{"id":17817,"date":"2026-10-06T22:07:46","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T22:07:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/?p=17817"},"modified":"2026-10-06T22:07:48","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T22:07:48","slug":"how-to-hand-off-clients-without-losing-them-with-meghan-caicedo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/how-to-hand-off-clients-without-losing-them-with-meghan-caicedo\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Hand Off Clients Without Losing Them, with Meghan Caicedo"},"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\/filthy-rich-cleaners-the-cleaning-business-podcast\/id1791590022?i=1000793437837\">Apple Podcasts<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/episode\/4J0pSAne6mEbpQhROgf1LC\">Spotify<\/a>, or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=OUiiX1Tr0VM\">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: #180: How to Hand Off Clients Without Losing Them, with Meghan Garner\" 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\/4J0pSAne6mEbpQhROgf1LC?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 fabulous guest, all the way from Canada, Miss Meghan Caicedo. She is the owner and founder of Caicedo Cleaning. She&#8217;s been doing it for four to five years. Her husband actually works with her now, which I&#8217;m really excited to hear all about. Meghan, thank you so much for joining us today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> Thank you for having me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yes, ma&#8217;am. How is the weather in Canada? Is it lovely right now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> Yes, well, lovely by my standards \u2014 it&#8217;s raining \u2014 but still better than&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I mean, as a Wisconsinite, born and raised until a few years ago, it was probably pretty similar to Alberta, I would imagine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> Yeah, so I wouldn&#8217;t know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I would miss the summer for sure in the fall, but not so much the winter. So now tell me, Meghan, what did you do before you cleaned?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-2\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Life Before Cleaning<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> I tried a couple things. I worked at McDonald&#8217;s for four months. Only survived four months, and then I switched over to a senior home, and that was during COVID, so I was doing sanitizing of all the two hundred something rooms in that place. And I did that for about nine-ish months. And then I remember just getting to a point where I was like crying after every shift, because it was like, there&#8217;s something about like having to be there for like eight hours a day, like doing the same thing, running into the same people, and it&#8217;s just \u2014 it was exhausting for me. And I just got to the car, my mom picked me up, and I was crying. And I was like, &#8220;I just can&#8217;t do this anymore.&#8221; But there \u2014 my parents are like, &#8220;Don&#8217;t ever quit!&#8221; So she actually ended up getting me a job working for a group of realtors who needed a cleaner for like move-in and move-out. Like, leave on good terms. So then I kind of switched over to that, like doing kind of as-needed, casual basis. And I started that at like $25 an hour, and I kind of did that on and off, like in between school, during the summers, for like a couple years, I guess. Before I really decided that I wanted to do this \u2014 this is what I want to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> That&#8217;s amazing! And what a good hookup to get with the realtor for move-outs, especially. Did anything particularly rough happen? Is that where one of your horror stories came from? Yeah, tell me about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-3\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Move-Out Horror Story<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> Yeah, yeah. So I never had really any issues with any of the cleans except for one, and with the realtor job, like they just told me, okay, this house has like a move-in this day, and you have to get it clean by noon, because that&#8217;s when they get the keys to the house. So I actually never got to do any walkthroughs, but again, never had any issues with that. The one place was far out from where I live, so it&#8217;s probably like a 20-minute drive. I don&#8217;t even think I charged extra to go out there, and so I went out there. It was this really big house, and they apparently said that they had a bunch of people come and do a clean beforehand. Clearly did not. I went into the bathroom. The smell was so bad. There was like caramelized pee all around the toilet. And there was like feces in the jetted tub, and then there was no way to drain the jetted tub. And I went to the kitchen and I started like vacuuming up mouse poo. I texted the realtor and I said, &#8220;Hey, this is gonna be more than 30 an hour. It&#8217;s got to be 50.&#8221; And then I did it for like two hours, and then I was just like, &#8220;I&#8217;m gone.&#8221; And the worst part was that the owner was actually there, and he was not happy that I left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh my gosh! I think, like, okay, this is not meant to like shame anybody. But I feel that if my home had that situation, right? Like, literal shit, shit in the tub. I&#8217;d probably leave the house while it was \u2014 I wouldn&#8217;t be able to face the person that I was asking to clean that. Oh my goodness!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> Yeah, yeah. He was like, &#8220;Where are you going?&#8221; And I&#8217;m like, &#8220;I&#8217;m just gonna \u2014 I&#8217;m gonna take a break. Just talk to the realtors. They&#8217;ll let you know what I&#8217;m doing.&#8221; Just left, not to have that confrontation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, because you just don&#8217;t know how people are gonna react, especially if they do feel that you&#8217;re being \u2014 no, like, you know, that&#8217;s just a total line. I&#8217;m really happy that you left that job because, you know, we had it \u2014 we had to settle for by myself, 100%. But it sounds like since then, not too many poopy issues?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> No, not too many. I did have one not too long ago, and it was probably the worst house I&#8217;ve ever done. And that one was the only one I didn&#8217;t do a walkthrough for. And that&#8217;s when I like started the business. It was such a bad place. Totally beat up. It had like student renters in there. I think I spent \u2014 there were two people, so me and then my first employee, which didn&#8217;t turn out to be very great \u2014 but we were there for like a total of, I don&#8217;t know, fifteen to seventeen hours. Not together, but like, total, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Man hours is what you call it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> Yeah, so we were there, and then like the whole bill came to about $1,200 for this guy, and he didn&#8217;t pay for a week or two, and usually that&#8217;s like, it&#8217;s okay. Most of my clients pay like the day of. He didn&#8217;t, and I tried to reach out. I tried to call him. No answer. I was terrified that he ghosted me, so I ended up like looking up who his realtor was, and then talking to the guy&#8217;s realtor. And he&#8217;s like, &#8220;Why are you texting me about him? Like, he&#8217;s a stand-up guy. I&#8217;ve been with him since high school.&#8221; So I was like, &#8220;Well, it&#8217;s because he&#8217;s not getting back to me,&#8221; and he has like a thousand dollar bill that he has to pay, and he&#8217;s not paying it. So that was the only way I could get him to pay the bill. I drove by the house like once a day, and he was never there, so I had to go through his realtor to actually get it paid. But other than that, like, it&#8217;s been pretty good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-4\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Getting Paid and Keeping a Card on File<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Okay, have you implemented anything since then? Perhaps a card on file, my dear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> No, not really. I do QuickBooks, and I don&#8217;t know if that like keeps a card on file. I know a lot of them just prefer to e-transfer. They don&#8217;t pay through QuickBooks, so I don&#8217;t \u2014 I don&#8217;t enforce it. Some of them just do the e-transfer anyways, and then I reconcile that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> It would be a backup. It wouldn&#8217;t be &#8220;you have to charge the card on file.&#8221; It&#8217;d be to save it, just to protect you. And the only reason I&#8217;m bringing this up is I had to literally play Dog the Bounty Hunter, and this is what \u2014 like, the situation you&#8217;re describing is what had to happen to me to finally be like, okay, I need to change. And at least for like one-offs, like especially move-outs, because they&#8217;re moving, they don&#8217;t give a shit. Like, if they don&#8217;t want to pay, like, you&#8217;re out. I mean, and they&#8217;re the most expensive jobs too, so it&#8217;s like high risk. And then to not have to do all that runaround. So because you&#8217;re using QuickBooks, I definitely \u2014 I mean, it&#8217;s possible, and just make it part of the onboarding. And I know for myself, I was really scared that people were going to throw a fuss and not want to do that. Like, &#8220;I&#8217;m not gonna give you my card,&#8221; but it&#8217;s like, if they&#8217;re letting you in their house, they can certainly trust you with their credit card number. Honestly, it&#8217;s been, you know, five years since we&#8217;ve implemented that, and nobody throws a fuss. Like, everybody just \u2014 like, this is the process: you put a card on file. So I&#8217;m just \u2014 I&#8217;m gonna say \u2014 like, I just don&#8217;t want you to get burned again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> Oh, I know! I know. I&#8217;m scared about that, and I have no idea how to go about like having that backup. I don&#8217;t even have like client policies. I don&#8217;t have a cleaning checklist. I \u2014 the only thing I have \u2014 is