{"id":17715,"date":"2026-09-08T13:13:40","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T13:13:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/?p=17715"},"modified":"2026-09-08T13:13:43","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T13:13:43","slug":"how-courtney-nunes-got-to-18-cleaners-in-under-2-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/how-courtney-nunes-got-to-18-cleaners-in-under-2-years\/","title":{"rendered":"How Courtney Nunes Got to 18 Cleaners in Under 2 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"    <div class=\"zm-cta\">\n      <div class=\"zm-cta__head\">\n        <div>\n          <div class=\"zm-cta__eyebrow\">ZenMaid<\/div>\n          <h2 class=\"zm-cta__title\">Brought to you by <em>expert cleaning business owners<\/em><\/h2>\n        <\/div>\n        <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"zm-cta__mark\" src=\"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/themes\/zm-theme\/assets\/images\/zenmaid-logo.png\" alt=\"ZenMaid logo\">\n      <\/div>\n\n      <div class=\"zm-cta__list\">\n        <div class=\"zm-cta__item\">\n          <svg viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" width=\"21\" height=\"21\" fill=\"none\" stroke=\"#01676c\" stroke-width=\"3\" stroke-linecap=\"round\" stroke-linejoin=\"round\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><path d=\"M20 6 9 17l-5-5\"><\/path><\/svg>\n          <p><strong>Tips and advice shared here have helped us grow our own maid services.<\/strong> The ZenMaid team currently has 5+ current and former cleaning business owners on our team, including our Founder and CEO, Amar. We&rsquo;ve been in the maid service industry for 10+ years and counting.<\/p>\n        <\/div>\n        <div class=\"zm-cta__item\">\n          <svg viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" width=\"21\" height=\"21\" fill=\"none\" stroke=\"#01676c\" stroke-width=\"3\" stroke-linecap=\"round\" stroke-linejoin=\"round\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><path d=\"M20 6 9 17l-5-5\"><\/path><\/svg>\n          <p><strong>We partner with amazing leaders in the cleaning industry,<\/strong> including Debbie Sardone, Stephanie Pipkin, Angela Brown, Chris Schwab, and many more &mdash; all to provide you with the latest industry insights.<\/p>\n        <\/div>\n        <div class=\"zm-cta__item\">\n          <svg viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" width=\"21\" height=\"21\" fill=\"none\" stroke=\"#01676c\" stroke-width=\"3\" stroke-linecap=\"round\" stroke-linejoin=\"round\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><path d=\"M20 6 9 17l-5-5\"><\/path><\/svg>\n          <p><strong>We&rsquo;ve built the easiest-to-use, comprehensive cleaning business software, built specifically for the industry!<\/strong><\/p>\n        <\/div>\n      <\/div>\n\n      <div class=\"zm-cta__actions\">\n        <a class=\"zm-cta__btn\" href=\"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/\">Check out ZenMaid<\/a>\n        <div class=\"zm-cta__chip\"><span><\/span>Easy 5 minute setup<\/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\/172-how-courtney-nunes-got-to-18-cleaners-in-under-2-years\/id1791590022?i=1000788451841\">Apple Podcasts<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/episode\/1mNbn3xMKIBN58nqDPaYFB?si=992dfd278e7e498a\">Spotify<\/a>, or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=uo2AhXk_biQ\">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: #172: How Courtney Nunes Got to 18 Cleaners in Under 2 Years\" 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\/1mNbn3xMKIBN58nqDPaYFB?si=992dfd278e7e498a&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 fantastic guest has a very unique story as well as business situation that I can&#8217;t wait to get into. Courtney Nunes, we connected over a consulting call just a few weeks ago. She&#8217;s a longtime listener, and I&#8217;m like, Courtney, we got to get you on the podcast because you have such a fascinating story. I love your branding and marketing. Greenleaf Cleaning. Courtney, welcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. I&#8217;m so happy to be here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I&#8217;m excited for everybody to hear your story, Courtney, because you were not always a cleaner. Tell us, what did you do before cleaning?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-2\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">From Waitressing to a Farm in Upstate New York<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> All right. So out of high school, I went to college, and I waitressed and bartended for a really long time. I was a lead server for so long, and I, you know, had a family. And so I decided I didn&#8217;t want to have to put my kids in daycare throughout the day. So it was flexible. My husband would go to work during the day, and then I would waitress at night, and so our kids would never have to be at childcare. So that was awesome. And then, I grew up in California, in a little suburb outside of Sacramento called Roseville. And during COVID, it was a crazy, scarce time, and we had the crazy idea to move to upstate New York and to buy a farm and just start a whole new life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> That&#8217;s amazing. So brave of you guys. Why New York? Was there something that attracted you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> Honestly, my brother and sister-in-law moved to New York, and so we were like, well, let&#8217;s just go follow them there. And so we both had our own farms. They had a 30-acre farm, I had a 10-acre farm, and we did like a family cow business. And we had pigs and goats and chickens, turkeys. It was just a fun experience. The thing that made me want to go there the most is because my true passion is gardening. I&#8217;ve always just found that to be a sense of relief for me. It&#8217;s like therapeutic. And so my dream to be able to have a huge garden was coming true, and it was just the most amazing part of my life. And it ultimately led me to where I am now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So we went to New York, we had our farm, and I had about two acres of gardens with herbs and vegetables. I did farmer&#8217;s markets there, where I did like elderberry syrup, chapstick, skincare. You know, I just did whatever fed my soul that made me feel good. And then, so we were there for three years. I homeschooled my kids. It was amazing. But then we had some financial things happen, and my husband had to take a job that was seven hours away in Maryland. So we did the long-distance commute for three years. And the day we got 22 pigs was the day that he found out he got this job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh my gosh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-3\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Starting a Cleaning Business in Maryland<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> It was an experience for sure. It made me grow as a person so much. But ultimately, after three years of doing that, we were like, hey, let&#8217;s sell the farm. Let&#8217;s move up to Maryland and be together as a family. And, you know, we also needed to earn extra money. I was a stay-at-home mom for so many years, and so I was like, what can I do that is going to make me happy, that&#8217;s going to give me flexibility? I thought it was going to give me flexibility in the beginning. And so I was like, you know what? I used to make herbal-infused cleaners and sell them at farmer&#8217;s markets. Why don&#8217;t I just start making them? And I&#8217;ve always been into posting on social media. It&#8217;s fun. It was like an outlet for me. When I did have the farm, I would do farm videos or me making herbal-infused things. Just sharing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> Yeah. And so I was like, you know what? We were in a whole new area. I did not know one person. And so I was like, I&#8217;m just going to start filming myself cleaning my house. And luckily, we were in the process of moving, so I had my old house and my new place. So I just posted videos of me cleaning, and it was just insane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A little backstory. You