{"id":17880,"date":"2026-10-22T14:10:23","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T14:10:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/?p=17880"},"modified":"2026-10-22T14:10:26","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T14:10:26","slug":"was-cleancon-worth-it-my-biggest-takeaways-from-austin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/was-cleancon-worth-it-my-biggest-takeaways-from-austin\/","title":{"rendered":"Was CleanCon Worth It? My Biggest Takeaways From Austin"},"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\/185-was-cleancon-worth-it-my-biggest-takeaways-from-austin\/id1791590022?i=1000797608849\">Apple Podcasts<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/episode\/5F4LOaLTnp8EjpzV7Xsg8M?si=594245580b264e42\">Spotify<\/a>, or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=2TJuTBqdSDw\">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: #185: Was CleanCon Worth It? My Biggest Takeaways From Austin\" 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\/5F4LOaLTnp8EjpzV7Xsg8M?si=36b308d87efd4d41&amp;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-1\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">CleanCon Austin 2026<\/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 we are talking about CleanCon Austin 2026. My takeaways, the things we&#8217;ve already implemented. Do I think it was worth it? And do I think you should go to it next year?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There&#8217;s a lot to go over today. My head is still buzzing from all of the incredible conversations I had at CleanCon, the ideas, the people that I was exposed to. It was just such a wonderful experience in so many ways, and I can&#8217;t wait to get into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">First and foremost, if you do not know who I am, my name&#8217;s Stephanie. I own a residential and commercial cleaning company in Western Wisconsin. I have about 30 staff members, and I run my business remotely from Savannah, Georgia. Here, I am a crazy cat lady. I love the fall. Let&#8217;s see, I enjoy long walks on the beach. What else, guys?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Also, when I was in my team meeting today, my cleaner McKenna said I should dress up like a genie for Halloween, and then I started whipping my hair around like this in the team meeting. So that put me in a good mood. So every time I move my head with this little ponytail, I just want to whip it around. So for my audio listeners, just, like, imagine me whipping my ponytail around, going woo woo woo. Go to YouTube if you want to see it. I don&#8217;t know what to tell you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So CleanCon, guys, it was absolutely fabulous. I do not regret going. I cannot wait for the next one. The biggest piece of value for me was meeting you guys. That was actually crazy and a very bizarre experience for me to have. So many people would come up and be like, &#8220;I know everything about you, Stephanie. I listen to everything.&#8221; And then I would be like, &#8220;I know everything about you too. I watch you sleep.&#8221; And nobody would laugh. I thought it was funny, but that was so wonderful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m so grateful for each and every one of you that came up and said hello. It was just so special to me to connect on that human, human basis, hear your stories, and just answer any questions that I could in person. I had some really in-depth conversations. Some very personal things were shared. People were really vulnerable, and I just can&#8217;t tell you how much I appreciate that. Because if you know me, your girl likes to be vulnerable, and she likes to have those real conversations, cut through the bullshit, and just talk about what&#8217;s really going on in your business and your life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So thank you, every one of you. I really mean it. I really mean it. I&#8217;m so glad that I got photos with you. I&#8217;m so glad we had fun and we danced, and it was a blast. So I wanted to say that first because that was the best part for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I want to actually go through my biggest takeaways. I thought about it. I went through my notes, and I have it listed here. So if you see me looking over, I&#8217;m just looking at my notes because I want to make sure I cover as many points as possible of what I thought from CleanCon, what I took away, and what I am going to be implementing at Serene Clean, as well as what information I&#8217;m going to disseminate to you guys in the future when I am making suggestions. Because I just thought there was so much great advice and points made and presentations. It was spectacular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-2\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Event Itself<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So before I get into the points, I just want to highlight the actual event itself. I want to say personally to Drew, Molly, and Holly, who are the owners, and of course Drew&#8217;s beautiful wife, Erin \u2014 they celebrated their wedding anniversary at CleanCon, and that was just so beautiful. It was a really beautiful moment. So, how many times can I say beautiful? Take a shot, right? But it was beautiful. I don&#8217;t know how to call it \u2014 spectacular, romantic, lovely. So, congratulations to Drew and Erin. I thought that was really special, and Erin is a powerhouse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I just cannot say enough about the way the event was organized. They&#8217;re not paying me to say this, guys. We paid to go to the event. I just want to say, I for one am somebody who notices details, and I definitely could tell how much thought and work went into the flow of the event. They took a lot of feedback from the first event \u2014 not that the first event was bad, but when I say this one was five times better, I&#8217;m not being facetious or hyperbolic. Fun words of the day. Okay, put those down in your little dictionary. I&#8217;m not being dramatic when I say it was five times better. It really was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The flow was incredible. Just everything moved so well. We had the time we needed to do what we needed to do. Bathroom breaks, snacks \u2014 just those little things that really make an event feel great, in my opinion, are those little moments of just being organized, and the flow, and the music, the audio and visual. Like, that was very impressive to me. I saw when we were setting up our booth for ZenMaid just how much work went into that. I mean, they must have spent a pretty penny on the audio, because that was quite the impressive setup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So the actual venue itself was wonderful. I much preferred the venue this time. The hotel last time was beautiful, but because where the presentations happened was closed off from the vendor tables and the bathrooms and things like that, it felt more divided. Whereas this time, the vendors were able to sit around the edge of the room while the presentations were going on, because it was all just one giant room. It felt very immersive, and like everybody was experiencing it together \u2014 not like vendors and attendees separate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And of course, technically I was both a vendor and an attendee, and I really appreciated that. I thought that was nice, and we could just have a lot more interactions because of that. And there wasn&#8217;t just this, like, separation. I think it was important and valuable for all of the vendors to hear what was being presented as well. So that was really cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I wanted to just highlight that the first night they had an incredible band. I mean, some of the best live music I have ever seen. It was so good. It was so fun. At first, I thought they were just going to do country, but then they were, like, live singing Bruno Mars and, you know, dancing songs and all of this fun stuff. So that was really fun. It was Western themed. I had my little, like, sheriff outfit on, which \u2014 I love to dress up. So any opportunity I can to bring some whimsy to the world, you know, I&#8217;m going to. So I really enjoyed that. The food was really great. Just the mixer part in general was awesome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-3\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Missing the VIP Boat<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I did not go to the VIP boat experience the night before. I had a ticket. I had a ticket, guys. But the fucking planes. I swear to God, I&#8217;m so sick of traveling by air. Like, I am so burnt out on air travel. It seems like \u2014 I think 75 to 80%, I&#8217;m going to guess, of the time I travel, there are significant delays or problems or whatever. And I get it. Like, I understand that that&#8217;s just the system, and I should just avoid it if I didn&#8217;t want to deal with it. But I&#8217;m gonna bitch, okay? This is my platform, and I&#8217;m gonna bitch on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I missed the boat, guys. I missed the boat by, like, 10 minutes. I was supposed to get in at two. The boat was at six. I had plenty of time. Chicago to Austin was delayed, so yeah, I missed it just by a hair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But the positive was, I was standing up by the Uber line, and I hear my name getting shouted out at the airport, and I look over, and it&#8217;s this guy, and he&#8217;s like, &#8220;Stephanie! I see your reels all over my Instagram.