like an actual document that I get employees to sign, to like hiring, onboarding. I guess, okay. Well, yeah, I&#8217;m pretty fresh. I&#8217;m like four months in of being officially a cleaning business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Which is why I&#8217;m so excited you&#8217;re here, because I think that this is going to be a wonderful conversation for newer owners, of, like, walking through, like, you know, all of the things that are overwhelming to start a new business, and all of the things you need to put in place. And the goal is, of course, to be able to put things in place to protect you from getting burned, right? Like, and you guys not having to touch the same hot pan that I&#8217;ve touched so many times. So, we&#8217;ll go into that a little bit more throughout the call, of course, but I want to hear about, yeah, the history. And obviously, you mentioned that your husband is now working with you, so talk me through that. What has that been like? And, ah, you&#8217;re hoping to have him full-time with you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-5\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Bringing Her Husband Into the Business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> Well, he kind of already is full-time with me. I officially \u2014 actually, like I said, I officially started the business like four-ish months ago. I think in May. But like I said, I&#8217;d been cleaning for years prior and then decided that I think this is what I want to do. I clearly cannot like keep a normal job. I tried Starbucks, quit after three weeks, just like, &#8220;You&#8217;re making me a business owner.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> I cannot fathom that like three grande drinks are more than what I make in an hour there. So it&#8217;s like, yeah, no, I&#8217;m gonna go back to doing my own thing. So I went to do that and like started telling all my old clients, all the realtors, &#8220;Hey, I&#8217;m here if you need me. I&#8217;m full time. I&#8217;m committed to this now.&#8221; And I tried to do it a year ago, and I chickened out, because I was like, once it came to hiring, I was scared about, you know, taxes and like keeping track of things and stuff. But I&#8217;ve got a really good accountant now to back me up for that. So yeah. In May, I officially started it, and then I got so crazy busy within the first month that I&#8217;m like, I need help. So I kind of jovially told my husband, &#8220;Hey, would you like to quit your job at the casino to like work with me?&#8221; He&#8217;s like, &#8220;Bet,&#8221; and I was like, &#8220;Okay, let&#8217;s do it.&#8221; Then, so I got as busy as I could, to the point of breaking, and then I was like, &#8220;Hey, you can quit now. This is like the rate it&#8217;s going. It&#8217;s gonna pay the bills.&#8221; So he did, and he&#8217;s been taking over all the BnBs, because we have a bunch of BnB clients. So we&#8217;re doing that, and now I have also four employees, but I&#8217;m not giving them a ton of hours. It&#8217;s like three to fifteen per week. And summer was super crazy busy, so I probably don&#8217;t need four at this point. But I mean, I&#8217;ve hired them. They&#8217;re great. The first one I actually hired, she didn&#8217;t disclose to me that she didn&#8217;t have like a vehicle. She just said, &#8220;I have reliable transportation,&#8221; who is in fact her brother. But the issue that I had with her is \u2014 yes, she was very slow, but I kind of expected that from a first-time employee. And she was very thorough. Like, she was a good cleaner. But when we were in clients&#8217; houses, like probably every ten minutes there would be a sigh from her, and I&#8217;m like, &#8220;I don&#8217;t like that.&#8221; And then she&#8217;d come up to me and be like, &#8220;My arms are about to fall off. I can&#8217;t get this stain out of the wall,&#8221; and I&#8217;m like, &#8220;The client&#8217;s upstairs!&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah! Oh my goodness!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> I don&#8217;t like \u2014 so I never had to fire her. I don&#8217;t like big sighs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> Yeah, I never had to fire her, thankfully, because I found out she didn&#8217;t have a car, and then I was like, &#8220;Hey, this isn&#8217;t gonna work.&#8221; So now my other employee, she&#8217;s amazing. I&#8217;m scared to lose her because she&#8217;s going to school, but I&#8217;m gonna be like, &#8220;I&#8217;m gonna keep you no matter what. I will give you benefits. I will increase your rate.&#8221; Like, I don&#8217;t want to lose her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh, that&#8217;s fantastic! And so many times when I have these conversations with owners, like, you don&#8217;t need 20 great people right the first day. You need one. You need one, because that gives you that, like, bolstering. And it&#8217;s not like you should put all your eggs in one basket, but it just helps you feel like, okay, I&#8217;m not alone. Like, this can happen, you know? Sounds fantastic!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> Oh, she is. But my number one elite employee is for sure my husband. He&#8217;s been very well trained, and I was gonna say it was hard for me when he first quit, and then I was like, how am I going to include him in the business? Because I was very concerned how my other clients would take a male maid into their homes, especially like with kids or anything. And not that he&#8217;s not trustworthy at all. That is not the thing. Like, he&#8217;s so friendly, and I&#8217;m sure most of my clients would love him. But it&#8217;s like I&#8217;ve never \u2014 I struggled with the idea of like having a male cleaner or hiring future male cleaners. So that&#8217;s why I&#8217;ve kind of like shelved him to the BnBs and the move-outs. I rarely ever take him to a residential. I try to keep like females in that area. So that&#8217;s one thing I struggle with, and I don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s just a me problem, or I&#8217;m just \u2014 sure?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-6\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Sending a Male Cleaner Into Residential Homes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I think let&#8217;s talk about it, the open one. Yeah, no, I think we should talk about this, because I&#8217;m in a lot of cleaning Facebook groups, as many of us are, and I&#8217;ve seen this come up time and time again, right? And I will say firsthand: I have not had a male residential cleaner since the first year of business, and that is not my intention. It is not done intentionally. It is simply we have commercial work, and a hundred percent of the time, the men who apply at my business apply for the commercial work, right? So I would have a male house cleaner. That&#8217;s \u2014 that&#8217;s not an issue to me, but it is a valid fear. However, I think by not facing it head-on, we are only perpetuating, frankly, the stereotype that, one, a man can&#8217;t do a good enough job, or that they can&#8217;t be trusted, you know. And especially the way I see it \u2014 and you put this on your intake form, and I&#8217;m really happy that we&#8217;re talking about this \u2014 is that you have a fear of your clients potentially not wanting a male house cleaner, right? And have you ever asked them? Have you ever asked your regulars, &#8220;What would you think about this?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> I&#8217;ve asked a couple of them, like, &#8220;Is it okay \u2014 where this is going to be like a little bit of a bigger clean \u2014 do you mind if I bring a helper?&#8221; And by the way, he&#8217;s my husband, which he&#8217;s in fact male. And they have all said yes so far, but I have never actually tried to replace me with him for a solo clean. I&#8217;ve never actually replaced me with any of my employees. I&#8217;ve gone to all my cleans. Never sent any of my employees to anybody&#8217;s house by themselves yet, which I know is holding me back, and it&#8217;s burning me out. But I&#8217;m \u2014 I&#8217;m like, my greatest asset is me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh, we got a little control freak on our hands, ladies and gentlemen! And there&#8217;s \u2014 yeah \u2014 but you know what? The thing is, you haven&#8217;t put the systems in place to make it not be so. That&#8217;s what I want to talk through, of like, what needs to occur so that you feel confident that they can do this right? Because it&#8217;s a valid fear if you just give all \u2014 like, here you go, clients off to these other people \u2014 and then if they suck in any way, then it&#8217;s going to prove to you. And that&#8217;s why, like, what you do next \u2014 the next step that you do \u2014 is so crucial, because you&#8217;re either going to show yourself it can be done, or you&#8217;re going to prove to yourself, oh no, it can only be me, I have to be on every job, right? So that&#8217;s why what you&#8217;re about to do is important. Super duper important. So when it comes to the man thing, I think it is 100% valid for a client to say, &#8220;I&#8217;m not comfortable with a male cleaner in my home.