know, sometimes you just know that you&#8217;re meant to be on the right path in life. And the reason why I know that this is so true and I am where I am for a reason \u2014 because, long story short, my mom had a lot of mental health issues growing up, and ultimately, you know, that cost her her life. And so, long story short, my wedding anniversary is on my mom&#8217;s birthday, because we got married on her birthday. And then also, I started my business in August, but my very first clean was on my mom&#8217;s birthday and my wedding anniversary. And so I was like, I know she was with me, and I know that I am where I am because I&#8217;m meant to be here, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And it was just so crazy, because it was August two years ago, of 2024. You know, I&#8217;m an avid learner. I love to learn. And so when I was starting this process of like, I&#8217;m going to open a cleaning business, I was like, I&#8217;m going to watch every podcast. I&#8217;m going to do all the research. I&#8217;m going to be prepared, right? I&#8217;m an over-preparer. So pretty much I wanted to learn and educate myself as much as I could. And so I just continued posting videos of me cleaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-4\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">A 6,000 Square Foot First Clean<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> And then my very first clean was on September 19th, about a month after I did all of my legal documents and I was an official, you know, cleaning business owner. My very first job was on September 19th, and it was a 6,000 square foot home. I was there from 9 a.m. till 9 p.m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Did you get it done?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> Yeah. And I cried the whole way home. Let me tell you, I was crying. I was like, I can&#8217;t do this. Like, I need to hire someone. So literally the very next day, I was like, I&#8217;m hiring someone. And of course, I did the, you know, the W-9 route, or ICs, at first. And then soon after, as I was educating myself, I was like, no, this is not going to work. And so about six months into the business, I switched over to W-2s. So that was an adventure, but it was something I really wanted. And so when I finally got that, I was like, yay, I&#8217;m doing it, you know? And I&#8217;m just so appreciative for your podcast, other people&#8217;s podcasts, because I would never have known about all of the risks you can undertake with doing things not properly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-5\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Switching From ICs to W-2 Employees<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Walk me through that process \u2014 and the reason I want to pause here is because we get so many questions, so many people who start exactly as you did, with ICs, independent contractors. And they&#8217;re like, I want to start using W-2s, but they think that it&#8217;s a very complicated, overwhelming process, and so they just don&#8217;t even do it. So can you walk me through it, as much as you can recall? Of course, this isn&#8217;t legal advice, anybody, okay?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> Definitely, it was a little stressful, but honestly, I got Gusto, and I think that really helped me out. And then I just, you know, got my workman&#8217;s comp insurance \u2014 I just made sure I got all of those insurances. And that ultimately made me feel better in the long run, because I knew that I was doing everything right. Whereas when I first started and I had the ICs, you know, I kind of knew. I never had them wear my branding or anything like that, but I have high quality, and I want to make sure that my brand is, you know, legitimate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Matching that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> Exactly. And so I was like, this is the first thing I need to do before I do anything else \u2014 I need to switch over to have W-2s. And that&#8217;s what I did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Those ICs, did you convert them to W-2s, or did you just have a whole new batch? Because I know a lot of people have that question too, of like, I have these ICs. Are you able to \u2014 not convince them, but show them the positives of being a W-2?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> You know, I switched everyone over, and one person wasn&#8217;t really happy about it, because they&#8217;re like, oh, all these taxes are getting taken out. They soon realized that I was helping them out, because they were getting taxes taken out a little bit at a time. Whereas if you&#8217;re an IC, at the end of the year, you&#8217;re going to owe a huge amount of money, and if you&#8217;re not prepared for that, it can be detrimental. But a lot of people just skirt taxes, you know? And so it&#8217;s like, okay, if we&#8217;re working in the realm of we are going to pay our taxes one way or another, it&#8217;s either a lump sum at the end of the year and you have to save, or we can save it for you if you go and take taxes out every paycheck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So ultimately, it was great. And I think that it overall had a great effect, because then I soon got a Slack account, which led to company culture. Before I had the W-2s, I didn&#8217;t feel confident doing something like that, because I knew that that&#8217;s not legal \u2014 you have to have W-2s in order to show anyone how to do something. And so I was like, okay, let&#8217;s do this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> And so it sounds like for you \u2014 and I know we&#8217;re going to talk a lot about culture and branding and all sorts of things today \u2014 but for you, that really aligns with the kind of company that you&#8217;re trying to build.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> A hundred percent. Yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-6\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">One Rave Review and Rapid Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Walk me through pricing for that first job. Obviously, that&#8217;s a massive house to undertake by yourself, and you hadn&#8217;t practiced your craft before. You hadn&#8217;t actually cleaned before \u2014 well, you cleaned your own house. So going into that first clean, what was your emotional state at the beginning versus the end? Obviously ending in tears. I can so relate to that on first cleans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> Yes. It was just insane to think that I went and did that. But I knew that if I got through that day, then I could get through anything, because she&#8217;s a very hard person to please. She&#8217;s very picky about things. And she was so thrilled with the service that I gave that she actually went online and raved about me to all of her friends. And the next morning, I woke up and, I kid you not, had like 20 text messages requesting services. When I went to her house to clean the next time, I gave her a hug. I was just like, thank you so much. Because, you know, you put yourself out there, you post things constantly, and sometimes it&#8217;s just you meeting that right person that can change things. And I was just really thankful that it happened the way it did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And then, honestly, I&#8217;m glad that it was kind of rough for me that first day, because then I realized this isn&#8217;t going to be sustainable. I&#8217;m going to have to do something else, especially because where we are in Maryland, we have very large homes. We have 10,000 square foot homes. We do have smaller ones, but a lot of them are large. And so if I wanted to continue taking on whoever reached out to me that was a good fit for our company, then I needed to have more than just me there. And I also soon realized to start delegating things as well, if I wanted to grow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> You know, you&#8217;re really speaking to the concept of sometimes we just aren&#8217;t in enough pain to necessitate the change that needs to happen, right? Because it&#8217;s really, what is the more