{"id":17962,"date":"2026-11-10T14:06:35","date_gmt":"2026-11-10T14:06:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/?p=17962"},"modified":"2026-11-10T14:08:32","modified_gmt":"2026-11-10T14:08:32","slug":"no-phone-no-car-no-clients-payge-aldridges-comeback-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/no-phone-no-car-no-clients-payge-aldridges-comeback-story\/","title":{"rendered":"No Phone, No Car, No Clients: Payge Aldridge\u2019s Comeback Story"},"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\/190-no-phone-no-car-no-clients-payge-aldridges-comeback\/id1791590022?i=1000800988810\">Apple Podcasts<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/episode\/3dgKQvpgItTE3MOXmEPBVj?si=7041f8cc0e5f424b\">Spotify<\/a>, or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=5PGAMRM7osU\">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: #190: No Phone, No Car, No Clients: Payge Aldridge\u2019s Comeback Story\" 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\/3dgKQvpgItTE3MOXmEPBVj?si=7041f8cc0e5f424b&amp;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-1\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Introduction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Hello, my friends. Welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I am your host, Stephanie from Serene Clean. And today&#8217;s fabulous guest is Ms. Payge Aldridge. And she is up in Buffalo, New York. She is the owner and founder of Payge&#8217;s Green Clean, Inc. And she has had a wild journey. Lots of things have changed even recently. And I cannot wait to hear how things are going. Payge, thank you so much for joining me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Thank you for having me. Very excited to be here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yes. And for our audio listeners, you are missing out on yet another gorgeous redhead. The redheads are just flocking to the podcast. So I&#8217;m excited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> We shall unite and become one super soldier. That&#8217;s why I started listening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah. Yeah. It&#8217;s the red hair. It&#8217;s the red hair. I get it. I totally, I totally understand. That&#8217;s why a lot of people listen, I&#8217;m sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-2\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">How Payge Aldridge Got Into Cleaning at 15<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Payge, you got into cleaning from a very young age. Talk me through that. What was it like growing up? Are you from Buffalo?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yes. From Buffalo. I got into cleaning when I was 15. So I was homeschooled, and we were very invested in our local church growing up. And we had a missions trip to Ireland that I wanted to go on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Are you Irish?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> I am. Are you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I am not, actually, at all. A little Scottish, but no Irish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Okay. Yeah, so I always wanted to go. And one thing my parents taught me was just, you know, working for those things that you want. So there was actually a woman in our church who had a cleaning company, and she&#8217;s like, hey, how about you come make some money? Help out a few days? So that was the beginning of my cleaning journey that has never ended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> So you were working while you \u2014 I mean, being homeschooled, what was your schedule? Like, did your parents let you clean during the day, or how did you actually accomplish that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yeah. So we were more flexible on that. There were a couple of days I was able to clean during the day, and then I had to come home and do my work, or just double up the next day. So the homeschooling gave me the flexibility to work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Wow. That is quite unique. I don&#8217;t know if I&#8217;ve had anybody \u2014 any previous guests, comment below, correct me. I don&#8217;t know if I&#8217;ve had anybody who said that they were homeschooled. Do you have kids, Payge?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> I do not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Would you homeschool them? Are you homeschooling your dog?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> My dog? Yes. Kids, I don&#8217;t know. I go back and forth on that, because with homeschooling, as the mom, you have to be very invested in it and have schedules and routines. And without those, it just doesn&#8217;t really work. And I sometimes question myself, if I have the capability to do that for my kids. So interfering with their education is something that really worries me. So I go back and forth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> No, I totally \u2014 the reason I ask is I just get really intrigued by folks who have had that experience. Like, would they do that? And I totally agree that it is so much work to make sure that you are giving them that well-rounded education, because I have met homeschool kids. Like, I grew up with some friends \u2014 one family, they were the smartest, like, little geniuses I&#8217;ve ever met in my entire life. They were so well-spoken, great social skills, all of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Like, just amazing. And then I had this other family who was like, oh, yep. They&#8217;re homeschooled. You can tell. So yeah, it&#8217;s like, oh, I could totally see it. But yeah. Any homeschool mamas or daddies, put it down in the comments below. I want to see if we got anybody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-3\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Starting Over With No Phone, No Car and No Clients<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> So out of school, talk me through that early adulthood time then, with cleaning. What was going on in your life?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yeah. So when I was 17, my cousin reached out to me. She knew I was doing cleaning, and she&#8217;s like, hey, can you personally clean my home? So I&#8217;m like, yeah, sure. So I added that to the list of work. And then she recommended me to a handful of her friends \u2014 I believe maybe around five people. So at 17, I had six clients of my own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> And then I was doing the cleaning. I have a horse, so I was working on stables too for that. And then life changed very quick. I ended up just abruptly leaving home and kind of just restarting in life. I had no car, no phone. So yes. Without those things, I had no clients. So that got put on pause for a little bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And as I was shifting through different living situations, I ended up picking up waitressing, because in the area I moved to, that was really the only thing I could do walking to work. So I did waitressing for a handful of years, and that was not for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-4\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why waitressing wasn&#8217;t a long-term fit<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Tell me a terrible story, Payge, because as a fellow former waitress, I&#8217;ve got more than cleaning, actually. Tell me something crazy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> You know, I don&#8217;t know if I had anything. Okay. This was probably the craziest one. So it was Sunday morning. We always got the Sunday church crowd, the worst tippers out there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I was going to say the worst.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> One of my number three reasons why I got out of it. And this couple, they were very nice, but the way the tables were set up, I had a very small aisleway to get to them. And we had the big trays that we carried everything on. So I came over, was bringing them their drinks, and spilled them on her, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh my gosh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> So, you know, they were okay with it. Things happen. Go back, get the second round of drinks \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh my gosh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Spilled those on her too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> No, no. Are we the same person? I feel like we&#8217;re the same person, because that&#8217;s crazy. And I would totally do that. Oh, did you just want to, like, crawl into a hole and die?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yes. Because I had, like, a large party next to me. It was probably 15 people. So they all saw it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Everyone saw it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Now they&#8217;re pissed, which, understandable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Holy shit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Oh yeah. I remember they still left me $2, though. So I guess that was more than I expected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> One for each spill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Exactly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I would have cried. I would have \u2014 I don&#8217;t know, man. I would have been so upset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yeah. I took a few trips to the cooler that day, though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah. Yeah. A little bit. Nothing like a walk-in cooler existential cry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah. Oh my gosh. So you were like, waitressing&#8217;s not for me. Talk me through that. What was happening next? And also, like, I&#8217;m just so \u2014 you know, and I don&#8217;t want to pry either, but this sounds like a hugely tumultuous time in your life. You&#8217;re a young adult, a huge change from the sounds of it, going from, I&#8217;m assuming, living at home to, like, a huge shift, and then, you know, no contacts, all of this. So where were you at mentally? Was it just survival mode?