&#8221; That is up to that person. So I think what you do is you simply say, this is a male cleaner, you know? I know some listeners might be like, &#8220;That&#8217;s effed up,&#8221; like, blah blah blah. I don&#8217;t think it is. You know, as a woman, I don&#8217;t think that is inappropriate. However, I will say, when I call and hire an electrician, or hire a plumber, or hire \u2014 I&#8217;m getting some work done in my house. I didn&#8217;t once ask if it&#8217;s going to be a man, because it doesn&#8217;t matter, right? So if we allow those service workers in our home with no issue, then what&#8217;s the difference between a cleaner? I understand a cleaner is gonna be here longer. They&#8217;re gonna be, you know, deep, deep in your home, that type of thing. What you certainly could do when you first bring on a client \u2014 if you are going to send your husband \u2014 if it is a mixed gender, like if you send your husband and another one of your employees, I wouldn&#8217;t say anything. I wouldn&#8217;t, because I think that&#8217;s only going to perpetuate, like, oh, we need to like not have men cleaning. But I would say, if you&#8217;re going to send him alone the first time to that house, give a heads up. I think that is courteous. Again, we don&#8217;t know anybody&#8217;s, you know, history and why they may or may not be comfortable with that. So I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s a bad idea. But I would love in the comments, guys, if you guys want to chime in on this topic. I think it&#8217;s a really pertinent one. But yes, tons of companies have fully male cleans. They got two guys going in and cleaning and killing it. And a lot of customers love it, because a lot of times the guys are willing to, you know, nudge a little furniture and vacuum and do some like heavier stuff than ladies would necessarily. So I will say that I think this fear is simply because you haven&#8217;t asked, and so I would just start asking. Communicate. You know, and also, at the end of the day, this is your stinking husband. If my cleaner said, &#8220;Hey, I&#8217;m gonna send my husband,&#8221; I would imagine that he&#8217;s trustworthy, because I trust her, and that would be crazy if, you know, your husband came in and was acting a fool. So yeah, so I think I understand your fear, but I think you just have to full send it. And the beautiful thing is, you&#8217;re already doing what you need to do to transition all your cleaners onto your clients from you, right? So that is the guy thing. Now, when it comes to any cleaning thing. Okay, so the reason that currently you do not feel comfortable sending another cleaner is why? Tell me why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-7\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why It&#8217;s Hard to Hand Off Cleans<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> Mostly because I&#8217;m worried that they won&#8217;t see the things that I see, do the things that I do, connect with the client in the way that I do, and maybe just overall don&#8217;t do as good of a job. And that&#8217;s kind of been reinforced when I went with another cleaner to do an initial clean, and she texted me back and said, &#8220;Hey, this wasn&#8217;t done. I was disappointed in how it was not done properly,&#8221; and whatever. And I was like, &#8220;I&#8217;m so sorry. I&#8217;ll go back for free and I&#8217;ll fix it.&#8221; So I was like, this is why I can never send anybody by themselves, or like, maybe I just need to train better or something like that. And I have other clients \u2014 when I wanted to switch over to like being a business, they&#8217;re like, &#8220;Okay, but if you do and you get people, please, like, only clean my house. I don&#8217;t want anybody else. I don&#8217;t like it when people or companies send other people, and then I have to tell them all over again, like, hey, like, don&#8217;t go to this room, or like, make sure this is done properly.&#8221; And it&#8217;s like, I don&#8217;t know. I just feel better doing it myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I have answers for everything you just said, hun. And I&#8217;m so happy we&#8217;re talking about this, because I believe that probably every single owner-operator, or somebody who used to be an owner-operator like myself, went through exactly what you&#8217;re going through right now. And so how is it that I&#8217;m able to be away from my company? How is that possible, when some of our clients \u2014 I started cleaning their house, I was their cleaner, right? So it can be done, but there \u2014 like, everything you just described, there is a way to do it so that your customers do not receive any lower service. Not only that, what I&#8217;m about to describe allows you to set up your business so that anybody can go into any home and do it to that client&#8217;s satisfaction, right? Because when you think about a scaling business, every single one of my clients, all of them will eventually have another cleaner, right? You are not going to have the same cleaners on every single house until they all die, right? Like, that&#8217;s not going to happen. So if we know that \u2014 as morbid as that is, they&#8217;re all gonna die or they&#8217;re gonna quit, one or the other, right? So, if that is the case&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> But that&#8217;s a really good way, like a really good way, a way of thinking of it that helps me relinquish the control. Or also, like, when I think like that \u2014 if that is the reality of the situation, how do I make it successful within that reality?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> If I say that every single one of your cleaners is going to leave eventually, okay? That&#8217;s a fact. We don&#8217;t know when. But we do know that it&#8217;s going to happen. So how do we make it that Meghan doesn&#8217;t have to be the one cleaning, or Stephanie, or Sally, or whoever else, the owner listening right now? How do we make it that they don&#8217;t have to step in? You know, like, meaning permanently. Of course, temporarily, sometimes you have to, of course, but we want to build the business so that is not necessary. And the way that you do that, there&#8217;s going to be two things \u2014 well, really three things, but let&#8217;s do three things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-8\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Step One: Standardized Checklists<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> So number one is going to be \u2014 I know I&#8217;ve beaten this dead horse, but I&#8217;m gonna beat it again, because it&#8217;s the way \u2014 it&#8217;s going to be standardized checklists. You need to be using checklists. Maybe not you, but all, like, what you do in a home \u2014 if you&#8217;re doing everything, like, completely custom and every single home differently. Like, if you are not working off of &#8220;this is what we do&#8221; and &#8220;this is how we work,&#8221; you&#8217;re not going to be able to scale, because how can another person succeed in that, right? So how do we set up a new person to our company to be successful and actually be able to get what they need to get done, done, and to the level of our expectations? They need to have something to work off of, right? And just think about it. Like, I&#8217;ve always thought \u2014 there&#8217;s a book I read, I believe it&#8217;s called The Power of Habit, potentially. Or, well, I can&#8217;t remember if this is what I&#8217;m thinking, but basically, the fact is, like, surgeons use checklists, right? So if somebody is doing a heart surgery and needs a checklist, why do we think that as cleaners we don&#8217;t? It&#8217;s so integral to making sure that everybody across the board is doing the same thing. So, like, we literally fill out checklists and leave them behind at every cleaning. And I know that sounds tedious. I&#8217;m gonna tell you, your clients are going to feel so much less anxiety when they see that your cleaner did exactly the same list of things that Meghan does. So, if I were you, I&#8217;d implement the checklist on all of your clients right now that you clean yourself. Start doing the checklist, because then, when you do eventually hand it off, and they see \u2014 oh, when Tina comes in and does it, she does the same list as Meghan. Like, she&#8217;s doing the same things. They&#8217;re visualizing. Otherwise, what&#8217;s going to happen if there&#8217;s no checklist? They&#8217;re gonna start looking around and being like, &#8220;What&#8217;s different? What&#8217;s different?&#8221; Whereas if they have the list and they see, they&#8217;re not necessarily gonna do that look around, right? So that&#8217;s gonna be number one. And there are, of course, digital checklists that you can use. I am a fan of the physical checklist still, because of leaving it behind for the client. It also helps you quality check. And for us, we train our cleaners: if you check off that box, it means that we are holding you accountable to that, to our level of standard, right? So it&#8217;s an internal way to control. &#8220;Hey, this is what you&#8217;re held accountable to.&#8221; Because the problem without a checklist, they can say, &#8220;I didn&#8217;t know,&#8221; &#8220;I didn&#8217;t know I was supposed to do that,&#8221; &#8220;I forgot.&#8221; You can&#8217;t forget when you have a literal list. So, when it comes to, like, holding people accountable, I never want them to be able to say, &#8220;I didn&#8217;t know&#8221; or &#8220;I forgot.&#8221; Like, how can we remove that from ever happening? Right. So it&#8217;s just such an integral part, and also, you can sell on it. Like, when we send our estimates or anything, we send the checklist along. So it&#8217;s just \u2014 it&#8217;s useful in about ten different ways, and that&#8217;s why I&#8217;m hammering this. And I think you should start doing it now with all of your clients, so that you can then make that transition easier. So that&#8217;s going to be number one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-9\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Step Two: Client Notes in Your Scheduling Software<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Number two is going to be \u2014 you said you are afraid that they&#8217;re not going to know things about the client. You are right. They are not going to know things about the client, about that house, or &#8220;don&#8217;t go in that room.