comfortable situation? And by you looking at it that way \u2014 that first clean was painful enough, it lit a fire under your butt of like, I need to hire. This needs to be done. I need to immediately go this direction. And that can be overwhelming, because it&#8217;s like, oh no, it feels like a lot. But at the same time, it&#8217;s just jumpstarting you in the direction that you want to go in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And also, when you say that this one woman with this huge house went and raved about you online \u2014 that is the power of what I would call a local influencer, and not in a disparaging way. When I think of when I first opened and I did a bunch of free cleans, I did them for these women who I knew \u2014 again, in the most positive way \u2014 they talk. It&#8217;s a small community. They&#8217;re going to go tell their friends. So it is a wonderful thing when you can find somebody like that. And I mean, that&#8217;s amazing that you got so much business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> It was scary at the same time, because I mean, I&#8217;d only had one clean, and here this lady is raving about me. And I&#8217;m like, okay, I need to crack down. I need to get going, because all these people are wanting cleans from me, and I&#8217;m only one person. But you know what? It all worked out, and we are where we are now. And I&#8217;m so, so thankful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh, how many cleaners are you at now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> We are at 18 cleaners. In September, we&#8217;ll have been open for two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-7\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Leadership Lessons and Letting Go<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Pretty rapid growth indeed. I&#8217;d love to hear about some of the challenges that you have faced as an owner, as a leader \u2014 areas that you&#8217;ve had to grow. That&#8217;s always fascinating to me, to hear from an individual&#8217;s perspective how you became the leader that you are now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> Honestly, the main thing is, like most people in our industry, we care about people. I cared too much, I guess, for certain employees. You stick onto people for far too long. And, you know, I had a cleaner that was with me for over a year, and I just loved her as a person so much. But ultimately, it cost me multiple recurring clients, because she was calling out. And it&#8217;s like, if I would have ripped that bandaid off a long time ago, I would still have those clients. So I guess, ultimately, learning to trust your gut and to realize that you&#8217;re spending all this time and effort on a company that you pour yourself into, and that one person can cost you your whole reputation. So that was what I took away. Just, you know, do things that make you uncomfortable, because the things that make you uncomfortable are the things that you probably need to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh, so true. Gosh \u2014 the solo episode that I think is going live next week is about having uncomfortable conversations, and that was one of my biggest areas of growth. I can completely relate to you about that. It&#8217;s so hard, especially when you like them. It&#8217;s a lot easier to have tough convos when you&#8217;re like, I don&#8217;t even really like this person \u2014 like, screw them. But when you like them and you enjoy them as a person, it&#8217;s almost way harder, you know?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> Definitely. It&#8217;s so, so hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-8\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">An Extreme Clean and Learning to Say No<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Tell me about \u2014 I know we had talked, I think, about a large, kind of crazy clean. You&#8217;d mentioned it in your intake form as well. I&#8217;d love to hear about that. Talk to me about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> So people were reaching out to me through, you know, social media, and I had my phone on me at all times, and I would answer within the first call. And this realtor called me, and she was like, I have a friend \u2014 he had passed away in a home. He was 500 pounds. He had been passed away in the home for 10 days. And she was like, we need a move out. We need a cleaning. We&#8217;re going to list it for sale. And I said, okay. Because, you know, when you&#8217;re in the beginning of your business, you&#8217;re like, I will do whatever it takes to please people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so I had me and my two employees go there. Obviously, we had our hazmat suits. We had our ventilation masks. But when I went there originally for the walkthrough, she had had the windows and the doors completely open, which was all great when I walked in there. But the day that I went in there to clean with my cleaners, I had the lockbox code, I went in there, and oh my gosh \u2014 I was having nightmares for two days straight because of the smell. Literally, the cleaners I was using in that home, I will never use again, because it just flashes back to that moment. And it was just crazy to think that people could live that way. He was a hoarder, and it was just sad to know the backstory as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I feel like maybe I wouldn&#8217;t have taken on all the jobs. You know, I have my limitations, and sometimes things aren&#8217;t worth it, you know, mentally. No matter how much money they pay, it might not fit our brand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah. That discernment to be able to say no is tough, especially when you&#8217;re hungry for growth and you genuinely want to help people. That&#8217;s the hard thing. It&#8217;s like, when you know you could do this \u2014 like, I could absolutely do this \u2014 but making that choice of, this doesn&#8217;t make sense for our team. This is not the type of cleaning that we want to do. And obviously, there&#8217;s a huge market for that type of thing, like hoarders and more extreme cases. But if that&#8217;s not what you&#8217;re interested in doing long-term and at scale, then why are we doing it at all, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-9\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Putting Yourself Out There on Social Media<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Which really, I feel like, lends itself well to the concept of branding. And I feel like putting yourself out there \u2014 I really want to get into that with you, because you just kind of glossed over it, but I want to give you your accolades for putting yourself out there like that. Obviously, you just naturally did that with the farm content. You are drawn to sharing, and that is an absolute strength, of course. And everybody, we&#8217;ll link her socials down below so you guys can see what this looks like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But the point being is that so many people absolutely do not want to put themselves out there, despite owning a business. They&#8217;re like, I&#8217;ll just keep getting clients through word of mouth referrals, or however else they&#8217;re getting it, because they are uncomfortable with putting themselves out there. And I would say we can attest to it with you \u2014 your growth directly correlated with your willingness to have that brave behavior, and also being okay with not everybody maybe liking it. So I&#8217;d love to hear your thoughts about this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> I&#8217;ll just say, you can&#8217;t be afraid to stand out from everyone else, and you have to just not care what everyone else thinks sometimes. And it&#8217;s so easy to say that. And I will tell you now, like, I&#8217;ll post something and I&#8217;ll be like, oh no \u2014 whatever. But you know what? When it comes down to it, they can think what they want to think. And all that matters is that if you are a true, genuine person and you are being authentic to yourself, your soul \u2014 screw everyone else, honestly. Just be true to yourself and not care what anyone else has to say