, that type of thing. So it can be really tough sometimes to bite your tongue and not just be like, meh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Yes, you wanna defend yourself the whole time. My husband&#8217;s like, just put the phone away, just leave it alone. Now, I recently \u2014 my business Facebook page was hijacked. About two months ago. And that was my baby for years. Like, I&#8217;m still brokenhearted. I&#8217;ve been working with Facebook to try to get it back. And I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;m gonna be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh no.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> So yeah, I&#8217;m really disappointed in that, and I may have to start a new Facebook page. But the good thing is, we didn&#8217;t get a lot of our business from Facebook. So, you know. But I think with my TikTok, with the hashtags, and making sure that you put on your area \u2014 the area that you&#8217;re in helps get a lot of people. I&#8217;ve noticed a lot of people in Oklahoma are really starting to catch on to my TikTok lately. And I also shared a video, one of my squeegee videos, and it was just me playing some music. And I said in the caption, like, if you haven&#8217;t learned the squeegee method, I suggest you do. And it&#8217;s just me cleaning a window. And that video went viral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> That&#8217;s satisfying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Yeah, it&#8217;s satisfying. So I put that on my website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-11\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">SEO and Google Business Profile<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> And then I think a lot of small business owners don&#8217;t realize that your Google business page \u2014 use it like it&#8217;s a social media platform as well. Like, I post regularly on there and share links and different things. And I think that&#8217;s helped a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Very much so. And it&#8217;s funny, because it&#8217;s really interesting \u2014 you do not feel like you are pushing, but you are doing so many things from a marketing and branding perspective that are helping. And I can relate to that feeling of like, oh, I don&#8217;t feel like I&#8217;m actually doing anything, but you are doing all of these things. Because like what you just said of updating Google My Business, treat it like social media, because Google rewards profiles that are using Google. Google loves Google, and they like that you use it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Exactly, exactly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> So it&#8217;s like, anything that you&#8217;re posting on any of the other platforms, take that second and post it to your Google My Business, because it&#8217;s not going to hurt you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Yeah, and you can schedule posts on there as well. So it&#8217;s not something you have to do regularly. It&#8217;s helped a lot. And I do all my own SEO type stuff. I do my own website. So just making sure that you put the keywords in there and change the website and kind of play around with it. I do a blog on there \u2014 I&#8217;ll do regular blogs. I think it&#8217;s every four weeks, I have a blog that goes out. So that kind of keeps things fresh, updated. When I started doing that, which was within the last six months, my phone started ringing off the hook. I saw a significant rise in bookings just from playing around with my website alone. And you don&#8217;t have to \u2014 if you don&#8217;t have a lot of money to hire people, I actually ran into a guy that kind of analyzed everything for me. And he became a friend of mine. He doesn&#8217;t charge me anything and he sends me monthly reports about my website. So, really awesome. I&#8217;ve really been blessed with the people around me. He gives me pointers, and I just listen to what he says. And I listen to what everybody else is saying, like what Stephanie is saying and what different people are posting on Facebook. I listen and kind of just take it and do it myself. But don&#8217;t over listen. There&#8217;s a fine line in picking and choosing what works for you and what doesn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, and I think a lot of times we get into the stage of analysis paralysis of, if I just keep learning more \u2014 you&#8217;re using it as a procrastination technique, basically, of just consuming and consuming and not actually doing anything with the information. So if you could pick maybe top three to five things that he suggested on your website that you believe have assisted greatly in you showing up online \u2014 clearly it&#8217;s working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Well, he was the one that kind of told me about the Google loves Google, and to make sure that the reviews that you&#8217;re getting on the other platforms are great, but make sure that you get the Google reviews. I had reviews that I just put on my website, but he was like, no, you need to link it to your Google reviews. So that was a big deal, I did that. He really wanted me to get the squeegee video from TikTok on my website, so I was able to do that. And just with the blog, making sure that you use keywords and changing some page titles and different things in the website \u2014 for example, like house cleaning in Oklahoma City, instead of just house cleaning. Because when people are