&#8221; The dog&#8217;s name is, you know, Jeffy, or whatever you said before we started recording. They&#8217;re not going to know these things. They&#8217;re not going to know that this client is very particular about the corners of the floors or the shower grout, or whatever, right? And that is setting our clean \u2014 it&#8217;s not their fault. It&#8217;s not the cleaner&#8217;s fault. It&#8217;s our fault, because we&#8217;re not giving them the information that they need. And this is where a software comes in. A scheduling software is built for this. Client notes are built for this. And of course, you can simply text them to the cleaner. Not a good idea, because that&#8217;s not scalable. We want to be able to set it once and have one universal source of truth, which for us, of course, is going to be our ZenMaid notes. And every single client note has the same exact information. And every time a client communicates something, whether to their cleaner who&#8217;s standing in front of them or to us in the office, it goes into the notes, so that \u2014 the way I see it, somebody&#8217;s gonna call in sick. Maybe that cleaner doesn&#8217;t leave, but maybe they&#8217;re sick. And we always tell our cleaners, at the end of each appointment, they&#8217;re supposed to sit and update any notes with new things. Right. Let us know if there is anything new or different, and we&#8217;re really trying to emphasize the team aspect of it all. Of course, these notes are so that your teammate can come in and do the clean just as well as you, and set them up for success. And you know you can get that back from them. And that is a huge opportunity for you to scale, but then not have inconsistency or incongruency, because there&#8217;s nothing worse. So what your client said \u2014 the reason they don&#8217;t want somebody else coming in \u2014 they didn&#8217;t say it&#8217;s because it&#8217;s a different person. They said it&#8217;s because they don&#8217;t want to explain themselves again. So we don&#8217;t forget that first part, but we listen to the actual problem: they&#8217;re sick of repeating themselves. So just don&#8217;t make them repeat themselves, right? You know, all of those things \u2014 yeah, you know, everything about the house, right? And then on your intake process, how can we build our intake process so that all of a sudden they never have to repeat themselves again? Right. It&#8217;s by having good client notes and just making sure the cleaner has access to said notes, right? So that&#8217;s going to be the second thing, and then, of course, quality checking and communication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-10\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Step Three: Quality Checks and Communication<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Right, so for us, if we have to switch, how we transition \u2014 like when I transitioned all of my clients, because I had clients who were like, &#8220;Stephanie, it&#8217;s you or nobody,&#8221; right? Like, and I was just like, okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> Right. They&#8217;re not willing to pay for another person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yes. And so they said, like \u2014 I&#8217;ve had clients say that, be like, &#8220;I&#8217;m not willing to pay the amount I pay you for somebody else.&#8221; Well, that&#8217;s kind of not nice to somebody else. They don&#8217;t know how great that somebody else is. So here&#8217;s the thing: they&#8217;re attached, which I totally understand. But what you could do is just to lessen \u2014 like, the first step. There&#8217;s a few \u2014 like, this is not a, just, like, dump them. You know, that&#8217;s not what I&#8217;m suggesting. What I would suggest is, could we cut your cleaning time in half by bringing somebody with you? Right, so these four-hour appointments all of a sudden take two clock hours. It&#8217;s still the same price, because it&#8217;s four labor hours, right? So, right, that will get you literally half of your field time down, right? And then after two to three times, do you need to run and leave early? And communicate that to the client, like, &#8220;Hey, she&#8217;s seen your house three times. You know, I got really double booked,&#8221; or what? Somebody else \u2014 &#8220;I&#8217;m gonna have her do the last hour,&#8221; right? And just slowly start that transition. And all of a sudden, especially when you have that checklist and\/or you come back around and quality check, do whatever you need to do to make them feel comfortable, of saying, &#8220;Hey, Tina did the clean by herself. I quality checked at the end. I thought it was fantastic. Of course, I want to hear: is there anything specific?&#8221; And if they cannot articulate anything, they&#8217;re just like, &#8220;It&#8217;s not Meghan.&#8221; Well then, they&#8217;re just being a control freak. Because my very last client that I had on me \u2014 I kept her for a year past every other client, because, well, one, she tipped fucking good, so I didn&#8217;t want to. Like, always gave me, like, great shit, like $100 every other week, or whatever it was. And she \u2014 like, my whole office was outfitted from her house, because, I mean, they had a movie theater in their house. Like, they are \u2014 they&#8217;re incredible. They&#8217;re still clients to this day. And she was like, &#8220;Stephanie, I don&#8217;t want anybody else.&#8221; And actually, she was one of my first clients that I gave to my very first cleaner, who all of you guys have heard the story about. Well, she was shit-tastic, right? And so it, like \u2014 she was like, &#8220;I don&#8217;t want anybody, only you, Stephanie.&#8221; So, like, she had a bad experience with my company, that I stayed on her for years, and then I was finally like, I cannot \u2014 like, I just can&#8217;t do this, right? Like, I can&#8217;t clean anymore. Okay, this is what is happening. And she came with me multiple times. I said, &#8220;Kelly, like, this is \u2014 you know, you&#8217;re getting this person. I cannot clean anymore. Okay, this is what is happening.&#8221; And she \u2014 so she wanted the owner. She wanted the owner in her house. It was very much like, &#8220;I&#8217;m special. I get the owner.&#8221; And she is special. She&#8217;s fabulous, but she can&#8217;t have me, right? So, so it&#8217;s something they&#8217;re going to say to you, and as long as you put these protective mechanisms in place \u2014 they&#8217;re worried about quality. They&#8217;re worried about annoying communication. They&#8217;re worried about not being trustworthy. They&#8217;re worried about somebody skipping out and not showing up, right? But you&#8217;re the backup all of a sudden, right? So you have backups in place, that type of thing. So all of a sudden, Meghan can be the backup now, and then you&#8217;re doing quality checks and just doing a really good job of that. And then if you do ever have to switch a cleaner on a client, we always communicate, so \u2014 we&#8217;ve learned the hard way, people do get attached to their cleaners. So if we&#8217;re sending a new cleaner, we do give them a heads up, because \u2014 like, &#8220;Hey, Amber called out today. She is sick. We&#8217;re gonna send Ashley. Just so you know,&#8221; you know? Like, just as a courtesy. And that&#8217;s what that looks like. And so your marketing and messaging going forward needs to be: every single person is held to the high standard of my company, and this is why we follow standardized checklists, so every clean is done at the exact same high level, right? Like, that&#8217;s how we sell at Serene Clean, so that nobody ever expects that it&#8217;s gonna be me showing up. So, your current clients know this. This current cohort of clients that you have are going to be the most difficult, because they&#8217;ve had you, all right? You get a new client, yes, send somebody else in, or, like, what I would suggest: you and this other cleaner go to the first-time clean, and that becomes their regular client. That&#8217;s how I would do it, because, of course, you&#8217;re going to need multiple cleaners on the first clean. And then, this is Tina&#8217;s client, and you load Tina&#8217;s schedule up until she&#8217;s good. And then, you hire somebody new, and you just repeat until you&#8217;re feeling confident enough to not go to those first-times at all, right? So I&#8217;m not saying this is an immediate thing, but you absolutely can put things in place to make this happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> Yeah, I definitely think we&#8217;re on the verge of transitioning into something like this. Because I did send my very first cleaner to her first clean by herself, because I wasn&#8217;t available, but she had been to that place like four times with me already, so she already knew her way around, and then I just kind of ran around at the end of it and just double-checked. But I think, again, that&#8217;s where the checklist would be helpful, because I&#8217;m kind of looking around, I&#8217;m like, oh, she does what I do, but for some reason there&#8217;s something \u2014 I can&#8217;t put my finger on it. It&#8217;s not what I would have done. It looked \u2014 looks good, but it&#8217;s not exactly how it looks when I&#8217;m finished with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> And the nice thing about a software is, if there&#8217;s a particular way that you like things done \u2014 like, whatever it is that you&#8217;re having a hard time putting your finger on \u2014 take a picture of that room, attach it in those client notes, of like, this is what it should look like at the end. Like, we&#8217;ve had to do that for some clients with the way they want their beds made, because they&#8217;re particular. Like, this is what the bed should look like at the end, right? And we have \u2014 yeah, we have that, exactly. So it&#8217;s just like, again, how can we make it so that anybody could go in \u2014 if they can clean, they can be successful in this home, right? Because it&#8217;s not just cleaning stuff. It&#8217;s like, &#8220;Hey, you weren&#8217;t supposed to lock the door,&#8221; or, &#8220;You didn&#8217;t lock the door,&#8221; or all of the things around cleaning that make it difficult to have people in your home and trust them. Right? Like, my cleaners \u2014 I love them very much, but they had a new cleaner in my house last week Monday, and she left the door cracked when she left, and I didn&#8217;t realize, because I was in a meeting, and I hyperventilated. When I say I lost my shit and ran around my house counting my pets \u2014 because I have, you know, I have like four animals \u2014 and then I&#8217;m like, &#8220;Hey, she did a great job, but please.&#8221; And she also did break shit in my house that day, so she was having a rough day, but I&#8217;m like, make sure that never happens again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-11\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Door Codes, Trust, and Hiring<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> Yes. So, yeah, that&#8217;s the other thing, too. Like, I&#8217;m scared to give out door codes to all these people, like, that they know and can access my clients&#8217; houses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> So if you are scared of that, then you shouldn&#8217;t hire that person. If you think you can&#8217;t trust them with a door code, then they shouldn&#8217;t be in your company. You know what I mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> Oh, it&#8217;s not that I don&#8217;t trust them. I&#8217;m just worried that my clients would be like, &#8220;Well, I don&#8217;t want local people having my door key.