or think. That&#8217;s what you need to do in order to grow as a person, as a business. Because you&#8217;re going to encounter so many people, and if you&#8217;re constantly wondering what they are thinking of you, it&#8217;s not going to be productive. You&#8217;re not going to go very far. You have to realize, you know, get straight to the facts. Be you, be true to yourself, and that&#8217;s all that matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> It&#8217;s so true. And even like \u2014 I just posted a video for Serene Clean today for our residential service. I posted videos on our website, and then, of course, I turn them into social media. And I literally had the thought of, am I coming across as like I think I&#8217;m all that? Like \u2014 yeah, even me, guys. I still have these little inklings of, what are people going to think? Are people going to think I&#8217;m arrogant or stuck up, or that I&#8217;m all successful and I&#8217;m posting too much? Because I really have upped the ante. I&#8217;ve started posting a lot more videos for Serene Clean. I really want to go heavy on that. But that&#8217;s how you grow a business in today&#8217;s age. We have to put ourselves out there. There&#8217;s so many people who haven&#8217;t heard of us, you know what I mean? And it&#8217;s like, we could be helping them and helping their families have a better home life, and them not hearing about us is actually hurting them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> So if you think of it that way \u2014 honestly, I will tell any cleaning business owner, the number one thing you can do is put yourself out there. Post on social media. Post on every single social media. Once you start doing it, it gets to be, you know, 10 minutes and you&#8217;re posted on every single social media platform. And just like what you&#8217;ve said, treat Google like a social media platform, because it is. Anytime I&#8217;m posting on my Facebook, my Instagram, my LinkedIn, any of that, I&#8217;m going straight to Google, and I&#8217;m posting it on Google as well. Because the more you are on Google, the more you&#8217;re going to be getting put up in people&#8217;s feeds or showing up. So you have to stay consistent, and don&#8217;t slack off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And just for an example, I went through all of my intake forms starting from the beginning of this last year, in January, just the other day. In January and February, I purposely did not post barely anything on social media, because I was going to Idaho and California to see my family. So I was like, I don&#8217;t want any new cleans. I just want my girls to take care of our routine clients and that be it \u2014 no worrying, no stress. So I went through my social media content, and for my location here \u2014 because I have two locations, Maryland and Florida \u2014 in Maryland, there was no social media content posted, and I literally had like one or two intake forms. Okay. But then come March, when I&#8217;m back home fresh and I&#8217;m ready to go, posting every day, multiple times a day, you can see I was literally getting like 10 intake forms a week. And now it&#8217;s like I&#8217;m getting 10 to 15 intake forms a day. So it really does affect your growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And that&#8217;s the one thing I will say: be consistent. Don&#8217;t care about what other people think. Just keep posting, because ultimately, that&#8217;s going to get you to where you want to be, and that&#8217;s going to be visibility for other people. The more you post, the more people are going to trust you. The more you come up, they&#8217;re going to automatically trust you, because they&#8217;re seeing you. Where if you&#8217;re just some random cleaner and you&#8217;re posting, you know, the AI-generated pictures, it&#8217;s like, okay, you&#8217;re just like everyone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-10\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Getting Content From Your Team<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> And that&#8217;s another thing \u2014 when you do step out of the business of being the cleaner all the time, like me \u2014 I only have like one clean, and it&#8217;s an 80-year-old lady, you know, once every two months \u2014 when you step out of the cleaning, it&#8217;s like, where am I going to get those videos from? How am I going to get these pictures? And so part of our process is, our cleaners have to take before and after photos of every single room that they clean. If it&#8217;s a deep clean, that&#8217;s a non-negotiable. But if it&#8217;s a routine clean, then it&#8217;s not so much \u2014 if there&#8217;s a damaged area, then take a picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So what I created, to try and get that \u2014 because people know me for my videos that I post \u2014 I created like a ticket system for my cleaners, where we have a quarterly meeting, where I took your idea of the spin wheel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> They can earn tickets for the things that they do. So they&#8217;ll earn tickets for just sending us pictures of their completed checklist every day. They&#8217;ll earn points for getting a Google review. And then also, for instance, if they want to take a time-lapse video of them cleaning, or if they want to take a little video of them cleaning, then they get like five tokens put into that. And then I get video content of my cleaners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I&#8217;m actually about to create a system of like, okay, I need a shot list, basically. And then I need somebody who&#8217;s not shaky \u2014 I&#8217;m about to buy one of those things so it&#8217;s like, stable or whatever. Because I&#8217;m actively working on this right now, of like, how can we keep getting video content? I love the idea of rewarding the cleaners for doing this \u2014 of like, hey, do this time-lapse \u2014 because yeah, people love to see it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> They love to see it. And then another way that I get the girls to want to do that is, I always do team shout outs on my social media. So they send me pictures or videos, and I&#8217;ll create some cool video. And that&#8217;s exciting for them, because they can see their hard work. And then also, if I&#8217;m posting consistently and all these people are following me and they&#8217;re seeing, oh, team shout out to Taryn, team shout out to so-and-so, they&#8217;re automatically going to trust that cleaner when they come into their home. And so I think it&#8217;s a full circle of, you know, employee appreciation \u2014 showing them that their hard work does matter, and we see that \u2014 and then also putting it out there on our social media platforms, because we do value their hard work so much that we&#8217;re putting it out there for everyone else to see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah. And I think really leaning into that team, especially for our owners who are listening who do have W-2s, right \u2014 you have employees \u2014 that is one of your biggest superpowers, is leaning into promoting your team. Because it&#8217;s going to help you on both the internal and the external customers \u2014 internal being our employees, right? They feel proud when they see that you are taking the time to call them out and praise them publicly. And of course, I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;re doing it in Slack too, within the company. So it makes them feel good. It makes them feel proud. And it also teaches them that they&#8217;re going to be rewarded when they send in those pictures and videos. So they&#8217;re going to keep that cycle going. And then, a hundred percent, as you said, the more the clients see them, the more they&#8217;re like, I can trust that person. Because this is a different type of business \u2014 we&#8217;re going into people&#8217;s houses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And for anybody who&#8217;s thinking, well, what if an employee leaves? Employees leave all the time, guys. It&#8217;s not going to negatively affect you to be having those people on your former, you know, socials. It&#8217;s fine. It&#8217;s