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-5\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Surviving without a phone, car, or income<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yeah, it definitely was survival mode. I guess I do well under pressure. So my biggest thing was like, I&#8217;m going to get through this, and I&#8217;m going to figure it out. And with the different living situations, I kind of bounced between a couple of families that let me live with them. Again, no phone, no car means no job for me. So no money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yeah. So I just remember survival mode, like doing as much as I can to get me out of this hole and going from there. And even though I hated the waitressing, it was the job I could do, the job I could walk to. I didn&#8217;t necessarily need a phone for that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> And for some strange reason, I&#8217;ve always wanted to waitress, and I&#8217;m not sure why. So it&#8217;s funny, I still will have dreams about waitressing sometimes. And, like, I really miss it a lot. Especially, I remember in the first couple of years of the business, I would, like, yearn to go back to waitressing, where the worst thing you could do is spill something on somebody. Where now, with the business, it was like a fantasy, even though it kind of sucked in a lot of ways. It&#8217;s simple compared to business ownership. You know, it&#8217;s my fantasy to go back to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yeah. I understand that. I think I&#8217;m just more of an introvert. So for me, putting on that, I guess, facade all day long took a lot out of me. I was very drained, and my patience is very small when it comes to rude people for no reason. So I was like, why am I dealing with people treating me like this? And the area I was waitressing in, that was kind of the community that we got. So it was like that very often.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-6\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Leaving home and setting healthy boundaries<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Were you very lonely during this time? I mean, no cell phone, you were bouncing around. Did you feel quite isolated?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yeah, because no one knew what happened. None of my friends growing up \u2014 there was no way to contact me. It was kind of more of a hush-hush situation. So no one exactly knew where I went, what I was doing. And then when I finally worked up the money and got my own phone, I just remember I reached out to all my friends, and they were just like, we just had no idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah. Like, scared for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yeah. Yeah. So for that time, besides the families I lived with, it was just me. I didn&#8217;t talk to my family. Of course, no phone for friends, no social media, nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Was this, like, family stuff that made you leave?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yeah, we were very religious growing up. Very Baptist, so very strict. I think me being the oldest daughter, and the only daughter for a while in the family, I got it probably a lot worse than \u2014 well, no, I know I got it a lot worse than my siblings. So really, the reason I left was, you know, I was doing things outside of the religion that they would consider wrong and sinful. And I was trying to, like, start my life, but I was being held back. And so the day I left was the day my phone and my car got taken away. And then I was told I wasn&#8217;t allowed to work. And I said, oh, I&#8217;m out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> That&#8217;s incredibly brave of you at that age to do that, especially against such \u2014 you&#8217;re turning your back on, like, you know, you&#8217;re almost being banished, it feels like. You have to just drop everything. Do you have a relationship with your family now? Or what is that like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> I do. Yes. Definitely some healthy boundaries set. It took a while. But I would say maybe two years later is when our relationship started again. And now I actually live with my brother. So yeah, I&#8217;m talking to my parents. We&#8217;re pretty close now. But there are some healthy boundaries and, you know, acceptance that had to happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-7\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Worrying tattoos would cost her cleaning clients<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, I was wondering, because I can see you&#8217;re tatted. And I was like, that doesn&#8217;t seem like \u2014 this is all wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yeah. I actually remember a podcast you did when you were getting your sleeve. And that&#8217;s why I feel like I&#8217;ve connected with you so much, because I&#8217;m like, she sounds like me. Talking about your sleeve and everything \u2014 for a while, with the mindset and the religion, I felt like, oh, if I got tattoos, no one&#8217;s gonna hire me to clean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah. I know. It really is interesting. I saw a reel the other day that I just loved so much \u2014 and again, obviously, everybody is entitled to whatever their opinion and belief is, so this is not to attack \u2014 but of, like, you know, churches, they have beautiful stained glass that tells stories, and they&#8217;re so ornate, and our body is the temple. It&#8217;s like, well, these are my stained glass windows. You know, this is my story. So that&#8217;s how I see tattoos \u2014 we&#8217;re just decorating our temples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> I love that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, say it to your parents at Thanksgiving. I&#8217;m sure they&#8217;ll appreciate it. I can relate, like \u2014 I can relate as somebody who, you know, has a very tumultuous family situation and things. And so I appreciate you being transparent and sharing, because I think a lot of people listening can relate that it&#8217;s not all rainbows and butterflies. And there&#8217;s so much that goes into it, especially in those early \u2014 yeah. Like, that must have been really, really hard. So I bet that made you grow a lot. There was a lot of pain, there&#8217;s a lot of lessons. And obviously, you learned a ton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-8\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Is Care.com a Good Way to Find Cleaning Clients?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> So now, you know, you finish waitressing \u2014 where do we go next? You&#8217;re cleaning some of your cousin&#8217;s houses, right? Where in the timeline are we now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yeah, so now I&#8217;m 18, 18 and a half. I&#8217;m not cleaning anymore, because I didn&#8217;t have a car. So I lost all those contacts. And at that point, I was just kind of even embarrassed to reach back out to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah. Yeah, no, I understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yeah. So then, fast forward to later that year, I met my now ex-husband.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh, see, we&#8217;re on the same page. We really are. Look at that. Same cycle of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yes. So at this point, I&#8217;m waitressing somewhere else, I got a car, I worked up, I had gotten my first apartment with a roommate. So I was pretty much financially stable enough to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Sure. Yep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> I met my ex-husband, and we moved very quick. Again, I was 18. So we moved very quick. I think within maybe two months we moved in \u2014 maybe three months. Very fast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> How old was he? I&#8217;m curious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> He is five years older than me. So he was 24.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Okay. So not, like, horrific. But still, I think \u2014 and again, I&#8217;m just going to therapize you right now \u2014 it makes me think of: you just left this stability. You&#8217;re out on your own. And so here&#8217;s this man. It probably very much felt like a lifeline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> It did. Just that companionship and, I guess, another stable person in my life to help me. I felt like in my first adulthood years, that was kind of what I was searching for. So yeah, at that point, I just realized, like, we were building our life together. I wanted to work more. I wanted to get more money. And unfortunately, that fell more on me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-9\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why she&#8217;d never recommend Craigslist for clients<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> So I don&#8217;t remember exactly what came into my head. But I remember I was good at cleaning. I&#8217;d been doing it for years. I enjoyed it. So I was like, let me start getting into cleaning again. So at that point, I was posting on Craigslist, which I would never recommend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> No, I can&#8217;t believe you&#8217;re sitting in front of me today, not murdered or, like, turned into a lamp or something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yes. Thank God. I don&#8217;t even know if people use Craigslist anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I don&#8217;t know either. Leave it in the comments below. Do you guys \u2014 does anybody listening actually continue to get clients from Craigslist? Because I just cannot imagine posting there for anything other than, like, sexy cleaning or something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yeah, which a lot of people reached out to me looking for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh, was it very, like, obvious? Or how did they hint at it? Or did they just come out and ask?