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I gotcha! I don&#8217;t like \u2014 well, I also understand. So, are you doing background checks or anything on these people? Like, how are you doing? Like, vibes? That&#8217;s okay. We&#8217;re cool with vibes too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> Yeah, yeah, I don&#8217;t even&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Do you like to do an interview, per se?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> I do what I call a trial clean. They still get paid for it, but I get there and I like kind of get a feel for their work ethic. I try to talk to them and see, like, how good are they with like compatibility, I guess. Like, how well they work with me, how do they take instruction? And if it like goes well that first time \u2014 they show up on time, they&#8217;re really good, they&#8217;re thorough, they&#8217;re receptive to feedback \u2014 then I&#8217;m like, okay, well, let&#8217;s keep going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-12\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why Clients Choose a Company Over an Individual Cleaner<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> You know, I understand their hesitancy, but every cleaning company in the history of all cleaning companies that has ever had an employee, they have to get into the house somehow, and that&#8217;s how. And the thing about hiring a company is they get to come after you if something goes wrong, right? Like, and that sounds bad as the owner, but it&#8217;s like, say that \u2014 like, listen, if any \u2014 insurance, that&#8217;s what it&#8217;s for. I do not think that&#8217;s going to happen, but God forbid! That&#8217;s why you hire a company, to protect yourself from that. And actually, as twisted as it is, the thing about hiring a company is we&#8217;ve got insurance. We have these things in place to protect you as the homeowner if something were to happen. So, again, your current group of people \u2014 like, when I think of all the clients that started with me, one, the prices were like half of what they are. So, we only have probably five or six that are still with us, if not less, honestly. Yeah, probably even less, because eventually they move on. They got pretty much an individual cleaner in me, even though I was a business, and now they all moved on to individual cleaners, because that&#8217;s what they want. And there are so many clients out there that they don&#8217;t need that, right? And if they do want that, they can go get an individual cleaner, right? And so when it comes to, like, your marketing and messaging, you really need to oomph up what makes it worthwhile for them to not go for an individual cleaner. Right. Because all of these things that they like about it, you can answer those. That we can actually \u2014 those, a lot of them are weaknesses, right? Because when Meghan&#8217;s sick, guess whose house doesn&#8217;t get cleaned? Those clients, right? Because that&#8217;s what happens with an individual cleaner. They have to get rescheduled, right? Like, they \u2014 and so, and there&#8217;s so many other reasons why, you know, a company is fantastic. But until you can, number one, articulate, but two, actually stand behind it, right? So adding these little things in place, right \u2014 like client guidelines, like employee documents, policies, procedures, checklists. Once you add those things, all of a sudden you can, like, sell on that, of like, yeah, it&#8217;s a machine. Like, we got this. So everything that you just said about how you feel and how the client feels is valid, but there&#8217;s also an answer and a solution for it. It doesn&#8217;t just say, well, I guess we can&#8217;t \u2014 we can&#8217;t ever do anything about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-13\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Growing Clientele Beyond Word of Mouth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> Yeah, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. And right now, like, I have to grow my clientele a lot more if I want to start handing off some of my cleans to other cleaners. Because right now, we&#8217;re trying to make sure that the bills are paid and that we have enough for like monthly expenses and stuff. So clientele needs to grow. Like, we need to scale, for sure. And I&#8217;m like, how do I do that? I don&#8217;t post a lot on social media. I know I do need to, and I&#8217;ve considered trying to do like targeted ads, like to my specific area, which has a very high need for cleaners. But a lot of them are like, oh, solo cleaner, or they just \u2014 it&#8217;s hard to find somebody to trust. So I&#8217;m like, how do I make it as easy as possible to, like, get myself out there? Do I do \u2014 do I do door knocking? Do I do cold calling? Do I send emails? And I&#8217;ve tried a little bit of all of them, and so far only word of mouth has worked, and Facebook groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Okay, so number one, those two avenues are always going to be there for you, even seven years in. Word of mouth is still our second highest lead procurement avenue, so that&#8217;s always going to exist. Facebook will always exist. Facebook is still our third, even though we don&#8217;t have a ton of community groups like you guys probably do in your area. We&#8217;re just so rural, but I know they&#8217;re an amazing avenue. However, we cannot rely on word of mouth to be steady. We also can&#8217;t rely on Facebook groups to be steady, right? It can be very sporadic. What I did notice \u2014 because, of course, I take a little peek at all of my guests before they are on. I looked online. I looked at your website. I looked at your online presence, that type of thing, and correct me if I&#8217;m wrong. Do you have a Google My Business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> I do not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-14\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why Google My Business Comes First<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> This is where we should start. Okay, because it&#8217;s completely free. And when it comes to people who are searching for a company, they are most likely to Google. They \u2014 they are in the mood. They are researching. They&#8217;re not just posting on Facebook. They may post on Facebook, right? Absolutely. But that&#8217;s because \u2014 getting clients via Facebook group, if I could speak \u2014 Facebook group is individual cleaner behavior. Not saying companies cannot get clients that way, but the powerhouse is always going to be Google My Business and our website, right? So you need to get verified through Google My Business ASAP, so that&#8217;s how you show up in the maps. Because when I looked up cleaning companies in your area \u2014 I mean, the cleaners they do have, you&#8217;ve got competition, of course \u2014 but many of them that are showing up, they got six five-star Google reviews. The next one&#8217;s a hundred. 2017. The next one&#8217;s 87. So if Stephanie were to go look for a cleaner, I&#8217;d Google, and this is who would pop up. You&#8217;re not even showing up, right? And those people are highly \u2014 like, they \u2014 if you&#8217;re Googling, you&#8217;re actually thinking about it. You&#8217;re reaching out for quotes, right? So, like, you&#8217;re just not even showing up, and so \u2014 you&#8217;re literally cutting off the main head of the dragon when it comes to leads. So, I would do that first thing. And the beautiful thing about Google My Business is, like I said, it is free, and you can post on it just like you would social media. So what I want you to do is immediately do that. Get all of your clients to leave you a review on there. Like, every single client. Like, I don&#8217;t care what you need to get them to leave a review. Harass them, stand out in their driveway with, like, a knife or something. I don&#8217;t know. Don&#8217;t actually do that. A mob, a mob! Don&#8217;t leave me alone. So get those Google reviews, and then start uploading images and videos every single week on it. Treat it like social media. Right, and this is something I see so many companies do wrong, and if I click into your competitors, they&#8217;re doing it wrong too. The before \u2014 now, okay, so this one&#8217;s doing it okay, but most of them don&#8217;t do it. Okay, which is, they upload on Google My Business, you hit upload on the photos, right? And you select your before and you select your after, thinking, great, they&#8217;ll be next to each other, they&#8217;ll see your work. No, that&#8217;s not how it works at Google. They put them randomly, so all of a sudden you just got a bunch of dirty toilet pictures, and you don&#8217;t have the afters anywhere to be seen. So go into Canva, pick a template that&#8217;s your brand colors, put your logo on it, put the before and after in the photo, right? Boom. You probably already do that. Okay, good to know. Yes, because otherwise it&#8217;s gonna fling them all over the place. So do that. Pictures of you and your cleaners, and this is going to help a ton. If your husband&#8217;s gonna be in this thing, he needs to be in this thing. Meaning you guys as a couple, that I can trust you, need to be on Google My Business. You need to be on your website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-15\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Website Feedback: Show Clients Why You<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> So, moving on to your website. Obviously, get video reviews. I&#8217;ve made content about video reviews. Go watch those. But your pictures on your website are gorgeous. First off, that house with the spiral staircase \u2014 I could die! It&#8217;s stunning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> Thank you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I want to live in that house. It&#8217;s like totally my style.