okay. Unless they did something crazy \u2014 then go ahead and delete them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> Yeah. Absolutely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-11\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Practical Tips for Consistent Posting<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I love that. And if somebody is like, okay, I&#8217;m feeling inspired, I want to start posting more, but they&#8217;re like, how the heck can I? I have so much going on. Maybe they&#8217;re in the field a lot still. Could you give a few practical tips of how we can actually make this happen, so this is a process for them \u2014 a system, and something that they are consistent with? Because I think a lot of people, they get all horny to post, and they come out of the gate and they post a bunch, and then they stop, right? And they just can&#8217;t keep it up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> That&#8217;s actually on my list of things to do this week. But before that, what I would say is, if you don&#8217;t have time, if you&#8217;re the one cleaning \u2014 literally get a really soapy sponge, make it really soapy, and just clean the counter, and go slow with it. And then go on to ChatGPT and be like, create me a hook that is going to resonate with my audience, that&#8217;s going to draw them in. And then maybe come up with another thing and be like, create me a description to go along with this, with some high-SEO hashtags. And then literally the most simple thing can be, you know, content. Even just setting your phone up and doing a time-lapse of you cleaning a shower door, and then just trying to make it as short as possible, because that tends to stick with people more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When I first started, I always wanted to put everything I did in one video, because it was so much hard work. And then people were finding me on social media, and a lot of the homes are really high-end homes out here, so I feel like people wanted to see their home come up. And so I felt like every time I got done with a clean, I had to rush home and post this video. And as time goes on and you grow and you expand, you realize you can&#8217;t do that. But I would just say, you know, if you&#8217;re laying in bed one night, or if you&#8217;re having a lazy day on the couch, create like 20 videos, put them in a folder, and just when you have a split second, post really fast. And just make sure you post it on every single social media platform. Like, I&#8217;m on YouTube, I&#8217;m on, you know, Pinterest, LinkedIn, all of it. I might not have as many followers on other things, but I&#8217;m going to be coming up on the web more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so what I did is, you know, if there is talking, I&#8217;m going to upload the transcript to an AI and be like, come up with 20 different videos. This is my target market. This is what they struggle with. Come up with the hook. Tell me exactly what to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> And with AI, guys \u2014 like, this is the way. Or yeah, like you said, just upload the video and say, how could I make a bunch of these, and have it basically give you a shot list. And then all you have to do is execute. Because I think a lot of us get stuck on, I can&#8217;t be creative or punchy, or, I don&#8217;t know what to make. Guys, we don&#8217;t need to think no more \u2014 there&#8217;s AI. And I say that jokingly, but like, for real, this is the amazing thing \u2014 it takes us from the creative stuck part to just execution. This is who I&#8217;m selling to. These are the services I provide. This is what makes us special. Help me come up with a bunch of stuff. And then just start with once a week. Can we do once a week? And then we do twice a week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> And I would definitely say to do reels \u2014 like, switch it up, you know. Do carousels, do reels, do stories. And as you start to delegate things in your business, you&#8217;ll get that time to start learning other things. So like right now, I&#8217;m starting to learn more about social media posting and AI, to help delegate certain tasks easier. And so once you get that chance to step aside a little bit more, it&#8217;s so beneficial, and your company will grow so much more when you decide to do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-12\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">From Pen and Paper to ZenMaid<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> So true. I just love all those tips, and you&#8217;re clearly very adept and have this incredible following. So I want to hear \u2014 obviously, it sounds like you&#8217;re pretty tech savvy, and you&#8217;ve grown the business really fast \u2014 talk to me about your operations, your tech. You mentioned Gusto. I am a huge fan of Gusto. It&#8217;s one of my favorites. I&#8217;m not affiliated at all \u2014 I mean, Gusto, if you want to sponsor me, that&#8217;d be cool \u2014 but I love Gusto.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> I started the business \u2014 for the first six months, I was doing it with my calendar, pen and paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> How was that working for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> No, it was not working out. It&#8217;s just so funny \u2014 the evolution of me doing my scheduling is insane. Like, I would go from text messages, and then I went to a Word document with typing in little details of every home, and then someone would cancel, and I&#8217;d have to delete it and resend it to all the cleaners. And I was cleaning constantly too, doing just, like, everything. It was such a hard first year or two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Did you ever have some issues where you got it wrong because it was all manual?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> You know, I didn&#8217;t, luckily. I&#8217;m an over-preparer, like I was saying. But you know what? I came across ZenMaid through \u2014 I don&#8217;t know, I think I was just on YouTube, and it popped up, and I&#8217;m like, this is not working. There has to be some other way, right? And then I got ZenMaid, and honestly, that was a game changer. And then I slowly found your podcast. Like, I was listening to so many other podcasts, and then I found yours. I remember I was cleaning the bathroom one day, and I&#8217;m like, why haven&#8217;t I found this one sooner? I just feel like this person connects with me so much more than a lot of other podcasts. And so I just binge watched all of the episodes, you know? And so now, whenever I go down to Florida, where my other location is, I&#8217;m listening for 10 hours straight to the podcast.<\/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>Courtney:<\/strong> It&#8217;s absolutely amazing. I&#8217;m so thankful for everything I&#8217;ve learned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> That&#8217;s funny, because Kylan, who is our editor, who you met \u2014 he literally listens to me for hours every week, doing all of the editing and stuff. And I&#8217;m like, how are you not having nightmares of my voice, man? That&#8217;s gotta be annoying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> He&#8217;s laughing right now. At least you&#8217;re funny, though. You&#8217;re funny. You definitely are your own person. And I think that not being afraid to be who you are \u2014 you are a perfect example of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh, thank you so much. It&#8217;s funny \u2014 as I get older, I&#8217;ve just become so like, I don&#8217;t care. I mean, I do. I care in the fact of, I want people to know the real me and know I&#8217;m being genuine and things like that. But when it comes to being silly and weird \u2014 guys, everybody is silly and weird. Just how much they show it is on a spectrum. So I&#8217;m like, you know what? Let&#8217;s just be weird.