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> One guy actually just sent me a picture of a load of cash. And he was like, when can you come clean? And yeah, so I just never responded to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I thought you were gonna say he sent a picture of his wiener. I really thought you were gonna say that. So the cash is better, but still \u2014 also dangerous. Both equally dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> I&#8217;m sure if I went, I would have seen that in real life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh my gosh, that&#8217;s crazy. So how did you sift through \u2014 like, did you actually take clients from there?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-10\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Getting started on Care.com at $16 an hour<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> I want to say I got two clients from there. And then I started just using Care.com at that point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh, sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yeah. And I got a handful from there. Of course, it was probably, like, I don&#8217;t know, at that time, $16 an hour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, because it&#8217;s kind of like \u2014 I use Rover for pet sitting. And it&#8217;s very similar, where you have to go through the platform, right? And all of that. So, one, it&#8217;s great that you got started through there. But was there anything, other than the pay, that was like, this kind of sucks? For anybody who&#8217;s starting out, would you recommend going that route at all? I guess that&#8217;s what I&#8217;m asking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-11\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why Care.com feels like a job, not a business<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> No. I think maybe if you don&#8217;t know how to clean, and you&#8217;re kind of starting by yourself, Care.com could potentially be a good way, because people are specifically on there looking for people, and you do have to go through the process of the background check and things like that. So they know you&#8217;re capable of coming into their home. But because of that, you are more of an employee to these people. That was my experience. It was very much on their time, their rules, which at the time was great for me. I didn&#8217;t mind that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I guess maybe if you&#8217;re young, 18, around that age, looking to get into it, that could be a good start. But I would not stay there long, because it&#8217;s completely different from actually building your company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah. Like you said, you&#8217;re working for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Not that we&#8217;re not working for all of our clients in a way, but when it comes to who is setting the rules, it felt like it was way more on their side, as if they were an employer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Because I even remember going in, and they had to sit down and interview me and things like that. It very much felt like a job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Interesting. I don&#8217;t know if I&#8217;ve ever talked to anybody who had gone through that specifically. I had a guest on who went through \u2014 gosh, what was it called? It&#8217;s that one that you see advertisements for all the time on Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Homeaglow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Homeaglow. Sorry, Kai. You know, when Kai listens, they&#8217;re going to be like, Stephanie, how could you forget Homeaglow? So I&#8217;m sure it&#8217;s kind of similar to Homeaglow. Did you ever consider that, or did you ever see it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> No, I&#8217;ve seen it. That came out years later, when I was in my business. So I was past that point. I saw it and I laughed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah. No, for real. For real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-12\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">How Local Facebook Groups Filled Her Cleaning Schedule<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Okay. So you&#8217;re on Care. You got some client rosters, but you&#8217;re making pretty low wages \u2014 pretty much employee wages, if you will. What&#8217;s next? How long did you stick with that? Did you start to branch out and get clients elsewhere?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yeah. So some of them came word of mouth through those customers. How many customers I had, I can&#8217;t exactly remember. I know I had enough to do at least one a day in the morning, and then I&#8217;d go to waitressing at night. And then I think I started posting on Facebook, just in groups. So I didn&#8217;t have a business page yet. Nothing like that. But I started posting in town community groups on Facebook, just saying, hey, like, who I am, introducing myself. I got a lot that way too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-13\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Quitting waitressing to clean full time<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> And then this was probably about a year later \u2014 again, I don&#8217;t know what I was thinking. I knew I wanted out of the waitressing, knew I wanted to work Monday through Friday. And I just remember I started my business when I was waitressing. I went downtown and got the paperwork done, and put my two-week notice in, and said, yeah, I said I would figure it out. And here I am.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Holy crap. Just like that. And the podcast \u2014 just kidding. That&#8217;s it. Just go on Craigslist and Facebook, and you&#8217;re good. Write that down, everybody. Write that down. Okay. So that&#8217;s a huge leap of faith. Obviously, you know, you have the skill, you have the know-how. How big is the community that you live in? Because you&#8217;re in Buffalo, but is it, like, a pretty specific area? Or, like, when you say it was kind of close-knit, and you were getting people on Facebook?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-14\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Serving 15 small towns within 35 minutes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yeah. So I actually live just right outside of Buffalo, but our towns are just so small and close together. So right now, I think we hit probably 15 towns. So yeah, within driving distance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yeah. Like 30, 35 minutes, maybe. So we&#8217;re pretty close. So that&#8217;s why posting on all these town pages worked, because it&#8217;s like, this town&#8217;s 15 minutes away. This town is 10 minutes. And there are different ranges \u2014 you know, we have the Southtowns here and the Northtowns. So different types of clients in both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> It sounds very similar to our service area, of like, we service a bunch of small towns, right? Because yeah, like you said, 10, 15 minutes, you hit another little town. And that&#8217;s exactly what it&#8217;s like for us, which is nice in a lot of ways. It&#8217;s just totally different than folks who are listening who are, like, in the heart of New York or Chicago or something, right? It&#8217;s just different. So, yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-15\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why New Cleaning Business Owners Overwork<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Okay. So what were those first couple months like after you were officially the business? Were you terrified? Were things going wrong? Were things going right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> I was terrified. I will say probably in a very unhealthy way. So I&#8217;m not broadcasting this, because I&#8217;ve learned how unhealthy this is, but I am a very hard worker, and I will work sundown to sunup. So that did help me in the beginning, because it was terrifying, especially when I had days where I had no jobs. And I was like, I don&#8217;t want to be at home. I should be out making money, and we&#8217;re going to be poor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And, you know, growing up the way I did, I think that was my biggest fear. You know, we were taken care of growing up, and we had a home and everything, but we had to just penny-pinch in a lot of ways, and skip out on a lot of things, or not experience a lot of things that maybe the average kid grows up with. And for me, just having that comfortable stability was where I wanted to be. So it was terrifying. When I had days with no cleanings, I would just freak out, posting everywhere, searching for how I could get new clients at that point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-16\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Taking less-than-ideal jobs out of fear<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> What kind of prices were you getting at that time? Because I&#8217;m sure that desperation led you to take some less-than-ideal jobs. Because that&#8217;s what we can all relate to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Oh yeah. And I&#8217;ve done that up until last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> So sometimes we have to touch that hot pan a lot of times before we&#8217;re like, oh, this is going to keep burning me. But also, I can really relate to the caveat of, like, I know this wasn&#8217;t healthy, but this is also what got us through that time period \u2014 that obsession, and that workhorse mentality. Do I want to ever do that again? No. I don&#8217;t want to work how I worked before. But it&#8217;s hard. It felt necessary at the time. And it sounds like for you, that is what felt necessary