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> One of our B&amp;Bs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah. It&#8217;s stunning. It&#8217;s gorgeous. So what I will say about your website is that, one, there is no strong, like, offer or no-brainer offer. So, if you&#8217;re willing to do an offer that, like, to incentivize people, go get that free quote, right? Number two, I would move up your \u2014 you do have some proof, like social proof, it looks like. I would move that above the fold. So &#8220;What our clients say,&#8221; move that right under your main banner, because that&#8217;s what people see first, and then get into your &#8220;Our recent work&#8221; and &#8220;Our services,&#8221; that type of thing. And just for the structure of the homepage, number seven, whatever I&#8217;m \u2014 I don&#8217;t even know what number I&#8217;m on. You guys need to be on this website, and about you. Who is Meghan? Who is your husband? Why do you guys care about this? What makes you different and special? Because when I&#8217;m hiring somebody to come into my house, I want to know about them. Why \u2014 you know, like, why should I hire you, of all of these options? Because every single person says that they&#8217;re reliable, detailed, affordable, and customized cleaning solutions. So nothing on your website is screaming &#8220;why you.&#8221; You know, so I think it needs to scream &#8220;why you.&#8221; Also, I love your colors. Pink and orange are gorgeous together. So I really&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> Thank you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, I think that you&#8217;ve got a good baseline. What I would do is I would go to Claude, or whatever your AI of choice is, and do a full website audit. Did you build your website yourself?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> No, my brother-in-law did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Okay, well, tell your brother to go hook it up to Claude using an MCP. Okay, so this is a little thing I want to make a whole YouTube video on, but I recently hooked up AI to my website to rebuild it and redesign the whole thing, and Claude can literally do it for you. It&#8217;s amazing with the plugin, but I digress. That&#8217;s a side note. The thing is, I want to see pictures of you guys, because that&#8217;s what&#8217;s going to make this stand out. Additionally, when it comes to your services, they&#8217;re not selling me. They&#8217;re not selling me, because it&#8217;s just a blurb about our services: residential cleaning, regular home cleaning, kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms, and living spaces. Cool. That&#8217;s what Sally with a cigarette can do off of Facebook, right? So, like, this is where the checklist \u2014 no offense to Sally or anybody who&#8217;s smoking. But how do we stand out so we can charge more than Sally? We need to list what we&#8217;re going to do. What are Meghan&#8217;s packages? What is a deep cleaning? What&#8217;s different? Because when I go to get a quote from you, it says &#8220;Select a service.&#8221; I don&#8217;t even know what I want, because I don&#8217;t know what&#8217;s included, right? So, I want you to specifically list out, once you get your checklist figured out, what is going to be included in every package, so that it&#8217;s unambiguous. Understood. And one that&#8217;s good for SEO, too, is to get some more content on these. So I would love to see pages for each of these services. Like, you should have a page for each of these, so that will help. And then finally, your quote \u2014 your quote request. I would add more to your form if possible, because it&#8217;s not saying anything about why do they need this? Like, &#8220;Describe your cleaning needs,&#8221; but what is stressing you out? Like, what we like to do in our request form is to get at the emotion of it, because there&#8217;s probably some emotions. If this is a residential cleaning client \u2014 or, well, commercial too \u2014 everybody&#8217;s got feelings, because they&#8217;re pissed off about something, right? And we want to know, so that when you call them, you are prepared to fulfill that need, right? Like, what&#8217;s the worst thing that&#8217;s happened? Like, why is this so stressful for you to do this yourself, or what are you frustrated with your current cleaner, or whatever is going on, right? So also, I&#8217;d love to see some, like, you know, bedrooms, bathrooms, that type of thing. I know that you would go do walkthroughs, but it would be cool for you to be prepared. Maybe you do calls \u2014 you know, you call people immediately \u2014 but it is nice to get a little bit more context on the form. But, you know, that&#8217;s a lesser thing. So I know I just did, like, a basic website thing, but I was like, I want to tell you all of these things, since we&#8217;re talking about procuring clients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> Yes, absolutely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-16\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Building Trust With Video Content<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> And then, of course, your personality \u2014 and you are adorable. You should be on video. Like, you should be on video talking about your business: why people should hire a cleaner. It doesn&#8217;t need to be why they should hire you. Why should they hire a cleaner? Like, what is it about it that&#8217;s so wonderful? Like, we can all probably talk about that for hours. So start doing that. Turn that into little clips. It doesn&#8217;t have to be fancy. Just, &#8220;Hey, I&#8217;m Meghan. I own this cleaning company, and these are the top three reasons I think people should hire a house cleaner.&#8221; List it out. Post. Oh, cringey? Yeah, I know, but you know what&#8217;s beyond cringe? Money, guys. Get over \u2014 like, go make money. Dude, you have to! You have to! And you don&#8217;t have to. I mean, obviously, people are being successful without making video content. But the reason I&#8217;m suggesting it: you don&#8217;t have social proof. So if you don&#8217;t have social proof to show to make people trust you, the only other option to make them trust you is \u2014 either one, word of mouth, which is social proof, so throw that over there in that bucket \u2014 is seeing you, is hearing you, right? So if you can only build trust these two ways, right? And right now you don&#8217;t really have this one, so you have to do this one while you build this one up. As you build this one up, you don&#8217;t have to do this one as much, because all of a sudden your reviews are doing that work. But if the goal for you is, I need to grow this thing so that we&#8217;re making money again \u2014 you&#8217;re going to keep getting word-of-mouth clients. That&#8217;s great, but the word-of-mouth clients are going to be like, &#8220;Meghan is so great,&#8221; not &#8220;Your cleaning company is so great.&#8221; And we don&#8217;t necessarily mean we want that. But if the goal is for you to be out of the field, then we can&#8217;t have it just be like, &#8220;You gotta have Meghan. No, Meghan&#8217;s the best,&#8221; right? Like, that&#8217;s not what we necessarily want for your big scaling endeavor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> That makes a lot of sense. Thank you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-17\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Finishing School While Running the Business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yes. And then as for school, I wanna ask you, because you are unsure what you want to do. So, what are you going to school for, and what does that look like when it comes to time, and what the goal is here?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> So I&#8217;m kind of in a little bit of a multidisciplinary degree. I started in music. I&#8217;m a piano player and singer, and I did that for about three years before I was like, sick and tired of going to music classes only, when I have so many other interests. So I switched to a general bachelor of arts with a focus in religious studies, English, and Indigenous Studies, because I&#8217;m part Indigenous. I&#8217;m part Cree, actually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> That&#8217;s amazing!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> You can&#8217;t tell it because of the white, yeah. Not my mom&#8217;s white, so yeah. I&#8217;m doing that, and I only have a year and a half left. And like, now that I&#8217;ve started the business, I&#8217;m like, great. How am I gonna find the time to be able to go back? Even if I step back from cleaning and I&#8217;m just, like, taking over admin kind of thing, I still have to be available. But I guess that&#8217;s where my husband would come in, because then he&#8217;d be home all the time. But yeah, but again, like, can I achieve that before the winter semester starts? And I don&#8217;t know if I can. Maybe I&#8217;m gonna have to wait till next fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Okay, so I got it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> And I&#8217;m not in a rush. I still want to finish it. Like, it&#8217;s still a major priority for me. I&#8217;m just unsure of when, like, the timing, and how do I prioritize what I&#8217;m doing right now to get to that point?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-18\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Pie Analogy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> So when it comes to \u2014 you mentioned that there is some money of it all, and this \u2014 I&#8217;m going to always come back to this analogy: that the money is like a pie, right? Every client that we get is a pie, and right now, when you or your husband is cleaning, your household is taking the majority of that pie home. Of course, there&#8217;s the taxes and all of the other expenses, right? But you&#8217;re not paying a cleaner, right? And as soon as we pay a cleaner who is not you or your husband, most of that pie goes to the employees \u2014 not you, you know \u2014 that would have gone to you for the cleaning portion, because you guys are only taking the owner&#8217;s slice of the pie, right? Which is a smaller slice. So then we have to add more pies in order for our slices to equal what it used to be. So that being said, you have something that a lot of people don&#8217;t have, which is a fantastic husband who is willing to do cleaning. And so if he is cleaning, that income is still coming to your household, right? So that&#8217;s not a normal situation, and that can fulfill your guys&#8217; financial needs and get you out of the field. So, if I were you, and I&#8217;m like, okay, I gotta still make this money as we grow the business and fulfill these cleaning hours, then I would be transitioning as many of my clients \u2014 meaning yours \u2014 onto your husband, and that will immediately open you up. So, I mean, how many hours are you cleaning a week?