&#8221; And it was one of my listeners, which is amazing. And he is super cool. He&#8217;s Serbian. He lives in Chicago. He&#8217;s starting his cleaning business up, really going full force. And so we just hopped in the Uber. We shared an Uber, and then we ended up spending a bunch of time together at the conference. So that was really cool. I actually appreciate that that happened because we were able to connect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And then I was able to go and have some killer barbecue \u2014 Terry&#8217;s, Terry Black&#8217;s Barbecue in Austin. If you guys have had that, is it not the best? It was some of the best barbecue I&#8217;ve ever had. And of course, I got to have dinner with Jonathan and Anna from Cleanzilla in New York, who are some of my favorite people. I have had Jonathan on the podcast. Anna, you are spectacular. I love both of you. So that was really fun to have dinner with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So all in all, though I did not have the fun boat experience, I did have a really good time hanging out with friends, new friends and old friends alike. And then I went back to the hotel, and that&#8217;s where I was reunited with my ZenMaid peeps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-4\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">The ZenMaid Booth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So who was at the ZenMaid booth? There was Kylin, who is our fabulous editor, and he films the content and all of that stuff. Kylin&#8217;s amazing. And then Elizabeth and Kayla, who are both in customer success, and that was so wonderful to have them with us. I think at all future conferences, I&#8217;m like, we need to have them there, because it was so helpful from a conversation standpoint at the booth itself to have those ladies there. Because they really know their stuff, and they can really get into the nitty gritty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Because a lot of you guys who came up to the booth, you had very specific questions of, like, &#8220;I&#8217;m looking for this feature,&#8221; or, &#8220;This is what I need from this,&#8221; and they were able to easily give you guys solutions and explain how that works with ZenMaid. So that was really cool, and I just \u2014 I love all of them. It was, I think, such a bonding experience for us. We haven&#8217;t ever just had, like, the four of us in a group at an event, so it was just really special, and I will absolutely cherish all of that time with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When I say these are my friends, guys, these are my friends, and I feel so blessed to be able to work with such amazing people. I&#8217;m feeling so much love towards them because it was really special, and they made it so successful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So those were the first days. So we had the wonderful dance. We, you know, mingled and had the fun bingo cards. That was a really good way to mingle people. The bingo card meaning, like, you have to find somebody to sign off on that square of your bingo sheet that fits that specific thing, right? That is, like, cleaning business oriented or business ownership oriented. So that was really fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So the first evening was a hit, and then we got into the first day. So we had our ZenMaid booth set up, and I am not trying to toot our own horn here, but toot toot. Okay, that booth was fucking sick, was it not? Anybody who was there, please leave it down in the comments below. I need that ego stroke. Just reach through the camera and stroke my ego right now, because that booth was awesome. I am so proud of what we did with the booth. It was really, really fun. It was silly. It was interactive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was very cool to have a free gift for every single attendee there, every business there, which was an SEO audit. We literally got the attendee list ahead of time, and we prepped an SEO audit for every single business there \u2014 of their Google My Business profile and of their website \u2014 and gave them a checklist of things that they&#8217;re doing well and things that they could improve on, so that they are more visible on Google and their website is showing up better, and just from a branding perspective, it looks good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So that was really cool and exciting, and that was no strings attached. That was to literally every attendee. You did not have to be a ZenMaid customer. So I really like that, and I want to take that forward for future events \u2014 making sure we always have something of value for you guys. We want it to be worth your while to come talk to us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We had killer stickers. Again, I love stickers. I wish I could hold up my laptop so I could show you guys my little stickers on my laptop. That makes it really fun, and it always takes me back to where I was when I got that sticker, and so that&#8217;s why I find stickers really fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We then also had, frankly, my favorite thing, which was the backdrop \u2014 the Filthy Rich Cleaners backdrop with the, like, police lineup lines, where you guys would come and write your cleaning business crime on it. We&#8217;d snap a Polaroid and stick it to our little billboard with everybody else&#8217;s crimes, and that was so much fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was honestly, again, coming back to the topic of vulnerability. I feel like that opened up so much conversation and connection, because we were sharing things that maybe we were a little embarrassed to share. And it wasn&#8217;t even necessarily something we did bad, but just a crazy thing that happened to us. I couldn&#8217;t believe some of your guys&#8217; stories. I want to share. You&#8217;re anonymous. You&#8217;re anonymous, and I mean, you did agree to take pictures of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So somebody cleaned up pig shit. Somebody walked in on their clients doing it in the shower, and the clients fired them. Like, it&#8217;s not their fault. It&#8217;s not the cleaner&#8217;s fault. One of them was crazy. I won&#8217;t say their name, but the cleaners went to do an Airbnb, and the guests had left behind some chocolate, and so the cleaners ate it. Turns out it was weed chocolate, and the cleaners got so high they had to go get their stomachs pumped, because they&#8217;d never even touched alcohol, let alone marijuana. So that was fucking crazy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So those stories were \u2014 a lot of cleaning the wrong house, breaking things, you know, just all sorts of stuff. So it&#8217;s not like I revel in misery, but I think there&#8217;s that vulnerability of, like, &#8220;Oh, you had that happen? I got one crazy one too. Let me share with you.&#8221; And that&#8217;s it. I feel like it brought the spirit of the podcast to CleanCon, which is just so special to me, because I feel like that is one of my most favorite parts of the podcast \u2014 that we can share with you guys, you listeners, that it&#8217;s not just you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s not just you that this is happening to, or that this insane, awful thing is only targeting you. It truly is a universal experience. We may not experience the same exact problem, but we are having crazy shit go on. And that thing that you&#8217;re embarrassed about \u2014 just by sharing it, that weight off your shoulders can really change things for you and make you feel a lot lighter. So that was so fun. And then just, of course, connecting with everybody at the booth was amazing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So that is my booth spiel. It was awesome, and we had great neighbors right next to us. Well, the DJ was two down, and then the guys from the digital \u2014 the digital something marketing. They&#8217;re gonna be on the podcast. I really like them. Great guys. So shout out, Justin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-5\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Kristen Hadeed&#8217;s Keynote<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Okay, on to the keynote speaker, Kristen Hadeed. So many of you may have read Kristen&#8217;s book, Permission to Screw Up. That&#8217;s what it&#8217;s called, I believe. I actually had never read it before, so I&#8217;m definitely putting that on my reading list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, one, she was beautifully dressed, immaculately dressed in this gorgeous blue suit. You know, I love a good power suit on a woman. This woman could speak. I aspire to speak even a fraction as well as Kristen Hadeed. I was blown away. She had the entire room absolutely locked in to every single word that came out of her mouth, and that is what I want. So just from an aspirational standpoint, as a speaker, I was so blown away. It was very impressive the way she could articulate her thoughts, and that&#8217;s something that I am always striving towards \u2014 being able to do that while also balancing what makes me me, which is being a little spazzy. So I really loved her presentation style.