for you guys to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-17\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Going back into the field to remember how hard it is<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> I agree with you. I would never want to go back there. Even on days when I&#8217;m, like, hopping in the field, I&#8217;m like, wow, I can&#8217;t believe I have to do this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> No, it&#8217;s crazy. Anytime I do clean, even, like, a couple of days in a row, I walk out of that, and I&#8217;m like, how the fuck did I used to clean like this? Like, how do my staff clean full time like this? It is so hard on the body. And I think it&#8217;s so important for us to periodically go back into the field, whether by choice or necessity, so that we can be like, oh shit, this is hard. You guys deserve a raise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yes. Every day I get a raise and a bonus and a massage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, it&#8217;s very physically demanding. And, you know, you touch on growing up in that situation, and really having to pinch pennies. And it sounds like that mentality gave you a really great work ethic. Now, looking back, it sounds like things have shifted a little bit. How was that helping you? How was it hurting you? I&#8217;m always curious about the flip sides of a mindset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-18\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Do Cleaning Business Owners Feel Guilty Leaving the Field?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> I think the biggest thing was the fact that I thought I had to work physically hard to earn. And I wasn&#8217;t worthy unless I was doing that. I think that&#8217;s the biggest thing, versus now working smarter and not harder \u2014 you know, growing it versus being in it, running the roles. Yeah, I would say that was probably the biggest mindset shift there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Did you feel guilty? I remember feeling a lot of guilt when I was getting out of the field fully, and my cleaning techs were cleaning. And it was quite strange, you know. There was an excitement, but also a guilt \u2014 not that I think it&#8217;s wrong, obviously, right? We&#8217;re giving them job opportunities. They wouldn&#8217;t do it if they didn&#8217;t want the job. But I&#8217;m curious how many other folks struggle with that. Like, oh, I feel bad because I&#8217;m not physically doing the labor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Absolutely. I just got out of the field. Yes, for now. Yeah. And it was so hard all around. And yes, I felt bad. I felt so bad. I felt like I couldn&#8217;t let them know what I was doing, and all this stuff. So I became very quiet, and just, you know, oh, they can&#8217;t see my car in my driveway, things like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-19\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Hiding downtime from your cleaners<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> It&#8217;s so funny. I still \u2014 like, Friday, in the middle of the day, you know, I went and got my nails done, because that&#8217;s the best time to do it, because it isn&#8217;t busy. And we have a Slack channel just for fun, right? Just social chat. And all of my staff know I love SpongeBob. That&#8217;s well known. They get me SpongeBob gifts. All of the SpongeBob stuff over here is from my staff. And so I was like, I have to post my nails to my team so they can see, because they know I love this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I literally hesitated, because I thought, what are they going to think about me going and getting my nails done during the day? There&#8217;s this sense of, I need to prove to them that I am actually working, even though I&#8217;m across the country, and they know I&#8217;m not the one answering them and stuff. And so I&#8217;m just telling the story to let you know, like, I still struggle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Absolutely. Yeah. And it&#8217;s gotten easier, but there are days where I&#8217;m like, I don&#8217;t care. And then there are days I&#8217;m, like, running to Starbucks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Like Tuesday, at whatever time it was, when I decided to go to Starbucks, and I&#8217;m, like, looking around, making sure none of my crew&#8217;s there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-20\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">When a former manager calls you greedy<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I find this concept really interesting, that we feel self-conscious or guilty if our team sees us not, like, killing ourselves, especially if that&#8217;s what they grew up in the business seeing \u2014 or even if they haven&#8217;t, like any of my new staff members. And I do definitely get a conniption, because I had a manager who left. It was a bad leaving. And she was like, Stephanie goes and gets her hair \u2014 she was just listing all the things I spend my money on. As in, like, look how greedy Stephanie is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so that is still, like, chirping back. There&#8217;s, like, don&#8217;t let them see you spend money. Don&#8217;t let \u2014 you know. But at the same time, it&#8217;s like, you&#8217;re the owner. Yeah, you&#8217;re going to make money. That&#8217;s the fucking point. And so as the person who, like, loves Filthy Rich Cleaners, I&#8217;m just saying it still is something that is subconsciously a problem for me. So it makes a lot of sense, especially coming from your background, why you would have those feelings. And we can&#8217;t control what other people think, you know. And that&#8217;s the hard part \u2014 like, they can&#8217;t know that I&#8217;m making money, that&#8217;d be terrible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> And I think that&#8217;s a big mindset shift. And that&#8217;s probably why we feel the same, because we were both very hard workers that broke our backs and probably worked insane hours in those beginning days that none of these people saw, because they weren&#8217;t here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Correct. Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Because there were days I would work all day, like, until the morning. And so the mindset shift \u2014 because we felt like we had to work so hard to earn that money and everything, it&#8217;s just this, I think, contrast in our brain. Like, wait a second, we can kind of work smarter and sit here. We don&#8217;t have to be running around out of breath all day, working crazy hours, and it&#8217;s still okay. So I think that&#8217;s more of a personal thing than our staff actually looking at that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-21\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Measuring your worth by hours worked<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> And like you said, really getting our worth from how much we are physically doing. That is, like, a thing for me. My whole life, it has been a huge problem. You know, I started working at 14. I just had two jobs \u2014 work more, more, more. And I took such pride in that. Like, yeah, I will work harder than anybody. And so then when it was like, this doesn&#8217;t make sense to do this anymore \u2014 it&#8217;s killing you \u2014 it was so hard, because I&#8217;m like, but if I&#8217;m not producing, what am I? Who am I? You know, I didn&#8217;t have hobbies. I didn&#8217;t have anything. I just fucking worked. And so when that was no longer the correct choice, it&#8217;s like, well, who am I?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And especially when my goal now for all of my managers is, like, let&#8217;s turn everything into AI and work as efficiently as possible, so we don&#8217;t have to add more managers, and everybody&#8217;s having a good time. And it&#8217;s so funny, because I would imagine, probably for you too, you want your team to have a good life and to have work-life balance, and to be able to relax and fully enjoy it. But we won&#8217;t do it. We think we&#8217;re shitbags if we do that ourselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And again, I&#8217;m sure if I asked my staff, they would totally have a different opinion. So it&#8217;s in my head. You know, I had some staff that sounded like your manager, to where it was a problem, but they&#8217;re not here anymore. And that&#8217;s why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-22\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Your team is free to start their own business too<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah. And I always think to myself, when those thoughts get in my head, like, well, they are free to go open a cleaning business. Nothing&#8217;s stopping them. There&#8217;s literally nothing stopping them. And I&#8217;m actually showing them the fucking blueprint. I literally put instructions on the internet for how to open a cleaning business and exactly what we do. So it&#8217;s all there if they wanted to take that, but they&#8217;re not, for a multitude of reasons. So everybody&#8217;s free to go open a business if they want to. We&#8217;re the ones who actually went and did it and took that risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-23\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Is It Okay to Start a Cleaning Business Just for the Money?