ZenMaid’s Vision for the Maid Service Industry, with CEO Amar Ghose

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Introduction

Stephanie: Hello everyone, welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I am your host, Stephanie from Serene Clean. And today’s fabulous guest, you may know him because his name’s Amar and he owns this company. And we are gonna talk about stuff and things and so many cool things going on. And I asked Amar to come back on because there’s a lot of exciting new developments occurring in the ZenMaid ecosystem. And we wanna talk about that as well as just in general, our businesses, what’s going on and how we’re feeling. So how are you feeling, Amar?

Amar: Yeah, feeling pretty good. It’s an exciting time I think for businesses right now. So yeah, it’s certainly a lot of fun over here at ZenMaid. Busy, but fun.

Stephanie: I totally agree. It seems like things are just moving at an accelerated pace every time I hop into Slack and people are coming up with these incredible ideas because of AI, because of what it allows us to build. Even, yeah, like I’ll jump into a chat and somebody will be talking about a problem and then someone else will just offer up, “Oh, I’ve built out this to solve this.” And it seems like the entire company is working very well together on this mission of creating tools that are gonna help our customers.

How AI Changed Prototyping at ZenMaid

Amar: Yeah, definitely. And what we’re finding is AI makes it easier than ever to essentially prototype the solution. So it’s easier for us to figure out what the right solution is. Implementing the solution can still take quite a bit of time, but I feel bad ’cause I’m forgetting the customer’s name, but someone put in a request recently to have us essentially be able to flag preferred cleaners and cleaners that maybe had had a bad experience with the client, or the client had specifically said, “Hey, don’t send this cleaner back to my home.”

And what I was literally able to do was to copy and paste word for word the request from this client, put it into AI and be like, “Hey, can you just take a look at these two pages? And I just need mock-ups to show my team. They don’t need to be working, they don’t need to be perfect, but just take what this customer is asking for and just mock it up on like our current pages and load this in my browser for me.” And literally one shot at it was able to show Alex exactly what we would like to do. Like I said before, now the question is, okay, is it as easy as just like making it look this way, or is there a bunch of backend work to connect everything and all of that stuff?

But yeah, like I said, AI is quite exciting and we’ve seen both customers that are able to send us like better prototypes and then internal team members that aren’t necessarily technical are all of a sudden coming to our team going, “Hey, is this possible?” And what they’re showing us isn’t just like a half-baked idea, it’s a working prototype and that’s really cool.

Stephanie: I agree. I think that the ability for non-technical people to take what’s in their brain and then communicate that with the visuals because of AI and be able to tweak — instead of, there’s just so many ideas that everybody has that it’s very hard to articulate and it never comes out the way we want because we’re not designers, we’re not developers. And even if we were developers, it would take so much time to come up with that idea. It’s like, it may just be a half-baked idea and you have to see it and it’s like, “Nevermind, this isn’t a good idea.” But just to even get to that point, the AI really does — it’s incredible. I’ve been very impressed with everything coming out of the whole team.

Amar: Absolutely. I mean, it’s been cool to see what you’ve been doing for Serene Clean as well, right? That I showed you sort of almost like mock-ups of report ideas that I had in mind for ZenMaid and you guys, from what I understand, ran with a couple of them and now have, I think, what, the fragmentation index that’s live in Serene Clean that you built for yourselves. And so, for anyone watching this, it’s like, these are all things that ZenMaid wants to provide to you in the future, but there’s already a ton of things that if you use AI, you can go and take what ZenMaid does and you can get a lot more out of it using AI, even now, but hopefully we’ll add that in natively so you guys don’t have to go and figure it out for yourselves. It’s always an ongoing battle for us over here, ongoing game of whack-a-mole. Like which solution to go for first?

Stephanie: No, 100%, but the nice thing is that when we do get to, okay, this is what we’re going to develop next, it already feels like it moves so much faster because we have that visual and able to provide feedback, not on just an idea, but something that we’re seeing of like, “Don’t like this, do like this” kind of thing. Even looking at our weekly design call, it just feels like it’s moving a lot faster. Like things are just cooking at a very fast pace and I love it.