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> Oh, this is what I wanted to ask you about, another thing, is that I have open availability Monday to Sunday, and almost always it&#8217;s getting filled up, and I try not to book myself more than two houses per day, but sometimes that&#8217;s not always possible. So I just fit it all in one week and I cram it, and then I just hope that I can get help for one or two of the cleans. And then my poor husband is doing the Airbnbs, and I&#8217;m not available to help him, because I&#8217;m booked with residential cleans. So I&#8217;m struggling to find a balance where, okay, this is going to be a day off, and it has to be, but then we have Airbnbs that are like, no, we have weekend ones, and sometimes we have weekday ones, and I can&#8217;t say no to those, per se. So, okay, I don&#8217;t know how to get me and my husband days off at this point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-19\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Protecting a Day Off<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Okay, so I think what you should do is pick a day for each of you. It may not be the same day. I mean, again, you&#8217;re the one who&#8217;s not saying no. That&#8217;s the thing, is keep that in mind. And I say that as somebody who couldn&#8217;t say no. But would I \u2014 I will say what I would do: protect one day a week for you guys. I would, because I think you&#8217;re gonna \u2014 do you \u2014 do you have kids?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> No.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Fabulous, fantastic! This is great. No offense to all you people with kids, but, like, it&#8217;s a lot easier without them, right? Because you guys don&#8217;t have them anytime soon, you can just go balls to the walls, right? Which is fantastic. So, so what I would do is sit him down and be like, &#8220;What day do you want?&#8221; Right. And if he&#8217;s doing Airbnbs on the weekends, maybe it&#8217;s a Tuesday that he has off, right? And, like, you protect that at all costs, no matter what. He gets Tuesdays off, or whatever the thing is, or afternoons, or whatever. Like, a couple afternoons, whatever that looks like. And you pick one day for you that you protect at all costs, and that doesn&#8217;t get booked. If that is Saturday, fantastic, right? Or, or whatever. Because then you&#8217;re not both out there cleaning, whatever. You guys want to decide. Now, I think that if you are telling me that you are able to book yourself solid, you are telling me that you are cleaning 40 hours a week minimum, right? Like, from the sounds of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> I&#8217;m able to book one to two houses per day, Monday to Friday. Okay, so, and then I help my husband on the weekends, which usually averages three BnBs per day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Okay, got it. So what I would suggest is \u2014 is he cleaning during the week, or is that just BnBs right now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> It is during the week. Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Okay, yeah. Which happens \u2014 of course, flips happen during the week. So when he is not cleaning BnBs, if he is willing to clean more, which it sounds like he is, have him start coming to all of your cleans. Or one of your other cleaners come to all of your cleans. You need to get some of these clients transitioned. If you transition them to him, and then his day is booked, you guys are still bringing in that money into your house, right? That is number one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-20\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Raising Prices Over Time<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Number two, I think you could raise some prices. I think you can price higher, because clearly you are booking people. Like, what you could do is simply have \u2014 if you could have three clients making you the money of five current clients, but it&#8217;s less clients, that is the ideal. We want to be able to price ourselves as high as we can. Like, it&#8217;s a tipping point, right? But it&#8217;s so much easier to keep, you know, the three clients happy than five clients, or ten versus thirty. You know what I mean? Like, you&#8217;re not going to book everybody, and that&#8217;s okay, because you&#8217;re making more money with less work, and that allows you then to pay cleaners \u2014 like, all of the things that come from higher prices, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> Yeah, and I actually just switched over to like flat rate for all my new clients, which I know that you recommended. And now that&#8217;s averaging about fifty to like sixty dollars per hour, but my older clients that I&#8217;ve had for a couple years, they&#8217;re still at forty, and I don&#8217;t want to change. I mean, I do want to change it, but I just changed it from thirty-five to forty, and that was the one that&#8217;s like, &#8220;Well, I don&#8217;t want to pay more than that if it&#8217;s not going to be you,&#8221; and I&#8217;m like, but you&#8217;re at forty, and everybody else is at like&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, they don&#8217;t even know. And so this is another reason I&#8217;m telling you this right now, to prepare for this, is that most of your clients now will not be your clients in two years, because in comparison to what you started them at, it feels unreasonably high. All of your new clients don&#8217;t know the difference, and they&#8217;re already higher, right? And, like, so when I look again, why don&#8217;t I have all of those clients? Not only because I&#8217;m not cleaning for them, but because they started at thirty dollars an hour. Our new clients are at sixty dollars an hour, right? So, like, for maintenance cleans. And so, so there is no fucking way I could ask somebody who paid thirty to pay sixty, like, and then be okay with that, because it&#8217;s double what they think was a fair value. Right? So it&#8217;s just that \u2014 the context of it all. So I just want you to know that I&#8217;m not suggesting that you, like, go raise all these prices right now, because you just did. But know that there will come a time, and that time is going to be when you are successfully booking clients in at fifty or sixty dollars an hour consistently, and you&#8217;re out of space. And what we need to do is look at every single tech \u2014 how much money could we make out of one tech? Like, looking at your husband&#8217;s time, how can we make as much money as possible out of his time? And if there&#8217;s no more spots, well, all of a sudden we gotta start looking at these types of things. So just keep that in mind. You don&#8217;t need to do it now, but it will have to happen eventually for you guys to keep growing, and it will just happen naturally if you do price increases right. And I would suggest yearly price increases. That&#8217;s what we&#8217;re doing, is every single year now, like, we just make it known, like, we do price increases, right, or at least start looking at them. You know? So I think what I would do for you guys is he should start coming to all of your cleans, and\/or even a couple days a week, transition them onto him. That starts to open you up. Let&#8217;s see, when does the next winter semester start?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> It&#8217;s September now. The September semester already started. By winter, I mean, like, in January.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-21\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">What If It Had to Work?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh yeah, girl. This can happen. Yeah, no question at all. I think this can absolutely \u2014 oh yeah! Oh, no question at all. Okay, let me tell you one thing: I talk to people all the time who stop cleaning within a month, right? Like, because they have to. They&#8217;re about to pop out a baby, right? So just pretend you&#8217;re about to pop out a baby, and then you must \u2014 you must get it done, right? And so, like, there&#8217;s no choice. Like, right now, you&#8217;re giving yourself the option that it could not work. What if it had to work? Like, what if it had to work? Then all of a sudden, we stop thinking, like, &#8220;Well, I just won&#8217;t,&#8221; because you&#8217;re going to keep kicking that can down the road, girl, and then it&#8217;s going to be the next semester, and it&#8217;s going to be the next semester, because you&#8217;re scared. And I understand your fear, but there&#8217;s solutions to literally every aspect of your fear, and you don&#8217;t have to load your husband completely up, because Airbnbs are volatile. You have other cleaners. You have people who could take these hours right now. I know financially you can&#8217;t give them all to them right now, but you have your husband that can do a hybrid, right? Take some of them. That keeps the money in-house for you guys. You have these other cleaners, but you got some great ones, sounds like. Well, there you go! Like, literally, we could clear this thing out, but you have to get the structure in place. You have to get the checklist. You have to have a \u2014 you know. We&#8217;re gonna be \u2014 really talk about training, but like, you have to have that transition go well. At least go to every client&#8217;s house twice, and then immediately quality check the first clean \u2014 the first clean that they are on themselves. Go QC it, right? So if you can be diligent about this transition period, then you can set yourself up for success and not have them come back. And finally, if you do not have a scheduling software \u2014 I&#8217;m not even going to say necessarily ZenMaid, even though I think it&#8217;s the best \u2014 you need to get a scheduling software, because the client notes are where you dump everything. Next time you go to every single client&#8217;s house, I want you to put everything about that client down, like, on a piece of paper. Text it to yourself. I don&#8217;t care how you do it. Like, keep the note.