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> And so, you know, you&#8217;re in this terrified stage. When did you start thinking about hiring? Was it like you were plumb full? I always like to know that edge point of, like, I don&#8217;t have staff, to now I have staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> I like to be very honest about this, because I feel like a lot of people are not. When I started my cleaning business, in the back of my head, of course, I thought, like, it&#8217;d be so cool to have this cleaning business with employees. But was that my goal in starting my business? No. My goal at that point was because I needed more fucking money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> I need money. I need money. And so it wasn&#8217;t this, like, inspirational story of why I started. I needed money, and I was good at cleaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-24\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Chase a skill, not a passion<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> So I think, honestly \u2014 it&#8217;s so funny when people ask me. I mean, still to this day, especially when they see me now, they expect me to answer with something very motivational. It&#8217;s the whole \u2014 if anybody has seen the Mike Rowe commencement speech, I think, the guy who does Dirty Jobs. He did this commencement speech that talks about, like, do not chase your passion, chase a skill, and it will become your passion. And that&#8217;s exactly what I feel like you&#8217;re talking about here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Because now I&#8217;m, like, the visionary, and I&#8217;m like, hi, it&#8217;s all rainbows, and I want everybody to be spoiled. It&#8217;s this huge thing for me \u2014 I take so much pride in being the workplace. But when I started it, I wanted to make money. I needed money. And that was literally why I opened it. I know how to clean. I want to make money. That&#8217;s literally the answer. And I think there&#8217;s literally no shame in it, because of course, I don&#8217;t think anybody wants to work without making money. It&#8217;s funny that entrepreneurs are held to a different standard, apparently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-25\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Her first hire: a friend paid under the table<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> So, you know, the dreams were always in the back of my head of having that. But how I got to hiring my first employee was I just got busier and busier. This is probably a year into the business now. So I think at this point I&#8217;m 20. I just got too many clients. And my friend, she didn&#8217;t have a job. She didn&#8217;t have a car. And I was like, how about you just come help me clean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> That was my first employee. Of course, not legally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh yeah. Hell yeah. Cash under the table, girl. Nobody do that. That is not me saying do that, guys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Oh yeah. I would totally skip that part. And don&#8217;t hire friends. Don&#8217;t do under the table. If I could go back, I would do it differently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Are you guys still friends?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> No.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Okay. That&#8217;s why I asked. I&#8217;d love it if you&#8217;re willing to share a little bit of how that changed, because so many people need to hear this. Anybody who&#8217;s thinking about hiring a friend or your sister or whoever the fuck, please listen to whatever Payge is about to say. Payge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-26\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Should You Hire Friends for Your Cleaning Business?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> I have multiple experiences with this, up to a couple months ago. And that was the time I was like, I will never hire a friend again. For me, I wanted to hire a friend because I&#8217;m going into these people&#8217;s homes. What are they going to think? I have to make sure they do a good job. So a friend is comfortable. You know them. You know they&#8217;re not likely to steal things like that. You know how they act, and that they would work well with you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-27\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why boundaries break down when an employee is a friend<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> But in the long run, the boundaries are never how they should be. The respect is not there, because they view you as their friend, not their employer. So making that shift \u2014 it does not happen. It will never happen, unless your friend already just respects you as a person, which can be very rare. And then the minute you start setting boundaries or implementing systems, rules, is the minute things are going to fall apart. They are either going to quit, you&#8217;re going to get in big fights, or they&#8217;re going to call off because they&#8217;re mad at you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So all around, it may feel comfortable, but that has been one of the biggest downfalls in my company, hiring friends. And like I said, this year I had to let her go, and we&#8217;re no longer friends either. And that became terrible, to where it affected my personal life and people I knew and things like that. And she just had it out for me. They know you on that personal level too. So they can probably use a lot against you \u2014 maybe secrets you&#8217;ve told them, times you&#8217;ve just talked to them as a friend. They will use that against you and your company. So just don&#8217;t do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-28\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">When a friend-turned-manager leaves on bad terms<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> That manager I was just telling you about, I mean, we were friends. We were already kind of friendly when I hired her. And then as time went on, we became very close, and I told her a lot of personal stuff. And you bet your ass, when she went out, she wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, and she just started saying shit. And I was just like, oh my God. And so I thank you so much for sharing, because I think when you are tempted to hire a friend or family member, ask yourself, am I willing to lose this friend? If you are not willing to lose that friendship \u2014 which I would hope, if they&#8217;re your friend, that&#8217;s not what you want \u2014 don&#8217;t hire them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-29\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Ask yourself if you&#8217;re willing to lose the friendship<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> As soon as money gets introduced into a relationship, the relationship forever changes. It forever changes. And it can&#8217;t go back. Like, you know, even \u2014 I hired my boyfriend \u2014 or my boyfriend, that&#8217;s weird. My brother&#8217;s girlfriend. I hired my brother&#8217;s girlfriend, against my managers&#8217; suggestions. And it was exactly what you said. She didn&#8217;t want to do things the way we do things at Serene Clean. And then she ended up opening her own cleaning business, which I was fine with. It was across the river, because we don&#8217;t service Minnesota, and all of this stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I mean, she&#8217;s a terrible person, if she&#8217;s listening, because she is a ZenMaid user. I have not smited her with my authority, like a mark on her ZenMaid. I don&#8217;t care if she hears this. You know who you are. You fucked over my brother. So I don&#8217;t like you. I don&#8217;t like you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> I love this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> No, no, I&#8217;m very loyal. And I&#8217;m like, you fuck over somebody I love \u2014 so yeah. You know, she just bought my bundles too. And I saw that, and I was like, no, you don&#8217;t get my knowledge. Take it back. So yeah, Stephanie can be a petty-ass bitch sometimes, guys. I&#8217;m not perfect. I never claimed to be. So anyhow, I love this lesson. I&#8217;m so sorry that you had to experience this several times. Obviously, you&#8217;ve learned it now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-30\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Does Hiring Family Work Better Than Hiring Friends?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> What about family? Have you ever tried to hire family?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Oh yeah, it worked out. Also, I do want to highlight, I did have one friend work for me, and she was the one and only that worked out. And she doesn&#8217;t work for me anymore, but we are still BFFs. So just in case she listens to this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, she&#8217;s just like, what about me?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yeah, she was great all around, because she respected me just as a human being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I mean, all we can ask for is that it just ends amicably, if it does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> But I just wouldn&#8217;t risk it anymore. You know, I wouldn&#8217;t risk it. I mean, one out of, I think, four friends I hired, one worked. So just don&#8217;t do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-31\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Hiring two of her five brothers<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yeah. So I had two brothers work for me. The one, it was just a short period of time, and I just needed help. And I have five brothers, so I&#8217;m racking them in, like, come on, guys. And he was actually a great cleaner. He thought a lot of things were gross, but he was a great cleaner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And he helped out my other brother. He still works for me, just one day a week now. But he really went through it. I think he worked for me for three years, and he was a terrible cleaner. It took probably too long to invest in him, but he&#8217;s a great cleaner now. So, like, anytime you get a girlfriend, I&#8217;m going to tell her that you can clean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yes. Yeah, exactly. You&#8217;re like, send her the bill for the training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> So yeah, you know, good experiences, bad experiences, but yeah, it&#8217;s very risky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-32\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">How hiring friends and family affects company culture<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> So especially \u2014 okay, I&#8217;m sure you were hiring other staff too. And when they know that you&#8217;re the boss&#8217;s friend or the boss&#8217;s sibling or related, that can also create tension within the company culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yes, I think it did. I don&#8217;t think to the point \u2014 because I&#8217;m just very loyal to my good employees, friends or not. And I&#8217;ve always been that way. And my good employees knew that. But I think the biggest thing was the entitlement that the friends I hired had, to where they thought they could do different things and do it their way, or say things and get away with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> And get away with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> And so that was the biggest contrast I saw.