Amar: Exactly, it’s very, very cool to see.

Stephanie: Well, and I even — I know Maria had came up with, what did she show recently? I think it was something to do with reporting, or she mentioned that she is doing something in her main service with AI. It was something to do with reporting. It might’ve been a cleaner flagging system or something like that.

Amar: Yeah, I know that she’s built out like a quote estimate tool that you see a lot of maid service owners that have built out for themselves ’cause it’s such a specific kind of thing. So she built out one for that. And then, yeah, I forget what the other one was that she was working on, but it’s really cool that Maria is able to do that now. And despite running a tech company for 13 years now, I’m not technical. And so in the past couple of months, it feels like all of a sudden I’ve gone from just being kind of like the idea guy in some ways, to actually being able to contribute to the team. That’s probably downplaying my contributions over time, but sometimes it feels that way when I look at how talented our technical team is that are the ones building the product and taking the crazy ideas that you and I have and turning them into like a working reality for our customers. It kind of blows my mind sometimes.

AI as a Thinking Partner

Stephanie: No, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. And I’d love to hear just in general, outside of like building prototypes, how you’re using it in your daily work. Because for me, a lot of times I’m asking it for blind spots or, “Is this the right way to go about this thing?” Like, for example, I’ll give you a perfect example. We use ClickUp very heavily. I was like, okay, I want to do production re-auditing of our first time cleans, maintenance cleans, is something I showed you guys recently. But yeah, eventually I’d love to see that in ZenMaid and what that looks like. But then going to Claude and being like, “Okay, this is the end result I am seeking. I want to be able to have this information, but is this the place? Is this the how?” So before I just run with an idea, I tend to like to ask, like, “Am I thinking about this correctly? If we build this out, what are actually the drawbacks?” That type of thing. And it’s really good at pointing out things that I would never even consider.

Amar: Yeah, exactly. My favorite use cases with AI — so I really love using AI as a thinking partner. And so I think that having AI present to you all of the different options with the pros and cons is a great way of using it to learn. And that having it ask you questions and challenge you to consider things that you haven’t previously considered, that’s something that I will explicitly ask the AI to do. If I’m thinking about this product or this way of adding value to the maid service industry, what am I missing here? Like you said, what are my blind spots? And so I really like using AI in that way.

Where I’ve seen people really go wrong with it is when they try to outsource decision-making to AI. So I try to use AI to give me clarity on maybe all of the factors in a decision or all of the different choices that I may not have considered when confronted with something. Or like you said, am I even deciding on the right thing? Oftentimes, I think there’s a decision that needs to be made, and then you get challenged on it a little bit.

And honestly, you can replace AI with your really smart entrepreneur friend, but it’s a lot easier to get feedback from AI. And then also, there’s questions that you and I don’t want to ask each other, right? Where it’s just like, this seems like a really dumb question. That is one of the nice things with AI — there’s no such thing as a dumb question. It’s not judging you, right?

Stephanie: Yeah, and I think also for me, it helps me get past points of frustration where otherwise, left to my own devices, I would have quit working on something. Like for example, if I’m building out whatever widget to calculate something and it’s not working, it’s like, okay, back to the ClickUp thing. So they have formula — like I was trying to get the formula function to work and it wasn’t working, it wasn’t working. And I was like, according to ClickUp, I was doing everything right, but just like sending it back and back and back to Claude. And he’s like, “Ah, this is why.” And it helped me work through points where I was like, I would have — this is taking too long, forget it. I will keep doing it the old fashioned way, like with a spreadsheet.

Amar: Yeah, exactly, exactly. I definitely found that it’s so much easier to take my ideas and either make them like a reality or to be able to communicate them to the team or the outside world, that for me, that’s the biggest unlock of just like my preparation on things, just on another level. But in large part, it’s removed so many of the blocks. It just removes the friction to getting a lot of things done.