Googling things, they&#8217;re gonna Google house cleaning in Oklahoma City. And just playing around with it and don&#8217;t let it get stagnant, keep it going. But everything he told me we did, and it has really paid off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I love that, that&#8217;s amazing. &#8216;Cause what you&#8217;re talking about is like basic search engine optimization, and the fact that it doesn&#8217;t have to be this complicated monster. I know a lot of people think that you need to hire somebody for this. And there are great options out there, don&#8217;t get me wrong, if you don&#8217;t wanna be doing this. But honestly, Krista, you sound like a very creative person, and it sounds like you really enjoy this aspect of the business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> I really do. If I&#8217;m not creating, I&#8217;m not happy. It&#8217;s my happy place. So I&#8217;m an energy queen, I love it. Made to create. I do have a lot of energy. So I have a tendency to maybe overwork myself at times, but I have people around me. I have the most awesome financial advisor who is also my mentor, who is also my business coach and my friend. And he kind of rails me back sometimes and says, hey, hey, hey, slow down, you&#8217;re doing great, don&#8217;t try to do too much too fast. So it&#8217;s been great, but I do have a tendency to just go all in or nothing. But yeah, I&#8217;ve been able to find a good balance, I believe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I love that. So for those who are wanting to dip their toes in and like, hey, I wanna try making content on TikTok \u2014 obviously tagging locally, putting the hashtags for your local area. Any other suggestions? Like you said, some have blown up, that could be just algorithm. But any other suggestions? Obviously, like I said, it&#8217;s a big endeavor to have a successful TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Yeah, it was intimidating for me, because I wasn&#8217;t very comfortable being in front of the camera and talking. So when I started out, I started with just taking videos of things that we were doing \u2014 my hands cleaning stuff, and the befores and afters. But then a lot of people were saying, just start video and you can edit later. So don&#8217;t forget that you can edit later. You can always take out the parts you don&#8217;t want. I had to learn how to edit a video. But you can edit out the bad parts. And honestly, when it comes to TikTok, I think the more realistic it is, the more real you are and the more authentic, the better it does. Like I said, if I overthink it and I try to come in with this perfect scenario, then it usually flops. But if I just go in and I&#8217;m just like, hey, by the way, did you know, these things are super stinky, clean these off, then it blows up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, overly produced does not do well there, for sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Right, yeah. So just go for it. Don&#8217;t worry about what you look like. I look crazy half the time, &#8217;cause I&#8217;m cleaning and I&#8217;m sweating and dirty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, and I think they like that better anyways. I definitely have found that. It&#8217;s funny \u2014 once you start, I think you go through phases when it comes to that self-consciousness of putting yourself out there. &#8216;Cause I&#8217;ve definitely gone through that, or being very hypercritical of yourself, of like, oh, I say things this way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Do I sound like that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, oh yeah, I remember when I first started doing the podcast, it was literally shocking, &#8217;cause I&#8217;d re-listen. I mean, it&#8217;s definitely helped me speak better, more coherently \u2014 sometimes not so much at all, then I just roll with it, as we were joking before we started hitting record. But honestly, one of my favorite phrases is, don&#8217;t be serious, be sincere. And that will come across of like, hey, be earnest, it&#8217;s okay to try, it is okay to just put yourself out there, and honestly, be kind of cringe. I think, especially my generation and younger, label anything as cringe because you&#8217;re trying. Those people aren&#8217;t gonna succeed, so there you go. You have to put yourself \u2014 you gotta get over it. And especially, as we&#8217;ve talked about with Drew Larrison, the trust economy \u2014 we&#8217;re in the trust economy, people really love seeing the person who&#8217;s going to be in their house, or the group of people who are gonna be in their home. It makes them feel better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-12\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Managing Client Expectations With a Team<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that has backfired on me a couple of times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh, do tell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Well, because I think a lot of people think that I&#8217;m gonna be the one that cleans their house every time, and I just can&#8217;t possibly do that. So maybe when someone else shows up, they&#8217;re like, oh, whoa, wait a minute, who are you, and are you gonna do a good job? And then once my team \u2014 which, like I said, have been trained, and we have our procedures and our checklists \u2014 once they do the job, they&#8217;re like, oh, okay, yeah, I trust you as a company. And I mean, I