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She had owned \u2014 why can&#8217;t I think of the name now? College Maids, is that what it&#8217;s called? Student Maid. Thank you, thank you. Who&#8217;s telling me this? Stephanie&#8217;s brain. I just said thank you to myself. What the fuck? Okay, so thank you, Brain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She owns Student Maid, which got to 100-plus staff members, huge success. And just the way she told the story about how she was miserable and resentful when her life on the outside looked so good \u2014 I feel like I could really relate to that. I think a lot of us could relate to it as she was telling it. And then just her lessons on leadership, because the topic of CleanCon was leadership. That was the focus topic, and she had such a beautiful mindset about it, as well as some very practical takeaways and tools to use to communicate more effectively and to get everybody on your team working in the same direction, so you don&#8217;t feel that resentment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-6\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">FBI Feedback<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so there were a few that I really like that I want to share specifically. So one of them is called FBI feedback, and that&#8217;s an acronym, of course, that makes it a lot easier to remember how to provide feedback. And so she absolutely recommended against the compliment sandwich, because it is confusing. Because you&#8217;re coming in with something good, and then you&#8217;re coming in with something they need to do, and then you&#8217;re trying to soften or deaden that feedback by giving them something good. And somebody could walk away from that being confused, like, &#8220;Well, so am I \u2014 do I need to change something, or what&#8217;s going on?&#8221; Right. So I thought that was really true, and I totally understand where she&#8217;s coming from with that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so the FBI tool is giving a feeling, behavior, and impact when you need to provide feedback, and it does help take the sting out of hard conversations. But it&#8217;s also not sugarcoating it to the point that somebody is walking away confused. And honestly, I am going to use this in my personal life. I&#8217;ve already started using this framework just in general, and I think it&#8217;s amazing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So if a staff member or a client or whoever is doing something that you don&#8217;t want them to do, and they are not supposed to be doing, perhaps this is a really good way to frame what the situation is. So, what is the feeling you&#8217;re having about it? What is the behavior, in one sentence? And what is the impact of that behavior?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I think the example she gave was, &#8220;When you are 20 minutes late, it makes me feel that I cannot rely on you.&#8221; So, there&#8217;s the feeling, there&#8217;s the behavior, and then the impact: &#8220;And what that means is I am less likely to schedule you next week for the hours that you want, because I don&#8217;t think I can rely on you. What can we do about this? What needs to happen so we can make sure that you are on time?&#8221; Right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And just very plainly stating it \u2014 it&#8217;s a really good structure, especially for those of us who are people pleasers or who really struggle with providing feedback, which is most of us. I think it was a really good framework, so I loved that one. I already shared that with my managers right away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-7\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">The One-Three-One Framework<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The next one that I really, really love is the one-three-one framework. You guys know how much I dislike a tit baby, right? And so all I could think of in my head when she was talking about this was, like, this is for tit babies. This is wonderful, because what it does is it teaches your team how to problem solve themselves and how to believe in themselves, and it gives them the autonomy to make decisions without needing to run it by you every single time. And some of the examples she gave were insane, ridiculous, and hilarious. So it was a great speech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What the one-three-one is: when a team member brings you a problem, they bring you one issue, they bring you three possible solutions, and then you ask them, &#8220;Which one do you think we should go with of those three solutions?&#8221; And they pick, right, and you go with it, unless it&#8217;s something horrific, right? And the whole concept of permission to fail falls really in line with this \u2014 as long as it&#8217;s not catastrophic. Like, sometimes going with their suggestion \u2014 &#8220;I think that&#8217;s a great idea&#8221; \u2014 or going with their idea so that they can learn, right? Instead of you swooping in saying, &#8220;No, I think we should do this.&#8221; They didn&#8217;t learn then, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And what this framework does, if you do it repeatedly enough, is they&#8217;ll realize that they&#8217;re going to have the answer if they just think about it long enough. Because so many times \u2014 I can&#8217;t even describe to you how many times this happens \u2014 a staff member comes to my management team or myself and asks about something, and then we don&#8217;t get to it because we don&#8217;t see the message right away, and then three minutes later they&#8217;re like, &#8220;Never mind, I figured it out. This was the solution,&#8221; right? Or we run around and try to find them the answer, and then they&#8217;re like, &#8220;Oh, sorry, we had the answer all along,&#8221; right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so, so many times the answer is right inside of us, right inside of our staff members, inside of everybody. But because we do not believe in ourselves, we do not believe in our autonomy to make decisions, or we just do not have the confidence \u2014 because perhaps we&#8217;ve been trained to just go to somebody and ask, and we always need an outside voice to tell us what to do, or maybe they&#8217;ve been at a workplace where they were micromanaged and they were not allowed to have autonomy and decision-making themselves. So this helps teach them how to do it, and it&#8217;ll become a habit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And again, I think that this framework works so beautifully in so many facets \u2014 even in myself. Before I go ask a question, like, what are three possible solutions? What are three avenues I could take, and which one do I think is the best? Because I think that is what helps build our confidence in ourselves. So I&#8217;m really excited about that one. I think that it will absolutely help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And actually, I talked about all of this in my operations meeting last Wednesday with my management team, and Hannah, my field manager, was really excited about this one. Because there are some situations \u2014 you know, Crystal brought up \u2014 where it&#8217;s not always practical. Like, when it&#8217;s a very time-sensitive piece of information, and they need a response, to be like, &#8220;Well, what three options do you think we should go with?&#8221; when they&#8217;re in the field, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But Hannah specifically said that she wants to start implementing this concept in training. So when she is showing something, instead of just telling them what to do, she&#8217;s asking them and making them think, like, &#8220;What do you think we should do here? What are some options that you could see about going through this house, or going about this situation, or how to clean this thing?