Stephanie: I feel like it’s perfect for ADHD brains like ours, right? We just get to jump from decision to decision to decision. Whereas in the past, people would make one decision, then take a bunch of time implementing that decision and then make another decision and spend a bunch of time implementing. And if you weren’t good at decisions, then that might’ve played to your strengths because there was less time, right, to kind of make. Whereas for me, it’s like, once I’ve made the decision, I just want to move on to the next decision. To me, the decision’s the fun part.

Amar: Totally agree, totally agree.

Advice for the “AI Curious”

Stephanie: So, for people listening, a lot of people are perhaps hesitant, or I would say using AI almost in replacement of Google. And it’s just like, I’ve seen folks who have used — I’ve watched them using it. And it’s very, I guess, rudimentary. And I mean that in the most non-derogatory way of, they are just asking a question as if they are typing into Google. And that feels like such a missed opportunity for using it. I mean, none of us are using it to its full capacity, of course, but for those people who are like, let’s say AI curious, what suggestions do you have for implementing it into their cleaning businesses specifically, since that’s who we’re talking to?

Amar: Okay, yeah, so there’s a couple of things. So I actually gave a quick talk on this for the CBF Live by Debbie, that I did, what, a couple of weeks ago. And so the big thing that I would say is the first thing, if you’re trying to really get into AI — the first thing is find some fun use cases for it. Everyone that I know that’s been successful with AI, generally they started, or at some point early on, they found some really fun use case. So like, for example, for me and Fran — Fran is my wife — I went and got food for us at some point and got stuck in a rainstorm. So I wasn’t able to come back. And so I let her know that I was kind of delayed and sent her a photo of, what, like pizza that was clearly already like partly eaten, right? And she literally sent me like a legal notice of intent to sue for like pizza related, you know, like crimes against, you know, the holy matrimony of whatever. And so it was just this hilarious thing to receive. And there’s all sorts of little things like that. So when I got into AI, just like a couple of months ago, I built Fran a little app for her to track some of her progress with painting. Like you’ve seen some of the fun stuff that I’ve done. So that’s like the first thing — just build something for your family or for a friend, or just something that amuses you just for the sake of it. That’s what’s going to make AI fun, you know? Do some funny things with images, right? Or have it write some silly stuff. And just realize that initially it’s going to be essentially a toy for you, right?

But then, to what you were asking about, if you’re essentially just using it right now almost as a replacement for Google, I think really what it is, is that the big difference between Google and a decent AI is that with Google, you’re trying to give it as little information as possible and as specific information as possible to get the result that you want. And with AI, it’s the more information that you give it, the better result that you get. And so honestly, the biggest piece of advice that I would have for someone listening to this, if they’re still in that stage that you were saying, Stephanie, is to start using the voice functions, right? Instead of typing into your phone, use the voice function. And just as if you were talking to an intelligent friend of yours, just describe the problem that you’re experiencing or what you want to have happen. And just give it more detail than you would ever imagine giving Google, right? And so a lot of the time for me, it’s taking Lola for a walk and just brain dumping a voice note about the challenge that I have or about the idea that I have. And then coming back, putting that into one of the AIs and asking it to either summarize or to give me feedback on it or whatever it is. But yeah, it’s essentially just realize the more information you give AI the better, and that’s the big difference between it and search engines. And I think if you lean into that, over time, your usage will get better and better.

I guess the final thing is, ask the AI how you can use the AI better, right? Which is very meta, but if you’re using ChatGPT all the time right now, go, “Hey, I’m starting to use you more and more. How can I get more out of ChatGPT?” And it’ll actually look at the previous chats that you’ve had and go, “Great. Here’s kind of where you are. Here’s the next step along the way.” The nice thing is you can just do that every week or two and you’ll just keep getting better with AI.

Giving AI Context for Consistency

Stephanie: I totally agree. And one thing — when I really got my management team using it more heavily, we are like, it is expected that they are using it and they do, not just for shits and gigs, although a lot of times it is just shits and gigs. But what we did was, we have our company Claude and we made sure that every single project that we open in Claude has a doc in the little thing that you can attach for the context. So, what is Serene Clean? What’s important to us? What are our core values? What are we interested in? Who is Stephanie? So that the AI, every single conversation, every single new project that we have within it, it understands the same context.