have had customers in the past that have decided to let us go, because I wasn&#8217;t gonna be cleaning anymore. And at first, that was difficult. You don&#8217;t wanna lose money, you don&#8217;t wanna lose clients. But I had to just kind of understand, like, I can&#8217;t do it all, and if they can&#8217;t respect that, then it&#8217;s maybe not the customer for me anyways. But we have a really good customer base. They know us all, and they love us all. We try to keep the same teams, but because it&#8217;s such a small team right now, just the four of us, they know us all real well. So it might be my son and my niece that show up one time, and then me and my husband another. And that way, we&#8217;re able to let each other have doctor&#8217;s appointments, and things that you need to do. I need time off, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah. And for those listening who are butting into this same problem \u2014 I find putting that you have a team out there, explaining that everybody&#8217;s trained in a certain way, we follow standardized checklists, this is why that is so helpful. Like, the cleaning should be getting done to the same high level. Even for us, our appointment reminders in ZenMaid \u2014 one of the features that I really love that I just discovered in the past few months \u2014 you can add the tech photo to the reminder email, so that they can see, like, hey, Brittany is scheduled. But for us to protect ourselves, so if Brittany calls out that day and we have to send Ashley, we just put underneath, like, your scheduled technician is Brittany, however, schedule changes sometimes have to occur. Rest assured, all Serene Clean staff members are trained to the same high level. That type of language, to protect us. Because they get hooked on certain cleaners, they get upset. And you guys are gonna experience this, whether this is on you or it&#8217;s on a staff member \u2014 they get very hooked on it, and you have to use a lot of methods to make sure of, like, listen, we want you to have the same cleaner, but it&#8217;s not always gonna happen. People call in sick, people quit, people move, blah, blah, blah. And I also find \u2014 I&#8217;ve switched completely, pretty much anything to do with my business, or anything that I personally am doing, I use the word we. Like, there is no I now. It&#8217;s just very much like, we, we, we.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> We, we, we, yes. Absolutely, yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-13\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why She Loves ZenMaid<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> I did not know about that feature in ZenMaid. In fact, they have added so much lately, and I have not had the time. That&#8217;s one of the reasons I&#8217;m so excited about my mother getting on and learning everything. I told her, there&#8217;s so much that ZenMaid offers that we aren&#8217;t utilizing right now, that we really need to do. She&#8217;s been having fun for the last couple of weeks, just following us around. She&#8217;s like, is Colton not with you today? And I&#8217;m like, yeah, he&#8217;s here. She said, well, he forgot to clock in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> That&#8217;s awesome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> So she&#8217;s looking at the app, she knows where we&#8217;re at. She has me on Life 360, but I think she&#8217;s liking the ZenMaid factor a whole lot better. So it&#8217;s like she&#8217;s with us all day, every day. She&#8217;s gonna start learning all that, so we can add all those features to ours as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Honestly, I would recommend her hopping on an optimization call. They do that, so that you are \u2014 especially because of all the new features \u2014 that may be a good utilization over time. You show her, have her hop on a call with one of the customer success team, and then they can show her maybe some suggestions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Oh, that&#8217;s a good idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, just &#8217;cause, like you said, you may not be aware of all of the new stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Right, yeah. Absolutely, it&#8217;s a good idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, we are cooking with grease at ZenMaid. That&#8217;s one of my favorite things. I don&#8217;t know if people say that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Yeah, I know, I&#8217;ve heard that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> But things are moving very quickly now with feature development stuff, just because lots of cool things are happening, and so many people are starting to work at ZenMaid. I mean, there always were owners that were involved, obviously, but now it&#8217;s like almost all of the new hires, it feels like, are owning cleaning businesses themselves. So it&#8217;s just being influenced so heavily by a community of owners. It&#8217;s really exciting stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Yeah, that&#8217;s great. I wouldn&#8217;t want to run my \u2014 I mean, I know this, I&#8217;m not doing a plug for ZenMaid, but I would not want to run my business without ZenMaid. It has been such a game changer for me. I love it, absolutely love it. I did get a little nervous about the new rules that went into effect about the text messaging, like opting out and all that. And one of the things that we loved the most about