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-13\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Opening a Second Location in Florida<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> You alluded to the fact that you have two locations, and they are nowhere near each other. So I&#8217;m sure everybody&#8217;s like, Stephanie, don&#8217;t glaze over that. So we&#8217;re not going to glaze over it. Do tell me about this, Courtney. I already know, but tell the people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> So I opened my location in Maryland, and it was just doing amazing. And my brother and sister-in-law live in St. Petersburg, Florida. And me and my sister-in-law had worked together in the past, actually, as waitresses, multiple times. In upstate New York, we bartended and waitressed together. So we were used to working with each other, right? And so I was like, you know what? I would love to help my family out, and I would love to be able to go to St. Petersburg to see the business more often. Like, you know, having another location \u2014 it&#8217;s everyone&#8217;s dream. And so we did that. We opened it up about a year ago, and it&#8217;s going really well. Definitely, we have our ups and downs sometimes, but in any business, you&#8217;re going to have that. And it&#8217;s literally just learning from your mistakes and trying your best to move forward. But I&#8217;m so happy to be able to help my family and see what an amazing job my sister-in-law has done. She&#8217;s grown the business out there a great deal, and it&#8217;s just amazing to be able to keep it all in the family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> That is really cool. Tell me, have you guys noticed any market differences, Florida to Maryland?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> Yeah, definitely. I feel like it is more oversaturated in Florida, because, you know, people are there year round. And also, the houses are smaller as well. So here in Maryland, we&#8217;re in one of the highest income earning areas in the United States, actually, and the homes, like I said, can be 5,000, 10,000 square feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, juicy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> We&#8217;re right by DC, so we have a lot of government workers in our area. Whereas you go to Florida, mostly it&#8217;s retired people. They&#8217;re on an income, you know, a budget. So it is a lot different. So it&#8217;s just been trying to learn and navigate the differences between the two locations. But it&#8217;s been super fun and exciting along the way, for sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> You know, it&#8217;s really interesting \u2014 I&#8217;ve never thought of that before. Anytime I talk to somebody who does mostly apartments, they&#8217;re in cities, right? These spaces are smaller. You either have to charge way more or have a lot more volume to hit the same numbers, because we&#8217;re able to charge more for bigger houses \u2014 or we should be able to. So I&#8217;ve never thought about that before, of like, she probably has to do simply more volume in order to even come close to matching the same prices, if you will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> Definitely, a hundred percent. And it&#8217;s just trying to learn the differences between the two that has been the hardest, because, you know, I had the business here for so long. So trying to gauge the two locations on what I&#8217;ve experienced has been a learning curve. But it&#8217;s also been super exciting at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-14\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Production Rate Auditing and Price Increases<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> In our consulting call, we talked a lot about production rate auditing. I&#8217;m curious \u2014 and I know it seems like a hard left turn, but I remember we talked about this a lot. We ran some examples, because from the sounds of it, you were not doing any type of auditing before. So walk me through it. Walk me through some of the problems that you were experiencing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> Yes, definitely. So pretty much, we weren&#8217;t doing any production rate auditing. But I am super excited \u2014 I was listening to the ZenMaid podcast this morning, and I heard that you guys will be getting that as one of the features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> So I actually decided, after that episode, my husband has taken over the job of doing production rate auditing. So he&#8217;s started to do all of the little numbers in his tablet and stuff, and then in a few days, when the month is over, he&#8217;ll go over and do everything. But one thing I will reiterate is, make sure everyone&#8217;s clocking in and clocking out. Because when you go to do those audits, it makes it really hard to know if your production rate is too low. It&#8217;s just not accurate if you don&#8217;t have the clock in and clock out.<\/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>Courtney:<\/strong> And then also, when you do that, you&#8217;ll realize, are you charging enough? And so I think that that&#8217;s super important, to just know where you stand. Because you can constantly guess, but until you know the actual numbers, you don&#8217;t really know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> You know, and it&#8217;s such a good point. I&#8217;ve seen a lot of ZenMaid accounts in my day, and I remember several where what they do is they have their cleaners clock in at the beginning of the day and stay clocked in the whole day, basically, instead of having them clock in and out of each individual appointment, because of the way they pay. They&#8217;re like, we pay this way. We don&#8217;t need to know that. And it&#8217;s like, you may not need to know it for pay, but you do need to know it for how fast you clean and how much money you made per hour on that job, right? Because even if we charge flat rate or pay percentage \u2014 all of these different ways we can manage that stuff \u2014 it is so valuable to have it in an hourly term, so that we can compare everything apples to apples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> Definitely, 100%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Have you realized any clients that need price increases because of this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> Oh my gosh, you know, it&#8217;s so funny, because you always put that off. Or you kind of know who needs to have a price increase and who doesn&#8217;t. And so I have periodically went in and did like two at a time. I&#8217;ve actually never had anyone turn down our increase, except for recently, when my very first clients actually did. And I&#8217;m like, you know what? I didn&#8217;t take it personally, just because, you know, it&#8217;s okay. It might be someone&#8217;s budget, and that&#8217;s totally fine. But you can&#8217;t let that keep you from doing what needs to happen. Especially if, you know, the margins are really bad and you are going negative on a clean. Because when you&#8217;re first starting out, you aren&#8217;t pricing appropriately. And then you get into that, oh, I love my client. I don&#8217;t want to make them upset. And then it&#8217;s just awkward. But as you grow and as you start to step back, you realize what needs to be done. And it&#8217;s not always the easiest decision, but it&#8217;s what needs to happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> It&#8217;s so true. And what I&#8217;ve really been thinking about a lot recently \u2014 and I just said this to my hairdresser \u2014 is listen to resentment, because it&#8217;s trying to tell you something, and you need to listen up. Because my hair appointments are basically therapy, you know. And so she&#8217;s talking about feeling resentful about something, and I was like, that&#8217;s telling you something. You know what I mean? We need to listen to it. And I see it the same way with cleanings. I have absolutely been cleaning a house, or been having a client, and I feel so resentful about it because we&#8217;re not making enough money. And I&#8217;m like, that&#8217;s my fault. Because it&#8217;s telling you \u2014 if you are feeling resentful about anything in your business or life, there&#8217;s probably some communication that needs to happen. It could be you&#8217;re resentful towards a staff member, a client, your partner, whatever. And it&#8217;s