So we’re getting consistency across all users in the way that the stuff is written, meaning if something’s going out to a customer or to an employee, we want that brand consistency. But then also, I want consistency across Serene Clean when it comes to anything going out. And so it’s very important that we are not just starting new chats over and over again with no context, because what you’re talking about is give the AI context because then it can better give you the results that are going to serve you. And so that would be a suggestion I would make too.

And I think we learned that from Bunty, that attaching that to the projects. And so we took that to heart. We just have our Serene Clean doc of context to give to AI and just attach it. And that was really helpful so that across all management users, we’re all getting that same feel, vibe, even colors. When we’re making a new document or something like that, when it creates it in our drive, it literally is already formatted in the Serene Clean colors. Everything’s very consistent without us having to tell it to do that, ’cause it already knows.

Amar: I mean, honestly, now that I think about it — yeah, there’s a couple of things that immediately come to mind here. I’m really looking forward to the ZenMaid team retreat that I think we’re about, what, seven weeks out, maybe something like that. Yeah, the ZenMaid team retreat in Barcelona. And I think that during that week, we’re going to see everyone’s AI, not just usage, but ability jump in a very short period of time, because there’s something about sitting together and just seeing side by side the different setups and all of that stuff where you can really, really accelerate.

But the other thing that I would encourage any listeners to do is to find other maid service owners and other friends that you have — other entrepreneur friends that you have that are using AI — and just do some Zoom calls and do some sessions. Honestly, Stephanie, maybe it’s the kind of thing that we should do at some point and potentially record and publish, or even stream live to maybe one of the Facebook groups or something — just showing some of the use cases and stuff. ‘Cause oftentimes when you attend things like that, even if 90% of the things go completely over your head because maybe you’re a noob or whatever with AI, the 10% that does kind of click that shows you that one level beyond what you’re currently doing — and so it’s very attainable — can be absolutely game changing.

And you can stack that up by just exposing yourself more and more. And so that’s really what I would do. I would treat AI almost like a skill and try to be learning about it every week or whatever. But yeah, I don’t know. It’s just fun to have.

Building a CEO Report With AI

Stephanie: I think that’s a great idea. I actually — so every month, I prepare a CEO report, State of the Union, and then I present that to my management team. And that is 100% from Claude. And as I was going back and forth, I had that same thought of like, this would be really useful to show people of, what are all the inputs? Like I’m giving it seven different reports and going back and forth until it hones into like, okay, how did last month go compared to the year before, compared to the month before, like the trends, calling out all — ’cause that’s — I just love that it pulls things that I would miss, any human would miss unless you were a data analyst. So anybody would miss it.

And so that is always — it feels like I’m finding gold in a mountain whenever that happens. And I’m like, holy shit, we did not see this pattern or whatever. Or like, “Hey, watch this,” or “This customer’s frequency, they’re skipping a lot,” that type of thing. Where you just wouldn’t see it otherwise.

Amar: I love that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. AI in terms of the reporting power that it’s providing, it’s given us a lot more actionable feedback at our fingertips. And then the question is just taking action on it. So one of the things that I’ve been saying is, AI hasn’t made too many things that were previously impossible possible — in some ways it has, but really it’s made things that were previously unreasonable, reasonable, right?

There’s a bunch of reporting that if I ask Nat to have one of the ops team members go and spend like two weeks doing a report for me, for me to look at it and to be like, I might’ve asked the wrong question — but you do that with AI and it’s like 30 seconds later, and you’re just like, “No, let’s try that again. Let’s try that again, like different parameters.” I just wouldn’t have asked for that information previously. And so, yeah, like I said, particularly on the reporting front, we just have so much more actionable information at our fingertips. The difference now is going to be who takes action and in what direction.