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I&#8217;m sure, you know, since you \u2014 how old were you when you started hiring?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> I think I was 19 and a half.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-33\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Advice to Her 19-Year-Old Self: Change Your Mindset<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Payge, I am curious, if you could tell that 19-year-old version of yourself some pieces of advice, what would you say to her?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> The first thing would be: change your mindset. Growing up in the home I did, the way we did, and then, I guess, measuring my self-worth by how much I worked kept me very small for a very long time. And just recently, I&#8217;ve had that drastic mindset shift of, you have to believe in yourself. So that dream of having employees one day, and having a big company, and creating these good jobs and things like that \u2014 don&#8217;t keep it as a dream. Make it an I will do that, and I can do that. And then set some time frames for yourself to progress to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think in business, I have been my own worst enemy out of everything. It hasn&#8217;t been the employees. It hasn&#8217;t been those bad clients. It&#8217;s been me who has stunted my growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-34\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why she invested in business coaching<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> One thing I did two years ago, after I left my ex-husband, was I really realized I was at a point where I needed to decide what I wanted to do with my company and what I wanted to do with my life. And so I invested in business coaching. I was actually listening to one of your podcasts. I can&#8217;t remember who the guest was, but I heard it from her. She left a domestic violence marriage, which is what I came from. So immediately, that caught my attention. And she put herself into the CBF coaching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so then I started looking into that, and they talked so much about setting those goals \u2014 saying, I want to be a millionaire by this point \u2014 or just envisioning those selves. And even if you feel like you aren&#8217;t that, you fake it. You fake it. You are that. So really, what we feed ourselves and feed our mindset is who we are going to become. And that is in business too. You know, what I tell myself I&#8217;m capable of is what my business is going to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-35\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">How self-talk shapes your business<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I can relate to this so much \u2014 being your own worst enemy, and really what we speak to ourselves. And I think I&#8217;ve done that even just in a recent episode, where somebody was saying something about themselves, and I&#8217;m like, don&#8217;t say that phrase, you know, because what we speak is what becomes. And I&#8217;m not a huge, like, rah-rah, woo-woo kind of girl, but our actions are going to follow our beliefs, right? And our beliefs follow our actions. They kind of feed off of each other, right? So even if I&#8217;m not believing in myself, but I&#8217;m taking action as if I did, then I do start to believe in myself, because there&#8217;s that proof of concept, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And it&#8217;s so funny, because this morning, I woke up late. I couldn&#8217;t get to sleep last night, super anxious. And then this morning, I was really down on myself, and I called in to volunteering at the cat shelter, and I felt like shit, because I was like, God damn it, Stephanie, you let them down. They always can count on you. And today was just not the day. And so I started walking the dog, and I was just ruminating on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And then every step \u2014 this is going to sound so silly, but I&#8217;m not kidding at all \u2014 I just started saying, like, you&#8217;re a badass bitch. You&#8217;re a badass bitch. That is just, like, this thing. So that by the end of the walk, I have said it 100 times, and I&#8217;m like, go kill the day. Go get dressed, put your fancy pants on, get it together. And now I&#8217;m having a great day. It&#8217;s almost like restarting the day. Stupid as it sounds, it works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yes, it does. Yeah. And that&#8217;s what I&#8217;ve learned a lot. And I have a coach now \u2014 his name is Misa. And when we started, I remember he would cut me off. I&#8217;d be like, I&#8217;m so bad at this. He&#8217;s like, stop talking about yourself in that way. You rephrase it: I am trying to be better at this. Because yeah, what you say is what you&#8217;re going to believe, and who you are, and everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, I mean, I think those days \u2014 I have those days every other day. But I think we wake up and we start thinking, like, oh, it&#8217;s already been a bad day because I woke up late, so the whole day&#8217;s thrown out. You have the power to just reset it now. Just because your morning didn&#8217;t go well, your afternoon can go well, then you can have a great evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-36\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Resetting a bad day halfway through<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah. Thinking of it literally as different days within the day. Like, okay, new day. It&#8217;s 10 in the morning. It&#8217;s a new day. Just go from this point \u2014 what would make it a good day from this point on? Because yeah, that is, for me, one of my biggest challenges: if I screw up, I just throw the baby out with the bathwater. It&#8217;s the whole concept of, if you dropped your phone, instead of just being like, oh, dropped it, pick it back up and move on, you start smashing it because you dropped it. Just start stomping on it. That&#8217;s been me my whole fucking life. And so that&#8217;s something I&#8217;ve really tried to work on, especially in the past couple of months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Well, I feel like the business will help you get over that stuff, because it&#8217;s every day in business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh my gosh. Yeah, no, it really does. And that&#8217;s where entrepreneurship and owning a business is the incubator. It is the magnifying glass, and it is going to show you \u2014 you can&#8217;t hide. You cannot hide from it. It&#8217;s going to show you what the fuck&#8217;s wrong with you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Absolutely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> For the rest of your life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yes, exactly. I&#8217;m good now. I learned so much. Nope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah. Got another lesson, got another lesson. That&#8217;s what I love about it. It&#8217;s so special. And it does things to us that I think a lot of other jobs couldn&#8217;t possibly do to us, because we&#8217;re the ones in charge, and it&#8217;s just really chaotic, and it&#8217;s a great place for growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-37\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">What to Do When a Cleaner Steals From a Commercial Client<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I want to ask you about \u2014 you put on your intake form, I want to make sure I hear this story about the tech you had that was stealing, but another person got blamed for it at that facility. Do you know what I&#8217;m talking about?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yeah. Our one and only, knock on wood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yeah. Yeah. That thief situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> So I want to hear this, because I&#8217;m like, damn, that&#8217;s crazy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-38\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Hiring for commercial accounts with no screening process<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> I don&#8217;t even know how long ago this was. It had to be at least four years ago. I had no systems for hiring. I didn&#8217;t know what I was doing at this point. So I had these commercial offices. I was doing them. I was getting to the point where I&#8217;m like, I can&#8217;t work all day anymore. So let me hire these out. Phone interview. Okay, you&#8217;re hired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah. Great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Because it&#8217;s like, it&#8217;s an office. What could go wrong? No one&#8217;s there. Nothing. There are no valuables there. I was cleaning for this client \u2014 I cleaned his home too, for years before this, then picked up their office. Got these people in, and I did maybe one quality check. You&#8217;re good. You&#8217;re great. Good to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And the owner reached out to me, just kind of filling me in. He&#8217;s like, hey, the past couple \u2014 I don&#8217;t know if it was weeks or months, but I was like, wow, I&#8217;m just finding out about this \u2014 we&#8217;ve had money go missing. And he&#8217;s like, but I did fire someone today, and I think it was her. And I was just flabbergasted. And I was like, okay, can I ask why you think it&#8217;s this person? And it was his secretary. He&#8217;s like, well, we&#8217;ve been having issues with her. And she&#8217;s the only person that knows about this stack of cash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m like, okay, so are you going to keep me in the loop? Or do you want me to do anything? Should I be going there? No. He&#8217;s like, let&#8217;s just leave it be and see. So it was him and his brother who owned the company. It was, like, a family company. And it was his brother who just left a stack of cash in his desk drawer \u2014 like, thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, that&#8217;s not smart. And no cameras? Like, what the fuck?