&#8221; Right? Asking them instead of just automatically showing them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It kind of reminds me of \u2014 I&#8217;m not a parent, but I&#8217;ve heard this from parents \u2014 that some of the most difficult moments to be patient are when your child is first learning how to do something, and it would be so much faster for you to just do the thing, because they don&#8217;t have the fine motor control that you do, of course, because they&#8217;re a child. And sitting there and letting them struggle \u2014 that&#8217;s got to be just so hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m not what I consider a patient person. I need to work on that \u2014 and even just saying that, I need to work on the identity of that, right? Because I identify as not a patient person. Maybe I am. And I feel like it&#8217;s like that, right? Like allowing them to struggle, allowing them not necessarily to get the answer right right away, instead of swooping in and saving them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I really like this just as a general kind of mindset of allowing people to swim in the discomfort of not knowing and putting their brain to use. Because then, as Kristen said, when they come to the solution and it wins, it&#8217;s their win. And that hit me like a ton of bricks \u2014 you are taking away their win and their accomplishment every time you swoop in and give the answer, because now it&#8217;s your win, it&#8217;s not theirs. And that was just \u2014 oh my gosh, mind blown! I loved that. I can&#8217;t stop thinking about that, and it&#8217;s just so, so true. By allowing people to struggle, when they do finally win, it is truly theirs, and they can be proud of that win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So that was amazing. I loved it. I loved this as much as I loved Mike Michalowicz at the first CleanCon, because, you know, finance. Obviously, I&#8217;ve read all of his books. Just an amazing man. And Kristen was just amazing. Like, bravo to the CleanCon team. What an incredible speaker. It was amazing. It really set off the morning and the entire conference in such a beautiful trajectory and got us, I think, all in the right framing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-8\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Permission to Fail With Thresholds<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And then, of course, just in general, the permission to fail with thresholds \u2014 setting yourself a limit, perhaps a dollar amount, a scope, or a risk ceiling for decisions. And actually, Amar has said this before. There is a number in his head of, like, okay, the team can spend this much to fix a problem, and they don&#8217;t have to come and ask me. Tell me about it later, but solve the problem. You don&#8217;t need my permission to solve it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, what does that look like for you? Right? Is that fifty bucks? Is that a hundred bucks? Is that five hundred bucks? Right? Like, maybe it&#8217;s $0 right now because you don&#8217;t have a team. But the point is just giving them some space, because sometimes a decision or a solution is going to cost money, right? Whether that&#8217;s a re-clean, a refund, or replacing something \u2014 I don&#8217;t know. But the point is you have to give them some space, and sometimes that means some runway financially in order to make that decision. Because if they feel they can&#8217;t spend a single dollar \u2014 meaning your management team, if you have one \u2014 if they feel they can&#8217;t spend a single dollar without consulting with you, well, guess what? They&#8217;re going to be coming to you a lot, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so for me, usually, I would say with my team, if it&#8217;s going to be more than, like, a hundred bucks, they come to me. For the most part, if it&#8217;s under that, we&#8217;ll talk about it later \u2014 but oftentimes they still will. I guess they still kind of do ask me permission a lot. I feel like I need to establish, like, if it costs less than this, then fix it. But definitely under fifty bucks, they&#8217;re not talking to me about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-9\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Drew&#8217;s Talk: Why Today?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My next favorite talk, I would say \u2014 okay, I don&#8217;t want to rank them. That&#8217;s not true. Kristen&#8217;s was my favorite. That is true. But for the next ones, there is simply no order, because they were all incredibly high value. This is just how I have them organized in my notes. So this is not a ranking system, Drew Larison. Do not get your head all big just because I&#8217;m saying how fabulous your talk was \u2014 because it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So Drew did a fairly short but incredibly impactful talk about sales and about the concept of &#8220;why today.&#8221; And the fact is, as he put it, customers, when they&#8217;re shopping around, know a lot about us. They&#8217;re doing their research. So when they finally decide to call us, instead of selling us, we need to understand them. We need to understand why today. What happened yesterday? What happened in the past week that made you say, &#8220;Finally, today is the day I&#8217;m going to hire a cleaner&#8221;?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And really probing and delving deeper as to what is motivating them to hire a house cleaner, to outsource this. What is it that&#8217;s stressing them out so much? What is it going to look like if they don&#8217;t have to clean anymore? And his concept of, like, sell Saturday \u2014 sell that free time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I feel like this is something that I&#8217;ve done fairly well at Serene Clean in general \u2014 really speaking to the heart of the overwhelm and the issues. But I think in the past couple years, probably, I&#8217;ve leaned a lot more heavily into just falling back on social proof, if you will. And within our sales conversations with our customers, I don&#8217;t feel that we&#8217;ve done this nearly enough. Not even close.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so we immediately have started implementing changes related to asking, &#8220;What happened that made today the day you picked up the phone?&#8221; Right? So Katie, my customer relations and sales manager, is working on revamping our lead follow-up process and our conversations and sales scripts to really reflect this \u2014 to understand and empathize and make space for their emotions and their feelings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so I love that \u2014 and less needing to sell. Like, if they found us \u2014 if they found us online, especially \u2014 they know we&#8217;re good. They know we&#8217;re good. That&#8217;s why they called us. So, less about us and more about them. And we are absolutely implementing that immediately. So that was huge. Thank you, Drew. Very impactful. I know that it&#8217;s been really meaningful to you to hear that from us folks who attended, and I just want to reiterate that it was impactful. It was beautifully done, and your speaking was incredible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-10\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Molly Moran&#8217;s Shine Protocol<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Okay, next, I want to talk about Miss Molly Moran, who I absolutely love. Her energy is magnetic, and I loved her presentation. She talked about her daily Shine Protocol. Live Bright is Molly&#8217;s coaching program, and it was really cool to see a lot of her coaching clients just talking about the impact. They gave her this really sweet, beautiful custom, like, cowgirl hat. Love that. You could really feel the love and friendship in that room. It was very special. It was very special. It didn&#8217;t feel like all these separate tribes of thought processes, if you will \u2014 like, &#8220;Oh no, we followed this coaching program, and we do this,&#8221; and blah blah blah. It felt very collaborative throughout, which I really appreciated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So in Molly&#8217;s Shine Protocol, she goes over, you know, basically that taking care of ourselves as the leaders is a CEO responsibility. And part of being the CEO \u2014 regardless if you are this small a company or this big a company \u2014 this is your responsibility: to take care of yourself and protect your energy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And something that she said in this \u2014 when I say this has been playing in my head every single day since then \u2014 is, &#8220;Taking care of our health is our job.