Stephanie: Yeah, no, that’s such a good way to put it — it’s not impossible, it would just be unreasonable. Or, okay, you have a follow-up question of like, “Well, tell me about this.” You ask that of somebody, they have to go back to the drawing board, where it’s like — the rapidness of it is just so exciting. I can walk away from a half an hour session and I know exactly the health of the business or whatever the problem is that I’m looking at. And for me, it’s quite comforting as somebody who loves data. Like, I feel like I understand my business a lot more because of AI. There’s no question to me at all.

New Tool: MaidPop

Amar: Gotcha, nice, nice.

Stephanie: So obviously, we’re working on all of these new tools and features and things like that. Some things are coming to fruition pretty rapidly because of that. And I’d like to share with the audience, if you don’t mind, some of these new fascinating features and tools that we’re creating.

Amar: Okay, so if you guys check out maidpop.io, you will find essentially — if you have a website right now that you’re not actively trying to collect people’s emails on, and you own a maid service, obviously MaidPop is designed for you. It essentially takes probably, I don’t know, 60 seconds, like two minutes to set up maybe. You literally just have to type in your company name, your location, and then everything else is just multiple choice. And what you end up with is a beautifully designed pop-up that shows up on your website. There’s photos that are pre-selected, so they make any maid service look good — clean home, happy family, all of that stuff. But there’s enough variation for you to find what fits for you.

And yeah, essentially just using AI, this was something that I personally was able to build. I did have our CTO kind of looking over my shoulder to make sure that I didn’t do anything horrifically wrong or anything like that. But yeah, we obviously have the booking forms at ZenMaid, but there’s a bunch of companies out there that, even if they’re using the ZenMaid booking forms, they’re not trying to just make it easy for people to leave their email, maybe in exchange for a discount or for some other benefit. And so we just thought, why not put together a quick free tool?

And we just think that it’s not necessarily the best thing in the world, but if you don’t have anything on your website, it’s way better than nothing. And we’ve got a couple of mainly ZenMaid users now that are literally collecting leads every single day from this pop-up. So yeah, that’s essentially MaidPop, but it’s the first of many little tools that I think that we want to build, and some bigger tools as well. But mainly little ones to start, at least.

Stephanie: No, and I love that because I think it gives options. And that’s the point — is to give people options for what makes sense in their business. And you guys have heard me harp about getting the contact information from who’s visiting your website. This is why I personally do not just have my pricing on my website, because I want to capture their email. And I also want to be able to sell to them.

And even — I know people listening might be like, “Yeah, email, email marketing, does that even still work?” Yes, I promise you it does. And you have to get that email. It’s still so important because then they’re in the ecosystem. Then they’re at least passively getting information from you and you have people to email when you have openings or want to do a discount or whatever thing. So it’s very valuable and very easy to add to your website, which is super cool. I think that is generally, I would say, one of the biggest values that I see of ZenMaid is that you guys want to make things as easy as possible — like simple, simple, simple, simple.

ZenMaid as the Industry’s “IT Department”

Amar: Exactly, exactly. Yeah, we know that a lot of listeners and a lot of maid service owners — they’re not in this industry because they’re overly technical. It’s generally because they love people. They enjoy creating safe spaces for families and contributing to the local community and all of that stuff. And technology is generally an afterthought. And so we’re trying to come in and make things that are just easy to use, that aren’t going to be frustrating and that aren’t going to cause problems once set up. So MaidPop is very much a set it and forget it. You go to maidpop.io, you set it up, you install it on your website and you don’t have to think about it again. You’ll just get emails every time a lead comes in. And we’re always trying to create stuff like that, at least on the product side.

And then on the support side, more and more, we’re trying to move towards almost thinking of ourselves as the maid service industry’s IT department. Most maid services — I mean, Steph, you’ve got a very successful and big maid service at this point. You don’t have a dedicated IT person or IT department. And that’s one thing that I’m wondering, why can’t ZenMaid essentially be like the Geek Squad of the industry, where you have a problem, our team just — tech is just where our team lives, right? We should be able to help most of our customers with it in a way that, sure, they could help themselves, but it’ll take way more time and they’ll be really frustrated with everything. And so that’s really what we’re beginning to think about on the support side of things.