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> No cameras. Outside. They&#8217;re not inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-39\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">How the client caught the cleaner on camera<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> So yeah. So I guess, without me knowing, they left a booby trap for her. And they set up a camera. They put \u2014 it was still, like, $500 they put in there, which I&#8217;m like, stupid, stupid. So they put $500 in there. And I guess her boyfriend or husband was a felon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh my gosh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> And she had her husband come to help steal the money. And she completed her cleaning. So she actually did clean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> She was doing the cleaning, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> She was doing the cleaning. And left. They went there, realized that they took the money, and called me. I had to get on the phone with her. And she has a son. And at this point, I&#8217;m like, listen, they have cameras. They saw. This was a trap. And she&#8217;s bawling her eyes out. She&#8217;s like, Payge, I can&#8217;t go to jail. I have a son.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I just get so disgusted when people are like \u2014 but the consequences of my actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> So basically, I had to tell her, well, you have two options. You can leave, and they&#8217;re gonna call the cops, and we&#8217;re gonna tell them where you live. Or you can go back and return the money and walk away scot-free. That was what the owner set up. That&#8217;s what they wanted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> That&#8217;s very kind of them to give that option.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yeah. So she went back, and she gave them $2 and said that&#8217;s all she took. Because her husband, I guess he, like, left on foot or something. And so he must have had the money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Which is crazy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Because she had to go back, and she gave them $2, insisted that they didn&#8217;t take it, all this stuff. They were just basically like, okay, just leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Which \u2014 I don&#8217;t know why that blows my mind, but that&#8217;s pretty wild. Because it&#8217;s like \u2014 I mean, it&#8217;s just crazy, because obviously they wouldn&#8217;t be talking to you about $2. Like, yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. What? Okay. So they didn&#8217;t call the cops? They just were like \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> So they did call the cops. The cops were there, but they didn&#8217;t press charges or anything. So they let her walk away. And then for me, it was, well, you fire her and don&#8217;t let her back here, and you do the cleaning. So shit, I just got out of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-40\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Keeping the commercial client after a theft<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> They kept you, then?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> They kept me for a while. Then they rebuilt the whole office. And at that point, I think that was their way out of me. For them \u2014 because I just realized, like, she doesn&#8217;t know what she&#8217;s doing. She just knows how to clean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> So then, when they rebuilt it, they went with a different company. But I still cleaned the owner&#8217;s house up until three months ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Wow. Okay. I mean, you know, it&#8217;s actually quite shocking. We&#8217;ve had the same thing with actual theft from our team \u2014 like the cleaner that we fired last year for stealing from that church. We still clean that church. They&#8217;re wonderful clients. There are so many clients who will be very forgiving as long as you get that person out of the situation, basically, which is kind of shocking. I mean, it&#8217;s nice, of course, that the relationship was still good enough that that continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Which makes sense, because if they hire someone else, they&#8217;re going to have to go through the same stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Exactly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> So, yeah, if it were me, I would have pressed charges. I wouldn&#8217;t have given two fucks. You knew what you were doing, and you continued to do it for weeks on end. So, yeah, you deserve to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> And then you lied about it. That&#8217;s my biggest thing. When faced with evidence and they still lie \u2014 like saying it was only $2, or for us, with my cleaner, she got caught on camera. We saw it, and she just kept lying and kept lying. And I was like, I cannot \u2014 you have this opportunity to come clean, and you&#8217;re not. God, it just makes you want to shake them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> I know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-41\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why Employee Theft Is Rare, and How to Plan for It Anyway<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, no, it just sucks, because it really is, I would say, one of the most negative parts of what we do. Sometimes it is going to be our company, and that fucking sucks. It sucks when it&#8217;s us. You know what I mean? Because at the end of the day, it&#8217;s us. It&#8217;s ours. No matter what. Like, I think you put on your intake form too, just letting go of that control when you have experiences like that. It is so hard to have something like that happen and still trust again. So what was that like for you after the fact? Were you just like, oh my God, I can&#8217;t hire anybody? What were you feeling?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> I think I was like that. And I think in my mindset, I was like, I&#8217;ll just go back to doing everything. I can&#8217;t ever have this happen, especially with my name on the company. Payge&#8217;s Green Clean \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> We steal. We steal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yeah, I was terrified. And I was just like, well, this is a good-paying job. I&#8217;m just gonna do it myself. I&#8217;m gonna do all the other offices by myself. Yeah, it scared me. But no matter what, it can happen. And I think the likelihood of it happening is very small.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, it&#8217;s rare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yeah. You know, I&#8217;ve been in business \u2014 I think going on nine years \u2014 and it&#8217;s happened to me once, and we&#8217;ve had probably over 25 people work for us. It really is rare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> It&#8217;s the risk of what we are doing. And the thing is, with any company that you have, there&#8217;s a risk of staff stealing in some capacity. You know, my best friend, she works for her family&#8217;s roofing company. And the guys will steal gas on the company card, time theft \u2014 there are so many different ways to steal. And people do be stealing. And so it&#8217;s kind of a risk of doing business that you just need to know how you&#8217;re going to handle when it does happen, because eventually, it&#8217;s probably going to happen to all of us at some point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Absolutely. Yeah, having a system in place for how you would handle that. And then obviously, insurance too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-42\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why You Need Scheduling Software Before You Feel Ready<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Obviously, you systematized a lot. What kind of software do you use now? What things have you put in place to make things run more smoothly for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yeah, so ZenMaid was actually the very first software I used. So I went from paper to ZenMaid. So it&#8217;ll always have a special place in my heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> And what was that transition like for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> It was nothing to do with ZenMaid, but it was the fact that everything was in my brain or on paper. So I needed to take this and put it into the software, and I&#8217;m not a techie person either. I remember every day, I&#8217;m like, okay, I&#8217;m doing two hours, three hours a night just to get it in and implemented. Because before then \u2014 I had employees at that point, I think I had maybe three or four \u2014 it was all texting. Like, here&#8217;s your schedule for the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, just horrific. And that&#8217;s where, when people are like, oh, I&#8217;m not big enough to need scheduling software, I&#8217;m like, do you want to get big? Because, as you&#8217;re describing, if you wait to implement scheduling software until you feel like you&#8217;re dying without it, it&#8217;s too late. Do you wish you would have done it earlier?