&#8221; And I have said that so many times this entire week. I&#8217;ll talk a little bit more about that in just a moment. But it&#8217;s been so different, because I keep playing that: this is my job. It&#8217;s my job to take care of myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so, what SHINE stands for is space, health, intentions, new you, and enjoyment. And she created this protocol so that anywhere she is, she is taking that space and going forth in her day with intention before the day takes over, right? And before the phone is just, like, sucking the life out of us, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I have actually been doing a pretty darn good job, I would say, of utilizing this in the past week since I got home. So, another tangent. After CleanCon, I immediately flew to Boston for my very good friend Nicole, who has been on the podcast here. She works at ZenMaid. She got married last weekend, so I went from wedding to wedding. So I flew up to Boston, and I was exhausted. So after I got back from that, I was like, okay, let me think about all this stuff and actually implement it, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m sure a lot of attendees felt this. Like, I needed to hear that. I needed to hear the impact that not taking care of herself had on Molly, how miserable she was, and just the whole concept of, &#8220;If I just work harder, life&#8217;s gonna get better,&#8221; right? &#8220;I&#8217;m just gonna do more,&#8221; because that&#8217;s always what&#8217;s worked for me. And so it was really good. It was almost like permission to say, like, yeah, this is not selfish. I need to take care of myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And this year has definitely been a big whirlwind when it comes to a lot of things. This is the most I&#8217;ve ever traveled, and the travel has absolutely taken a toll on my physical health, because I have not been able to maintain any sort of habits or structure within the travel. So I need to figure out how to sustain that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But what I&#8217;ve been doing, just briefly, when it comes to space \u2014 this past week, it&#8217;s been a successful week of: I do not pick up my phone and start scrolling right away. That was such a bad habit for me \u2014 immediately checking Slack, checking my email. I&#8217;m laying in bed, I haven&#8217;t even taken a piss yet, and I&#8217;m on my phone scrolling and responding to things. And I don&#8217;t need to do that. There is no need for me to do that. It&#8217;s like I just need that spike to my cortisol, apparently, the second I crack my eyes open. There was no need for that. It was just a nasty habit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I wake up, I do not touch my phone. I go take care of things. I go feed the pets, and then I make that space for myself, for my health, right away in the morning. And so what that means is I have been waking up a little earlier, and I&#8217;ve been taking Lily, my dog, for a walk every morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And it&#8217;s been really good for the bit of a perfectionist in me, because the other day I did not have time, because I had a full day of consulting calls. My full walk with Lily is about, I think, 40 minutes, 45 minutes every morning to do my full loop that I like to do, right? And typically, if I do not have an hour to get the 45 minutes in and have enough space, I just won&#8217;t go for a walk at all, because I&#8217;m just like, &#8220;I can&#8217;t do the full thing, so therefore I shouldn&#8217;t do it at all,&#8221; right? Because that makes sense, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so instead of being like, &#8220;Oh, all or nothing,&#8221; I went for a 15-minute walk, because I was like, &#8220;No, take this space. You need to do this. This is about to be a really hectic day for you. This is so important that you do this right now.&#8221; And so, success \u2014 I&#8217;ve successfully walked every single morning, and what that&#8217;s done for me just in the past week is kind of insane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I don&#8217;t go on my phone. I just walk. I get some sunshine. I move, and it&#8217;s just been wonderful. I haven&#8217;t been listening to any podcasts or anything \u2014 just listening to nothing. Because that&#8217;s another thing, I think: previously, when I would be moving my body, I&#8217;m always trying to distract myself with entertainment. And so just having that quiet time in the morning has been so wonderful, and I look forward to it. It&#8217;s my favorite part of the day, honestly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And then when it comes to intentions \u2014 I really liked how she said, &#8220;What do you want the day to look like today?&#8221; Right? Before the day decides it for you. How are you going to go about this day, regardless of what comes at you? How do you want to feel at the end of the day? And so this hasn&#8217;t been an everyday thing, but it has been coming more and more to my mind this past week. Like, what do I want to feel like at the end of the day? How do I want to feel when I look back at the end of the day? And it&#8217;s helped. It really has helped. I can&#8217;t tell you. It&#8217;s kind of crazy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">New you is, you know, just challenging you, pushing you out of your comfort zone, doing things that maybe feel a little bit uncomfortable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And then finally, enjoyment. Like, where&#8217;s the fun? Where&#8217;s the fun in the day? How could I make this fun right now? Right? Like, I started recording this before, guys, and I actually cut it at about five minutes, because I was not having fun. I was trying to be too formal, or like, &#8220;Let me give you the synopsis of this conference,&#8221; and I was like, &#8220;What am I doing? This isn&#8217;t fun.&#8221; Because if I&#8217;m not having fun, you&#8217;re not having fun, right? And so I caught it. I started over, and I was like, &#8220;Just have fun. Just have fun, right?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so I feel like I always do a pretty good job with finding enjoyment and bringing whimsy. But I just want to lean into that even more \u2014 like, how could this be more fun right now? Or how could I turn this thing into fun?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-11\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Your Health Is Your Job<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, you know, I&#8217;ve been really focusing on my nutrition this week too, and, like I said, my health. It&#8217;s been a very difficult year in a lot of ways. You know, if you guys ever want a full episode on mental health, I think that would be a really interesting conversation to have. I think it affects us so much as business owners, and it can really rule the roost. If we are struggling with our mental or physical health, it&#8217;s hard to give it your all, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so for me, this year has been a very challenging year with mental health. I went through, you know, a pretty severe depressive episode, and anxiety, PTSD. I have all sorts of things, guys. Did you know? Now you do. And so all of these things have been really tough to deal with this year, and my physical health has absolutely gotten a lot worse because of that. And so I just keep telling myself, like, this is your job, Stephanie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And for me, I do really well with external expectations. If you&#8217;ve ever read The Four Tendencies \u2014 the author is Gretchen. Her name is Gretchen, but I can&#8217;t remember her last name. It&#8217;s a really good book if you want to learn how you react to \u2014 it&#8217;s basically how you interact with expectations, both internal and external. And personally, I do really well with external. I&#8217;m an obliger through and through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so when Molly Moran said, &#8220;Your health is your job, treat it as such,&#8221; I took that. I took that seriously. I took that personally. That&#8217;s what it is. I took that personally. And I just keep saying, &#8220;This is your job, Stephanie. No, you&#8217;re gonna eat breakfast. You&#8217;re gonna get your protein, and you&#8217;re not gonna drink alcohol,&#8221; right? I&#8217;m not drinking right now, because that can be a big problem for me too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so I&#8217;m sharing all of this to say, guys, it is not just your business. I have had such a good work week this past week because I took care of my physical and mental health. I took care of me first. Last week was so good. It was such a good week. And, you know, things happened. Definitely not-great things happened. But I was just able to have a lot of clarity and a lot more calm, because I followed this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So Molly, thank you so much for sharing that. That has, you know, encouraged me to share and be vulnerable here with you guys too, because I like to create that space as well. So that one was so useful, and it&#8217;s literally affecting my life in so many ways right now, every single day \u2014 because it&#8217;s my job, and when it&#8217;s my job, I&#8217;m gonna show up for my job, right? And it&#8217;s turning out that it&#8217;s helping every other area of my life as well. So I&#8217;m really happy about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-12\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Mastermind Roundtables<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, moving on to the roundtable, which is the time that we get to meet with other businesses that are similar revenue sizes as us, and we get to talk about our one big question or problem that we want to discuss and get their feedback. And this is most people&#8217;s favorite session of the entire retreat. It&#8217;s the last session \u2014 the mastermind roundtables \u2014 and I loved it. It was amazing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I actually did not know what my question was going into it, because I just \u2014 I don&#8217;t know, I didn&#8217;t know what to ask. But then I heard everybody else, and several people said some really interesting things about how many leads they were getting and how they&#8217;re handling their sales. They were getting hundreds of leads a month, and I&#8217;m like, &#8220;Oh my gosh, we get, like, at most 50.