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> That one&#8217;s already done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Okay. Awesome. Excellent. So&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> I do have an amazing scheduling software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yes, fantastic! So you&#8217;re already there. Just make sure that as you bring new clients on, you keep that discipline with the notes, and as things change, make sure you tell your cleaners to update the notes, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-22\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Client Guidelines, Signed Policies, and Protection<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> So I think \u2014 I think this can absolutely happen. You need to get card on file. You need to start getting client guidelines signed. If you do not get them signed \u2014 even if you say, &#8220;Hey, by getting this email, you acknowledge it&#8221; \u2014 like, it&#8217;s probably not going to stand up, and they&#8217;re gonna be pissed. So I recommend getting things signed. We use SignRequest. It&#8217;s eight dollars a month. I&#8217;ve used it for years. It&#8217;s like DocuSign, electronic signing, so you don&#8217;t have to do this all by paper. If you want to see our client guidelines, it&#8217;s literally right on our website. You can click on Serene Clean&#8217;s website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> Okay, I would love to, because I have no idea how&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh yeah, write up \u2014 absolutely, go steal everything! I don&#8217;t care. They&#8217;re there for ya, and anybody else listening. Our client guidelines are there, and of course, everybody is different. Like, your policies are probably different, but the thing is, you probably don&#8217;t have a lot of these policies, so it&#8217;s going to make you think, &#8220;Oh shit! I don&#8217;t have that. What do I want for this?&#8221; And then as for your employee documents, same thing. Obviously, I have lots of them. You are in Canada. Things are a little bit different. Of course, their employment laws are much more stringent than the U.S., so it&#8217;s not a bad idea to consult with a one-off attorney, employment type of stuff, just to make sure, because it&#8217;s a different country. I don&#8217;t want to recommend you anything that&#8217;s not correct. However, again, if you&#8217;re going to grow, it&#8217;s just to protect you. You know? Because if they&#8217;re gonna do it \u2014 like, cleaners are \u2014 if there&#8217;s a will, there&#8217;s a way for them to try to fuck you over. You know, not even intentionally, right? You need to set yourself up for success, because you don&#8217;t know the next psycho coming through the door. You don&#8217;t, right? And they could really try to screw you up. So getting your policies in place and getting them signed is, like, the first step of protection. And I&#8217;m assuming you already are insured, but just making sure the insurance is there, so that protective level. But truly, when I think about, like, you being out of the field, it&#8217;s checklist, quality control that&#8217;s systematic, training, communication, and reminders, that type of stuff. Leaving the checklist behind. Like, that&#8217;s it. You know what I mean? And just telling you, like, it doesn&#8217;t \u2014 it&#8217;s not&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> It&#8217;s a dream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, it&#8217;s a reality. I promise you, it can. It can. And it&#8217;s like, try one client, and then try another. Like, this week \u2014 it is a Tuesday. Can your husband come to a clean later this week with you? Right? Can you talk to that client and be like, &#8220;Hey, he&#8217;s going to be taking over the clean after next. Just \u2014 I just want you to know he&#8217;s going to be following this checklist just like I do. This is what I do in your house, but I want to make sure he does it the exact same way. And then I&#8217;m gonna check in on that first clean to make sure you&#8217;re happy. Sound like a plan?&#8221; Cool. And then do it like that. That&#8217;s what it needs to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> Okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> You got this, girl! I know you can do this. I know you can do it. Is there anything else that comes to mind before we wrap up?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> I don&#8217;t think so. No, we kind of went over everything. Like, my biggest thing was the policies and the checklist, which I will definitely be creating now. Definitely be checking out your client policy as well, because I have no idea how to do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-23\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Final Advice and Where to Find Meghan<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Remember, AI is your best friend, girl. I mean, obviously I&#8217;m not going to say AI everything, but it can be a great brainstorm and start. What I like to do is, like, have a kind of prompting session with, like, &#8220;This is what I&#8217;m thinking. Like, is there any gaps in what \u2014 like, what other things could I put into this? Like, ask me questions about how I want to run my company and the policies,&#8221; and then you just start speaking into your phone, and it can put it together, of, like, what you want it to be. So yeah, there&#8217;s just so many things in place that can make these things easier, and they really just start making your brand more personal. Get Google My Business verified. It can be a little annoying to get verified. I understand that, but it&#8217;s so worth it. Just don&#8217;t give up on it if it gives you trouble. Keep trying, because it is \u2014 like, it is going to be the lifeblood of leads as you continue to grow. And yeah, get those client reviews. But yeah, you&#8217;re killing it, girl! I know that you can do this, and you care very deeply about your clients&#8217; experience, which is going to come through in how you handle this. But what happens in the next couple months is gonna really change the trajectory of things. I know you can go back to school and get this done. I believe in you. And oh! Oh, last thing: make sure you&#8217;re not using your cell phone. If you are currently using your cell phone number, you need a business number, because the only, like&#8230; I know, I see your face right now. Okay? To our listeners, I see that guilty little face. Go sign up for OpenPhone, which is now Quo. Even though it&#8217;s a stupid name, go sign up for it. It is so freaking cheap, and you can get a business number right now. Do it while you&#8217;re smaller and before you start printing more marketing material and everything like that, because, one, it protects you. It is not safe to be putting your cell phone number out there. You don&#8217;t know what psycho is out there. And number two, it allows other people to help you with admin someday, when you are sick or your husband needs to manage things. There you go, right? And it works beautifully on a computer. You don&#8217;t even need a phone. Like, we don&#8217;t have phones anywhere. We just do it all through the computer. So yeah, yes. So do that too. That&#8217;s my final piece of advice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> Okay, okay. We&#8217;ve been just treading water at this point. We&#8217;re out there. We&#8217;re in the water. We don&#8217;t have floaties, but it&#8217;s like, okay, now we need to actually structure this, to make it work, to make it scale. I have some goals in mind. Let&#8217;s see if we can do this in the next four months, and we&#8217;ll really crack down on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Hell yeah! Please, guys, leave Meghan some love down below. Tell her she can do this. Give her some good words of encouragement, because I know it can be done. Obviously, we see it done every day. You&#8217;re a very intelligent woman. There&#8217;s no reason that you can&#8217;t do this. So I have complete faith. And of course, my email inbox is always open. If you have questions or you get stuck and you&#8217;re like, &#8220;Oh no, this client said that they hated me, and then they cursed my family,&#8221; or something like that \u2014 so, like, so don&#8217;t worry. It may happen. You&#8217;re still a good person. It&#8217;s gonna be okay. But you&#8217;re going to do this thing, hun. If people want to find you, follow along on Facebook or your website, what are those socials?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> It&#8217;s caicedocleaning.ca. So C-A-I-C-E-D-O, or &#8220;Cesado.&#8221; Answers to both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Love it. We&#8217;ll definitely link that down below. Meghan, thank you for being vulnerable and allowing me to ramble on, because I know \u2014 I know that this has been helpful to somebody. Like, these questions are so important for us to answer. So thank you for allowing me to do this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Meghan:<\/strong> Of course! Thank you so much for having me. This was so exciting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, it&#8217;s very exciting, guys. Hit that like, hit that subscribe. Leave Meghan some love down in the comments. We&#8217;ll see you on the next episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners. Bye, guys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> If you enjoyed this episode of the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast, please be sure to leave us a five-star review so we can reach more cleaners like you. Until next time, keep your work clean and your business filthy rich.<\/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 fabulous guest, all the way from Canada, Miss Meghan Caicedo. She is the owner and founder of Caicedo Cleaning. She&#8217;s been doing it for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":17826,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"How to Hand Off Clients Without Losing Them, with Meghan Caicedo","_seopress_titles_desc":"Stephanie coaches Meghan Caicedo, four months into running her cleaning business, on checklists, client notes, Google reviews, and getting out of the field.","_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-17817","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\/17817","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=17817"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17828,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17817\/revisions\/17828"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}