because something is happening that you&#8217;re not okay with, but you&#8217;re not talking about it, or nothing&#8217;s being done about it, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so especially with pricing \u2014 I know everybody listening, I know that you have taken on a client and you went lower than you should have. You took it, you got the job, and then you are cleaning that place pissed off, and you are so annoyed, and you&#8217;re annoyed with them \u2014 even though it&#8217;s like, no, this is us, guys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> And honestly, some of the cheapest clients, the ones that care about the money the most, tend to be the ones that are the biggest hassle, honestly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah. And I understand conceptually, because for them, this amount of money is a larger percentage of their total income. So they&#8217;re going to be like, this needs to be good, because I have to get every ounce of value out of it. Whereas somebody where it&#8217;s a smaller portion of their income \u2014 of course, you know, rich people can be assholes too, but it makes sense from a mathematical perspective. Like, this isn&#8217;t as much money to them. So that makes a lot of sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> We&#8217;ve definitely experienced that too, where some of the cheapest people, they&#8217;re just \u2014 yeah. So that&#8217;s why it&#8217;s like, they didn&#8217;t stay, but at the same time, you can replace them with someone else that will pay your prices, and you won&#8217;t be so stressed out about having someone go to their home each time, you know?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah. Nothing feels better than filling a spot because somebody canceled because of price and they weren&#8217;t paying what you need to charge \u2014 and when you fill that spot with somebody else who&#8217;s paying what you need to be charging, oh my gosh, it feels so good. It strengthens that muscle of price. Because price increases are scary. Everybody gets scared to do them. Everybody is probably needing to do one on somebody right now, and they&#8217;re not, because it&#8217;s scary and they&#8217;re worried that they&#8217;re going to drop. But that&#8217;s why it really brings us full circle to everything we&#8217;ve talked about with branding and marketing so far today. Because if you work on that, you know that eventually that spot is going to get filled, because you&#8217;re doing what you need to do and putting your business out there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> Exactly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-15\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Managing Two Teams and One Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> What has been some of the challenges with the multiple locations? Is there anything \u2014 I mean, technologically, is it two ZenMaids? Are they running everything the way you are?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> For the most part, we have been trying to put things in place a little bit more to where we&#8217;re consistent. I actually just started doing Loom training videos and stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Nice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> So that both of our teams can be on the same exact page and make both of our lives easier. Because, like I said, I am really huge on company culture. Like, I pour my heart and soul into it, because, you know, I worked for a lot of people growing up, and I want my cleaners to feel valued, appreciated. And so I post a lot on my Slack \u2014 everything, honestly \u2014 just because I want my cleaners to feel connected, like they&#8217;re part of something, not just cleaning, you know? We haven&#8217;t been connected so much on that aspect of Slack between the locations, and so I&#8217;m trying to maybe focus more on that and get us both on the same page with that. But overall, we do all of the same things. We use the same ZenMaid account. We use the same Gusto account. We use the same Quo account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I have a virtual assistant that I hired in April. Game changer. If you don&#8217;t have an office person, get one. Like, I promise you. I&#8217;m about to hire a second one, just for weekends and other little odd jobs. But it&#8217;s been such an amazing \u2014 that&#8217;s like another thing, stepping aside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And that&#8217;s another thing \u2014 you know, my sister-in-law is amazing. She cares so much about what she does: cleaning, creating that customer experience. She wants to go do all the walkthroughs. Like, she cares so much. And so that&#8217;s the one thing that we&#8217;re trying to get on the same page with. I&#8217;m telling her, step away a little bit. It will be okay, I promise you. And it&#8217;s so hard sometimes to think that people aren&#8217;t going to do as good of a job as you. But if you want to grow the business and stuff, sometimes you have to do those hard things. And so I think that&#8217;s what has been the hardest \u2014 maybe trying to navigate both of our perspectives. But I also think that we balance each other out really well as well, you know? So I think, going forward, I&#8217;ll continue doing the training videos that I just started doing, and I think that will create more of a company culture in both locations together. And I would even love to start doing \u2014 I know you do your weekly meetings. I do meetings occasionally, but I want to start doing maybe a company meeting on, like, Zoom, just to build that company culture. Like, we might not have the same cleans, but we have the same experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> You know, that would be really fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> And then I hop in and just add a gif of, like, you know, killing it, girl \u2014 and she responds back. And it&#8217;s just that those little micro moments, they matter. They do have just that little connection. So especially because it&#8217;s just such an independent job \u2014 you know, they&#8217;re out in the field. That&#8217;s why I do want to try and do, like, the company meetings and stuff, you know, getting in person, doing the fun little giveaways, because it does build that community. Because it is hard when you&#8217;re not working with them all the time. And so that&#8217;s why I do think that the Slack is awesome. Like, I don&#8217;t think that posting too much is ever too bad, as long as it&#8217;s being motivational, and it&#8217;s positive, and it&#8217;s building a community with your workers and your management team. I think that, you know, just do what makes your heart happy and do what you think is right, and I think that it will all work out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, that&#8217;s a really good one. If you like AI, connect your Slack and your Claude, and just say, hey, run the daily shout out. And it&#8217;s to find things specifically that they&#8217;re doing that have nothing to do with, like, we got a review, right? Because we&#8217;re already sharing that. This is more like, they communicated really well, they went above and beyond for their teammate, they just had a really good attitude in this way \u2014 and just highlighting those things. But it&#8217;s hard for me to stay on top of that. And that&#8217;s where AI comes in, to allow you to be better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-16\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Scratching the Surface of Your Software<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I remember when we did our consulting call, we talked about custom filters, because of the two locations in the one ZenMaid. So did you guys lean into that? Has that been working for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> So I went and did the individual cleaner colors. I haven&#8217;t actually switched it to where I see them by colors yet, but I did go in, and I switched the locations by color as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, the status, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> Because when she pulled up our ZenMaid, she