&#8221; The most we&#8217;ve had this year is 50 leads in a month, and obviously we&#8217;re in a rural area and all of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But my question was about paying for marketing, because I have been \u2014 not against it, but I felt like it hasn&#8217;t been necessary, and I don&#8217;t think it really was necessary previously. But we&#8217;re in a new era of Serene Clean, where we are keeping up with hiring. We have a really good pipeline of applicants, so that means that we need to look at sales more. And I&#8217;ll get into that briefly in another section here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But my question was, you know, how much are they spending on marketing, and just overall thoughts of, like, &#8220;Do you think this is really holding me back?&#8221; And it was really good. It was a good mindset of, like, yes, you need to invest in this. And it made me realize that one of my, I guess, limiting beliefs is, &#8220;I don&#8217;t need to spend on marketing. It just kind of comes to us because of all of our amazing branding and our online presence and things like that.&#8221; And while that is true, it&#8217;s like, yeah, but if you could spend this much on marketing and it brings in this much ROI, that makes sense. And I&#8217;m just scared, because I&#8217;m like, I don&#8217;t know what to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so this may involve hiring a marketing agency. Probably this is going more the Claude route of things first. I&#8217;ll see. But just being open to spending money on certain things. Just like last year \u2014 I feel like my biggest breakthrough was spending money on Indeed. It&#8217;s like, am I cheap? Am I a cheapskate? Am I Mr. Krabs? Leave a crab emoji down below. I don&#8217;t think I am. I think I&#8217;m pretty not cheap, but apparently in some areas I am, because that changed our life when we started spending on Indeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I&#8217;m like, maybe I need to start spending more money on marketing. So I&#8217;m definitely going to marinate on that. I&#8217;m going to put things in place. I&#8217;m going to have some conversations, maybe with some agencies. Stay tuned. Stay tuned \u2014 just to increase our lead volume, for sure. So I love that. I loved giving advice to the other owners. That was really fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-13\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Dedicated Salesperson<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So the next section I want to talk about is kind of a segue from that: sales. And the thing I kept hearing over and over again was having a dedicated salesperson and not putting customer support on your salesperson \u2014 which historically has always been the case for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so it was just so abundantly clear, from these conversations I was having and the things that I was hearing, that this is hurting us greatly. Because between a new customer and a current customer, we are always answering the current customer first, which is important and wonderful. But that means that oftentimes sales gets pushed and pushed and pushed, and we&#8217;re not getting back to them very quickly, and that means they&#8217;re moving along, right? Whereas if we get a hold of them right away, they&#8217;re probably closing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so that means Katie, my customer relations manager \u2014 I want her as a full-time dedicated salesperson. That is what I want for her. And I took this back to my ops meeting on Wednesday, and I was like, &#8220;This is what I want. I want this restructure to happen. We need to create the space in order to do this.&#8221; So what does that look like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Because when I was up in Wisconsin two weeks ago, we had the in-person conversation of: we do not want to add another office person. We don&#8217;t want that overhead. We don&#8217;t want to add another manager. So how is it possible that we can continue to grow and scale with the same management team? What does that look like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so then when I come back and say, &#8220;All right, Katie \u2014 all customer relations after the point of sale is now going to be somebody else,&#8221; well, how does that happen, right? Because all the work still needs to be done. And so this is happening. This restructure is going to happen so that Katie is fully sales. And how are we making the space?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-14\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">AI, Agents, and Automation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Well, that leads me into the next big takeaway from CleanCon, which was agents, AI, and automation. You guys already know we were moving towards that. But when I say what has been accomplished in the past week at Serene Clean with AI and agents and automated tasks, it is absolutely mind-blowing \u2014 blagging, blagging, guys! I say mind-blagging. I cannot believe how much has been accomplished this past week. It has been crazy. I can&#8217;t even describe how much we&#8217;ve automated. Every day I log into Claude, and there&#8217;s more and there&#8217;s more scheduled tasks, and there&#8217;s more skills and all sorts of things. It&#8217;s crazy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I saw in the ZenMaid mastermind, like, a week and a half ago \u2014 Briarcliff Cleaning, right? Yeah, Briarcliff Cleaning commented on a post. Somebody asked about AI, and they said that they had AI logging into ZenMaid, and I&#8217;m like, &#8220;What?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Actually, let me just pull up my scheduled tasks so I can look at what we&#8217;ve created. Sales: we&#8217;re checking LSA calls against ClickUp twice a day, to make sure that we&#8217;re not missing any LSA calls that came through and that we&#8217;re getting back to them quickly, because they didn&#8217;t necessarily fill out a booking form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Daily invoicing check. Daily sales availability report, so that Katie can have a printout on her desk right away in the morning of our current availability for big time slots in all three of our locations, so she can at a glance say, &#8220;Cool, that time slot would work&#8221; \u2014 like, when she&#8217;s on the phone. Because that&#8217;s one of the biggest challenges that we have when booking clients: finding the best time for first-times, because of the drive time \u2014 like, what is the most efficient place to put them, right? Because we want to eliminate as much drive time as possible, especially when we&#8217;re pulling multiple cleaners for that, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Daily lead follow-up sweep. So what that&#8217;s going to do is scan through all of our ClickUp, which is where we do our sales process and lead management flow. It&#8217;s scanning that. It&#8217;s going through the email and the texts from Quo, and it is creating follow-ups automatically for us, based on what needs to occur \u2014 which is just crazy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is some HR stuff that Crystal has created: compliance check reviews, weekly time-off reports, quality check reviews \u2014 those are going to be running. Let&#8217;s see. I&#8217;ve got Friday afternoon invoicing, monthly CEO report preparation. I did that one last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So one of the presenters \u2014 I&#8217;m so sorry, I can&#8217;t remember her name \u2014 talked about having, like, 70 agents in her business or something, and I was like, &#8220;That&#8217;s insane, that&#8217;s crazy.&#8221; And I&#8217;m like, &#8220;Oh God, that&#8217;s going to be us. That&#8217;s going to be us.&#8221; And I&#8217;m obsessed, because this is how we are going to create the space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So April is our payroll and accounts manager, right? So hours of her week are spent on payroll and doing invoices and keeping all of that up to date. So if we could eliminate that \u2014 even down to, like, 25% of what it takes now \u2014 oh my gosh, there&#8217;s the space. There&#8217;s the space for her to take customer relations and customer support, so that Katie can be fully sales, and everything is moving more smoothly, and their mental capacity is more focused on the things only a human can do, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And that is the human-to-human connection. That is the conversations. That&#8217;s not freaking out because your sales call is taking 30 minutes and you&#8217;re booking them, but you have this huge line of manual tasks that you need to do, right? So this is literally a work in progress. Every single day it&#8217;s changing, guys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I know, I know. I posted in the mastermind, I think last week or the week before, and you were like, &#8220;Please tell us what you&#8217;re doing. Show us all of the things.