ZenMaid was the fact that we can let the customer know when we&#8217;re on our way to their house, and then let the customer know when we&#8217;re finished. But I think they fixed something \u2014 they changed the wording a little bit and fixed that, and I thought that was great. But yeah, I absolutely love the app. I wouldn&#8217;t want to do it without it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh, wait, so do you see that they&#8217;re about to unleash the new mobile app, and it is sick. It&#8217;s really great for the cleaners specifically. This is gonna be a huge improvement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> I&#8217;m excited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, no, it&#8217;s fantastic. And I just can&#8217;t wait to hear how your mom likes it. That&#8217;s so cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Yeah. How awesome. My office manager.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yes, that is fantastic. And just, obviously, it really is incredible what you built \u2014 this literally intergenerational business. And it just sounds like it&#8217;s this wonderful thing in your family, and I love to hear it. That&#8217;s amazing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh my gosh, Krista, this has been so fun. I&#8217;m so glad that you agreed to hop on, because you have such an interesting story. I really appreciate your transparency and just your authenticity. I think that the more we can showcase that in the industry and be like, examples of \u2014 one, your business can be whatever it is that you want it to be. I think you are a perfect example of that. You don&#8217;t have to do anything you don&#8217;t want to do. You&#8217;re the damn owner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> You&#8217;re the owner, that&#8217;s right. You make the decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yes, exactly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Yeah, and I love that, and I tell people all the time, in my TikTok videos and stuff, I tell them all the time, I will share anything with you. I believe you do the same thing with your forms and different things. I&#8217;ll share anything with you. You want a copy of my policies and procedures and see what I tell my customers before I show up? Let me know, I&#8217;ll email you a copy over. I&#8217;ve had quite a few people reach out to me. But I&#8217;m an open book. I love to help people. I&#8217;m not gatekeeping anything. I don&#8217;t have any competition. I believe that there&#8217;s enough houses out there for all of us. There really is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> There&#8217;s so much. Just focusing on being the most excellent version of yourself and your business and lifting up your team. &#8216;Cause there&#8217;s nothing you can do \u2014 I mean, I guess you could go egg their house or slash their car tires, I suppose, but if you don&#8217;t want to do those things, then all we can really control is ourself and our businesses, and stay in our lane. I love that. So what is your TikTok? Where can they find you, Krista? &#8216;Cause I would love everybody to go follow you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> It is queenofcleanOKC on TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> What a great handle. Oh my God, that is catchy as hell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Well, I believe there was already a queen of clean out there, but there wasn&#8217;t any in OKC at the time. So yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> It&#8217;s super, super duper catchy. We&#8217;ll definitely make sure to link that down in the comments. But yeah, well, thank you so much. This has been wonderful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krista:<\/strong> Thank you for having me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, you bet. And everybody, please leave some love down in the comments below for Krista. Go give her a follow on her platforms. And definitely, if you guys are interested in doing TikTok for your business, that would be a wealth of information and some inspiration as well, to see how she&#8217;s doing it and killing it over there. And hit that like, guys. Hit that subscribe. We&#8217;ll see you on the next episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners. Thank you so much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Listen on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube Introduction Stephanie: Hello everyone, welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I am your host, Stephanie from Serene Clean, and today&#8217;s lovely guest is Mrs. Krista Radau. She and her husband own Extreme Clean Solutions in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Krista and I have been in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":17392,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"How Krista's Family-Run Cleaning Business Grew 30% a Year","_seopress_titles_desc":"Krista Radau of Extreme Clean Solutions shares how she built a family-run Oklahoma City cleaning business, walked away from a government bid, and grew on TikTok.","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-podcast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17391","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=17391"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17393,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17391\/revisions\/17393"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}