was like, what is going on right now? What is going on? And I&#8217;m like, I don&#8217;t know. Help me. And so she walked me through how to do certain custom filters, and I&#8217;m like, oh my gosh, I don&#8217;t know why I didn&#8217;t know this. And so I&#8217;ll definitely be doing another mentor call with you in the future. Because learning from other business owners, cleaning business owners \u2014 especially you, because you work with ZenMaid \u2014 you know, there&#8217;s so many features to it. You&#8217;re so busy as a business owner, you&#8217;re just doing the bare minimum to scrape by, you know, because you just have so many tasks to do. And so I think that was such an eye opener, that there are more ways to do it and make it easier for both Maryland and Florida. Because when we were looking at it all on one screen, it was not fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, trying to find openings and stuff. And I can&#8217;t tell you how many times I&#8217;m in the weekly design call with ZenMaid, and I&#8217;m, like, bitching about something, and they&#8217;re like, you know that exists, right? Here&#8217;s the setting for that. I&#8217;m like, oh \u2014 I&#8217;ve only used this for seven years, and I didn&#8217;t know that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> Yeah, for real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> And that&#8217;s why I like always just paying attention to all of my software. Like, I&#8217;m subscribed to all of their emails, because \u2014 like, ClickUp just sent something today that I was like, oh, interesting, let me look into this new feature. Because pretty much every single software that we all use in our business, we are probably just scratching the surface of what it can do, literally. So just try \u2014 it&#8217;s hard, of course, we&#8217;re all busy \u2014 but just try to take a little time once a month and be like, all right, explore. Just comb through stuff, you know? Like, what&#8217;s this thing? What is this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> It&#8217;s like, you know, I have ClickUp \u2014 I learned about it from you \u2014 but I don&#8217;t use it, because it&#8217;s so crazy. And then when we were on our mentor call and you pulled up your ClickUp, I&#8217;m like, oh my gosh, there&#8217;s like graphs everywhere. It&#8217;s just, like, insane. I&#8217;m like, I have a lot to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah. And it&#8217;s literally just continual improvement, right? Literally, last week we realized \u2014 and this is interesting, I should just do a whole solo episode on this \u2014 we know how many clients we&#8217;re adding, right? We also know how much money we&#8217;re adding every single month, and losing, right? Both ways. But we don&#8217;t know how many hours we&#8217;re adding. We don&#8217;t track that. Because when we&#8217;re talking, I asked my manager who does the hiring, I was like, how many people do we need to hire? And she&#8217;s like, well, definitely one, but I&#8217;m not sure on the second one, if we need to do that right now. And I was like, you know what? We have the data. We know, on average, how many hours of work we add a month, because that would tell us how many people we need to hire. And I was like, you know what, it&#8217;s been seven years, and I&#8217;ve never thought to track this. Even though the data is there, I just haven&#8217;t put it together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So even to this day, you&#8217;re constantly learning. It would be nifty if we knew how many hours, not just how many clients, because every client is different on hours, right? So then you&#8217;re not guessing \u2014 based on the past three months, we should hire two people, because this is how fast we&#8217;re growing, or whatever. So yeah, I see those things as exciting. I think a lot of people beat themselves up on, like, oh, I didn&#8217;t know this, blah, blah, blah. It&#8217;s like, well, now you do, and that&#8217;s really exciting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> You&#8217;re always gonna be learning new things. You&#8217;re never gonna have it all done. Right when you think you can take a break, you got 20 other things you got to do. So it&#8217;s just, like, the excitement of being a business owner, huh?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> It really is. And I think coming at it from that \u2014 businesses push us so much to grow and learn, if you just allow it. And just don&#8217;t let shame beat you up. Because I think a lot of us hold a lot of shame, because we feel like we&#8217;re failing, or we don&#8217;t know what we&#8217;re doing. But one, nobody knows what they&#8217;re doing. Two, it&#8217;s just not a helpful emotion. Like, it doesn&#8217;t help you at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> Just follow your gut, and you will be led to where you&#8217;re meant to be. I never once thought I would ever be a business owner. Like, it never crossed my mind, ever. And then, you know, it all happens for a reason. You will go where you are meant to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-17\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Goals and Where to Find Courtney<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh, well, you&#8217;re clearly meant to be doing this. As you said, there&#8217;s just so many signs pointing to that, and how well it&#8217;s been going, Courtney. What&#8217;s the goal for the end of the year?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> The goal for the end of the year, I would say, is to hire another VA, to get my automations for my social media content on an automatic going-out process. And then I would love for us to be close to hitting the million mark soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Hell yes. $87,000 a month. You got it, girl. That is so exciting. If the people want to follow you, Courtney, what are your socials, so they can go take a peek and get some inspiration? Of course, we&#8217;ll list them down below, just in case we mess up the wording.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> It&#8217;s greenleaf_MD_FL for Instagram. That&#8217;s my main social media platform, but I do post on all the other ones. And then my email is admin@greenleaforganics.org.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Perfect. Yeah, we&#8217;ll link that all below. This has been amazing, Courtney. I&#8217;m so grateful for this conversation. It&#8217;s been so fun to share with everybody. Especially with the content \u2014 I&#8217;m definitely going to go and look at yours, because I want that inspiration. And I think it&#8217;s just amazing what you built. You should be very proud of yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Courtney:<\/strong> Thank you so much, Stephanie. Thank you for everything you&#8217;ve done. So happy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I&#8217;m so happy to do it. It just is a joy for me to have these conversations and meet other owners. It&#8217;s a really good industry. I just love what we do. Awesome, Courtney. Thank you, everyone. Please leave her some love down in the comments below. Hit that like, hit that subscribe, and we will see you on the next episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners. Bye, guys.<\/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 fantastic guest has a very unique story as well as business situation that I can&#8217;t wait to get into. Courtney Nunes, we connected over [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":17716,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"How Courtney Nunes Got to 18 Cleaners in Under 2 Years","_seopress_titles_desc":"Courtney Nunes of Greenleaf Cleaning shares how social media, W-2 employees, and team culture grew her business to 18 cleaners and two states in two years.","_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-17715","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\/17715","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=17715"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17718,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17715\/revisions\/17718"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}