&#8221; I promise I will, but give me some time, because I want to build this out a little bit further so I can show you what I mean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But the biggest thing that you need to know is that Claude, or AI, can log into any website. It does not need an open API. Okay, ZenMaid does not currently have an open API. If you don&#8217;t know what that means, it&#8217;s basically like a key into the lock of a software. So, for example, ClickUp has an open API. I think Gusto does, QuickBooks does. So when you give that to something like an AI, it can easily go in and make tasks in ClickUp. It can do everything in ClickUp, right? Because that&#8217;s what the open API does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But now, because Claude can log into any website, you don&#8217;t necessarily need that. An open API is definitely faster, but for the things that we needed to do \u2014 which is, like, export files and reports and things in ZenMaid \u2014 it&#8217;s doing that automatically. So this morning at 8:15, it logged into ZenMaid, it exported the appointments for the next month, and then it analyzed that, found the large chunks of time, turned that into a PDF, and emailed it over to the office so that Katie had it to print off right when she walked in the door. Fucking crazy, crazy!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And yes, can she look at the computer and scan? It is so much easier when you just have it at a glance, and you&#8217;re not fucking with the computer \u2014 because you&#8217;re probably already fucking with the computer when you&#8217;re making a sale, right? So then she goes into ZenMaid during the call, once she&#8217;s kind of pinpointed a day, and then she starts to look a little bit closer at what the schedule is best for, right? And then she can make her notes, all of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So all in all, this was already in the works, but seeing so many use cases for AI in our business at CleanCon was like \u2014 and now it&#8217;s like a runaway train right now. It&#8217;s crazy, and I&#8217;m so excited. I literally just asked Claude, because I saw a reel yesterday that said Claude can do video editing for you. And so I&#8217;m like, &#8220;Oh my gosh, I want to take all of the employee conversations that we&#8217;re recording. I want to put those in a folder. Claude transcribes them and cuts them based on the most impactful thing. Do the captions, do the edits.&#8221; This is not built yet. I literally just asked about it this morning. I&#8217;m looking at the chat right now. But I&#8217;m just like \u2014 I can&#8217;t stop. I can&#8217;t stop. I just want to do everything, because it&#8217;s going to create that space. Any time we can take that manual labor off of us, it creates the space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I know that this is probably really overwhelming. If you are not an AI user, trust me when I say this is all new to us too. We&#8217;re learning at a rapid rate, and so it&#8217;s all new. It&#8217;s messy. It&#8217;s, you know, potentially breaking stuff. But the point is, we&#8217;re trying, we&#8217;re getting better, and it is improving little by little. Every single week we are automating something \u2014 just a little snippet, right? &#8220;Oh great, that took me half an hour. Now it&#8217;s taking me five minutes to do this thing.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So that&#8217;s the type of shit. That efficiency \u2014 that is leverage in the office, so that all of a sudden we don&#8217;t need to add another admin person. We can do it with my current management staff, which is better, because then I don&#8217;t have to teach somebody new. We all make more money, right? Because we don&#8217;t have to share it with anybody else. Literally, that&#8217;s what I say to them. It&#8217;s like, &#8220;Cool. If we can figure this out, guess what? All of us get more money as the business grows, because there&#8217;s not another person to pay&#8221; \u2014 and more benefits. And that&#8217;s amazing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I&#8217;m so excited about this, and I&#8217;ll definitely share more as I discover more. I&#8217;d love to hear how you guys are using AI. There were a ton of vendors that are using AI really heavily, which was very impressive. So all in all, it was really exciting to hear how everybody is using it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-15\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">One-on-One Check-Ins With New Hires<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I want to go into my final couple points here. I actually asked Kristen a question about in-persons. I was like, &#8220;What was your cadence for in-persons? What would you recommend?&#8221; And she said that she kind of had an open-door policy, as opposed to dedicated in-persons with her people, because she didn&#8217;t want to influence them to think that&#8217;s the only time that they can bring something up. Which I can also understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But then, after the fact, I had two folks come up to me, Nina and David, and they are from Squeaky Clean. Is that your cleaning business, David? And David had a killer presentation too. Oh my gosh, his was amazing. It was basically about creating your business as if you were sick, because he got really sick. He had really bad Lyme disease and was exhausted, and they didn&#8217;t catch it for years, and so his business had to run without him, basically \u2014 and his tips on how to do that. So shout out to David. That was amazing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I am having them on the podcast. I have so many future podcast guests because of CleanCon, because I was like, &#8220;We have to get you on the podcast. You speak so well. You have so many amazing thoughts and experiences.&#8221; So I want those to be shared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So both David and Nina from that cleaning company came over and talked to me. They&#8217;re like, &#8220;Hey, you asked about follow-ups, right?&#8221; And I was like, &#8220;Yeah.&#8221; And they said that they implemented in-person \u2014 or, you know, huddle slash Zoom \u2014 follow-ups with the newbies at a specific cadence, and that has dropped their turnover for new hires down to basically zero. To the point \u2014 she&#8217;s like, &#8220;The people we want to quit aren&#8217;t quitting.&#8221; And I&#8217;m like, &#8220;Oh my gosh, this is crazy. Tell me more.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And she said that what they&#8217;re doing is, for new hires within the first month, they&#8217;re having a one-on-one conversation with them once a week. And then I think after the first month, they go to every other week, and then they go to once a month and once a quarter as the person gets further and further along. And what that does is it gives them the opportunity to communicate, and also non-verbally communicate, how it&#8217;s actually going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And, you know, I brought this up on Wednesday with my managers, and I was like, &#8220;What do you guys think of this? I don&#8217;t think it could hurt, and I think it could only help.&#8221; Because right now, we are doing check-ins on a very regular basis for the newbies, but it is all over, like, Messenger \u2014 like Slack. And I was like, I bet you that a lot of our staff are not necessarily comfortable. They don&#8217;t know us yet. Maybe if something negative is going on, they don&#8217;t want to share, right? And it feels very intense to type that out, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Whereas if you just hopped on the phone or a video chat with them, you can see their faces, you can hear their voice. And if they&#8217;re like, &#8220;Oh, it&#8217;s okay, it&#8217;s good, it&#8217;s going good,&#8221; I&#8217;d be like, &#8220;What&#8217;s going on? Tell me more. What is that? Is there something that we could do better? Is there something that&#8217;s making you feel not super great or confident?