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> It&#8217;s unprofessional not having a system with communications for the clients, so they know when you&#8217;re coming. It&#8217;s unprofessional. It&#8217;s gonna stunt your growth. Just invest in it, even if you feel like you&#8217;re not big enough, because it&#8217;s gonna be so much easier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Exactly. Because getting everything from your head into the client notes, if you&#8217;ve got a good amount of clients \u2014 you&#8217;re just going to kick that can down the road, because you know it&#8217;s going to be so much work. But luckily, now with AI, it&#8217;s so much easier. You could literally just babble into an AI, and then it could do it. So things are so much easier now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yeah, we had to grow up in a hard time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> So yeah, I know. Yeah, back in my day, we didn&#8217;t have ChatGPT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Now I&#8217;m talking with you about my business, and I&#8217;m like, oh, back then we were making $10 an hour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, I know. It&#8217;s so funny. I just imagine talking to my grandchildren about the pre-AI times, and they&#8217;re like, okay, grandma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Oh my gosh, that&#8217;s so funny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-43\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Rebranding a Cleaning Business and the $1 Million Goal<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Okay, so, you know, you talk about goal setting, and that has really changed a lot of things for you, with coaching and just setting the vision. What is the vision? How do you want next year to look for you? Because you&#8217;re at eight employees now, right? So what is your vision?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Well, we lost a few employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> That&#8217;s normal. I&#8217;m down to 27 as of today. So I get it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yes. So the vision for the company \u2014 we are going through a rebrand. Again, I started this company when I was 18. So I think I&#8217;ve outgrown the \u2014 I don&#8217;t think there was a lot of vision to it in the first spot. But I&#8217;m just looking at the colors, the logos \u2014 it&#8217;s very, like, 18-year-old Payge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> It&#8217;s cute. It&#8217;s cute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> But it&#8217;s not business. And it&#8217;s not professional. And so the vision is \u2014 right now, I&#8217;ve lost \u2014 we had eight employees, one is my VA. So we lost four. Actually, no, five. When it rains, it pours, I swear to God. Every time, it&#8217;s like, when will this end?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> No, I feel ya. That was us last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-44\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Using a rebrand to reset company culture<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> I&#8217;m taking this time, as much as it sucked, to really go into this rebrand, because we need a culture reset. I had to get those friends out. I had to reestablish what I want the boundaries to be for my employees. I&#8217;ve had to learn to be harder. And that doesn&#8217;t mean, like, being a bitch and screaming at them. It just means reminding them of your boundaries and having those talks, like, this can&#8217;t happen again. Like, you do great work, but this cannot happen again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So taking the time to really reset \u2014 we&#8217;re really going for the professional look, the calm that we can bring. My biggest thing is, for me, the feeling I get when my house is clean, especially when I work from home \u2014 everything else in my life could be falling apart, but if my main living areas are clean, I&#8217;m set. I&#8217;m good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I can relate. My little pro tip right now is, on my TV, there&#8217;s a nonstop YouTube video of a fall background with light classical music. So when I walk into my house, it&#8217;s just like, oh my God, this is the best feeling. It just sounds good. It smells good. I&#8217;m just like, I feel so happy right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-45\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">The goal: $1 million, 10-plus cleaners, and a second VA<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> I do that too. Yeah. So that&#8217;s what my mission is \u2014 to bring that. The vision for my company is, next year \u2014 not at the start, because we&#8217;re not going to hit that \u2014 but by the end of next year, to be at $1 million in the company. I would definitely like to have 10-plus employees, cleaning staff. Probably have a second VA, because my VA, she&#8217;s my first. So God bless her. I had to, again, take everything from here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> It&#8217;s so painful, but so worth it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Oh, so worth it. Also, I wish I did that sooner. So probably a second VA, because she&#8217;s doing everything now. So I know that gaps are going to start opening up the bigger we get.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"heading-46\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why you can&#8217;t stop recruiting<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> So that&#8217;s the vision, and just continuing to really set the systems. This short-staffed mess I&#8217;m in is because I stopped recruiting, and I got comfortable, and I&#8217;m not a fan of hiring. It&#8217;s a lot of work and a lot of interviews. It&#8217;s a whole process, so I&#8217;m not a fan of it. But the minute I got comfortable is the minute I lost everything. So systems like that \u2014 really zoning in on the systems. So that&#8217;s next year&#8217;s goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I think those are really realistic goals. I think you can absolutely hit them. And when you hit that million, girl, you let me know, and we will have to reconvene. I think you&#8217;re going through \u2014 this is a new phase. And sometimes it means the controlled burn or uncontrolled forest fire might come through your business, and you&#8217;re just like, okay, cool. What can I plant here that&#8217;s fresh, that&#8217;s new, that can grow into those big, strong trees and roots? Because from the sounds of it, there were a lot of cultural things happening. And now you&#8217;re starting fresh, and the rebrand will help with that too, with you feeling fresh. So yeah, I&#8217;m so excited for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Thank you. I am too. It&#8217;s going to be amazing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Oh yeah. We will absolutely be having another conversation, because I could talk to you for hours, literally. This is such a vibe. I really enjoy speaking with you, Payge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> It&#8217;s our hair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah, it&#8217;s our hair. It&#8217;s because of our hair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> It&#8217;s a connection. I feel like we have similar trauma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> I&#8217;m like, we&#8217;re the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Trauma bonding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Trauma sisters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Yeah, trauma sisters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Exactly. Exactly. That&#8217;s funny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-47\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Follow Payge&#8217;s Green Clean on Facebook and Instagram<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Payge, where can people find you if they want to follow along on your journey?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> So right now, we have just the business social media. That&#8217;s on Facebook and Instagram. It&#8217;s just Payge&#8217;s Green Clean. Payge is spelled with a Y.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Wonderful. Progress. There&#8217;s always progress, guys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Payge:<\/strong> Oh my gosh. Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Yeah. We will be having another one, guys. Please leave Payge some love down in the comments. This has been an absolute blast. Leave a hot dog emoji down below. We did say the word wiener, and I think that shows me that you made it this far in the episode. Hit that like, hit that subscribe, and we&#8217;ll see you in the next episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners. Thanks, guys.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Listen on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube Introduction Stephanie: Hello, my friends. Welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I am your host, Stephanie from Serene Clean. And today&#8217;s fabulous guest is Ms. Payge Aldridge. And she is up in Buffalo, New York. She is the owner and founder of Payge&#8217;s Green [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":17964,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17962","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\/17962","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=17962"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17968,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17962\/revisions\/17968"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}