&#8221; Just by the voice alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so we definitely want to implement this. This will take a little bit longer, because structurally it&#8217;s more complicated to make it happen. But I absolutely think this is, again, making that space so that Crystal can do the things that AI can&#8217;t \u2014 which is Crystal hopping on the phone or on a huddle with every staff member and having these conversations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Because I really appreciated Nina sharing that some feedback they got, they were shocked at. They never would have guessed it, but the new person told them and then allowed them to improve. And that&#8217;s really the goal, right? To get honest feedback, especially in that first month somebody&#8217;s with us. If they&#8217;re having a bad experience, that is 100% why you&#8217;re not able to keep anybody, right? If all of the new hires are \u2014 and now somebody finally told you, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I think that is really crucial. I&#8217;m really excited. Maybe it&#8217;s not gonna get rid of our turnover necessarily, but it might improve it, and it also will help us improve. And it shows a new hire, again, that we respect you, we want your opinion, and we take it seriously \u2014 just like we take everybody seriously. So I loved that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-16\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Themes That Kept Showing Up<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, you know, just in general, the themes that showed up over and over were: separating my sales from my operations. That&#8217;s going to happen. Protecting my energy as the owner and taking my health seriously. I&#8217;ve gone through many phases in my life. It feels like I&#8217;ve lived 10 different lives, I swear. And so just really focusing on my mental and physical health, because the way I show up is going to be so much better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Giving feedback faster and with structure. The FBI is also within 24 hours, ideally, if something happens, so that it doesn&#8217;t simmer. Building leaders by handing them real decisions, right? Not swooping in and solving every problem and saving the day, because then you&#8217;re stealing their win too. You&#8217;re not just stealing the loss \u2014 you&#8217;re stealing the win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And just hearing these all layered out so well \u2014 I really&#8230; It was very inspiring. I&#8217;m not gonna lie, I really enjoyed this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-17\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">What I&#8217;m Not Changing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, some of the things I&#8217;m not doing, even though I heard them at CleanCon. It was Sarah Hutton that built all of those AI agents, and she pretty much paused all growth to do that. We are not pausing our attempts to grow. We&#8217;re just building these as we can \u2014 not overhauling everything, but just chipping away at it, kind of slowly. I would say regularly \u2014 you know, a good cadence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I am not overhauling our compensation model. That is something that I asked about. Like, you know, people are paying by labor hour, they&#8217;re paying percentage, they&#8217;re paying performance pay? We are not changing how we pay. We just changed how we charge to flat rate for residential. We&#8217;re not going to change how we pay right now. I think that would be unwise. It&#8217;s not broken right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We also do not have the problem that so many people said that they were having, which is people, you know, milking the clock. I do not feel that happens. Our cleaners are still getting done early so much, and I just don&#8217;t think this is a big enough problem to literally overhaul that. We have a very specific \u2014 like, this is your pay rate, this is your pay raise cadence, and this is how you get the pay raise. We just built all that out last year, so I am not interested in throwing that out the door and changing it right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So that&#8217;s staying the same, and I&#8217;m comfortable with that. I know some people may think that&#8217;s dumb. That&#8217;s okay. It&#8217;s my business, so I can do it, and you guys can do whatever you want. It&#8217;s all good, but that&#8217;s not a change I&#8217;m looking to make. I think that we can move the needle in so many other areas before we even consider that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-18\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Was CleanCon Worth It?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, was CleanCon worth it? What do you guys think? I think I&#8217;ve spoiled it this whole time. Absolutely, I will be going back. I did sign up for their online mastermind group as well. I think it was so affordable \u2014 a couple hundred dollars a month \u2014 and there will be virtual meetings. And some of the folks that are in that, I&#8217;m so excited about. Folks from Holly&#8217;s company, Maids and More \u2014 and I&#8217;m like, oh my gosh, that alone. Any information I can get from that, because that company is insane. I&#8217;m so excited for that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And then CleanCon next year is going to be in the fall, so I don&#8217;t know when it is yet. They haven&#8217;t released it, from what I know. But please, guys, if you can make it, I really hope you do. Not only to meet me, of course, and give me a big old hug, but this has really had an impact on me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It didn&#8217;t feel like a rah-rah, Tony Robbins, motivation masturbation type of thing going on. It wasn&#8217;t like that. It was tactical. It was heartfelt. It was, &#8220;What can we actually do to move the needle in our business?&#8221; \u2014 not just feel good and walk away with nothing to actually do. Right? That is not my style at all. If you listen to any episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners, you know that is not my style or what I like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Do I like motivation? Sometimes, yes, absolutely. Do I do that in the morning while I am doing my makeup? I&#8217;ll put on a motivational video to get me all jazzed up, right? Because I don&#8217;t want to do the thing. Absolutely. But I don&#8217;t do that all the time. I want tips. I want methods. I want systems, right? And so I really, really appreciated that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I will be going back to future CleanCons. I know it&#8217;s going to be spectacular. It is well worth it. As far as conferences go, now that I&#8217;ve gone to a couple, I think it&#8217;s priced very appropriately for what it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So to everybody who came up, said hello, had a conversation with me, spent any time with me \u2014 thank you. It meant the world. Honestly, it made me emotional to hear how many people have been impacted by this. Because I&#8217;m just sitting here in my room with my broken lava lamp that I needed for light, and it&#8217;s kind of bizarre to know that there are all these people on the other side listening right now. Ah, I&#8217;m getting emotional right now. This is crazy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So it just felt really special to me. You know, we&#8217;re all far away from each other for the most part, so I really loved that time together, and I want to do that as much as I possibly can. I want to meet you guys. I want to spend time with you. And so many of my consulting clients \u2014 you know, I&#8217;ve had so many Zoom conversations \u2014 meeting them in person, being like, &#8220;Oh, you&#8217;re really tall. I had no idea.&#8221; So it was just amazing. I loved it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Again, kudos to you, Drew, Erin, Holly, Molly. You guys are incredible. I am so proud of you. I hope you are as proud of you as you should be, because that was spectacular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We&#8217;ll definitely leave all of the details of things I mentioned down in the show notes, guys. I would love it if you would hit that subscribe. I&#8217;d love it if you hit that like for me. Leave your comments and questions below for future episodes. I&#8217;m always looking for new topics to talk about, new guests. If you know somebody who would make a good guest, the application is down in the link. If you are ready to get on the podcast and join me, I would love to have a conversation with you. Please don&#8217;t be shy. It would be a blast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I hope you&#8217;re having a beautiful day, guys. It&#8217;s a Monday for me. It&#8217;s probably a Thursday when you&#8217;re listening to this \u2014 that&#8217;s when this is going to go live. And I hope you&#8217;re having a smashing day. I&#8217;ll see you in the next episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners. Bye, guys.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Listen on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube CleanCon Austin 2026 Stephanie: Hello, everyone. Welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I am your host Stephanie from Serene Clean, and today we are talking about CleanCon Austin 2026. My takeaways, the things we&#8217;ve already implemented. Do I think it was worth it? And [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":17881,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"Was CleanCon Worth It? My Biggest Takeaways From Austin","_seopress_titles_desc":"Stephanie shares her CleanCon Austin 2026 takeaways: FBI feedback, the one-three-one framework, why-today sales, AI agents, and new-hire check-ins.","_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-17880","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\/17880","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=17880"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17882,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17880\/revisions\/17882"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}