And so it’s beginning to think about the company and these different things where there’s the marketing, where we’re trying to provide all this free education and provide a bunch of value like this podcast to as many people for free as possible. And then we get rewarded with some of those people who listen to this podcast, who end up coming and signing up for our software. And then we have the product, which is that software and a variety of other products that we’re beginning to work on. And then on the support side is, can we provide that sort of customer experience through support? So yeah, I don’t know, that’s how we’re at least beginning to think about ZenMaid these days.

Stephanie: Yeah, and I totally see that when I’m looking through some of the support threads. Like, for example, I’ll see Jorge be like, “Yeah, what I do is I suggest to the customer, use Zapier and hook these things up.” And it has nothing to do with ZenMaid. It’s just, this is a solution that’s going to work for you because we know this industry and we know what others are doing in the industry. Like me, I use Zapier, I use all of these things.

And even this week when we were in the design call and we were looking at a feature for the customer portal, I believe that’s in the works, and Jim was asking about notifications — like, “No, we need to be reminded to tell our customer this,” or it was something specific. And I just remember being like, “No, but we are going to have to update that information in all of our other softwares for this customer.” And he’s like, “I never would have thought of that because I’m thinking about ZenMaid,” right? And he’s working on ZenMaid and it’s just like, “No, but ZenMaid is a part of our software stack. It’s not the only thing.” Just like every company is going to have multiple. So I think having those perspectives of knowing the tools that are out there and suggesting what’s going to make the most sense for the customer in that particular situation is really where we can show a ton of value.

Amar: Yeah, exactly. And I think that there’s a lot of folks that have softwares similar to ZenMaid that try to claim to be an all-in-one software. And I think that’s something that we’ve kind of leaned away from, where it’s like, no, no, no, the bigger and more successful that you are, the more you’re going to use different softwares because you want the best. You don’t want one software that doesn’t do a bunch of things very well. You want the best. You want the best payroll solution. You want the best scheduling, which is ZenMaid, by the way. Obviously.

Stephanie: But obviously.

Amar: But that’s one of the things that we’ve essentially leaned kind of away from. And it’s nice because that allows us to sometimes step back and to suggest other solutions and to really suggest what’s best for the customer. And it’s not always going to be ZenMaid. And so, yeah, I think that that’s important to just the way that we approach things.

The 12 Star Experience Exercise

Amar: I was going to ask quickly, were you at the last retreat — or at the retreat, I’m not sure when was the last time that we did this — where we did the 12 star exercise? Do you know what that is?

Stephanie: I don’t think so, no.

Amar: Okay, so I heard about it from the founder of Airbnb on one of the podcasts that he was on. But it’s essentially thinking through your service experience and going, what’s a one star experience, right? So a one star experience for a cleaning company might be —

Stephanie: They burn your house down?

Amar: Might be like, oh, yeah, exactly. That would be like — well, yeah, ’cause honestly, it would be something along those lines where it’s like, the cleaner broke something priceless in the house and the company didn’t have insurance. There’s no way of getting it back. And there were serious repercussions, like potential —

Stephanie: Or they lied about them even breaking it, like that type of stuff.

Amar: Exactly, right? A three star experience might be the one that I had with a company in London, which was that I booked and their booking system just didn’t let them know about the booking. So they just completely no-showed me. And it’s like, okay, that’s kind of a bit neutral. I didn’t pay the money, right? But also, you guys didn’t show up and break anything. So maybe that’s three stars, right? And then you go up to five stars, and five stars is obviously you guys show up, you do a great job, they pay on time, leave a tip, everyone’s happy, et cetera.

The interesting thing is when you challenge yourself and your team to go, what’s a six star experience, right? Then what’s a seven star experience? And it’s like, forget about money, forget about how much it would cost you, if you want to just blow somebody’s mind with this. And the 12 star experience is like, we run the maid service for you and deposit the profits into your account, right? Like that’s always where you get to by 12 stars.

But I’ve done this with the ZenMaid team multiple times. And it’s interesting to see what you begin to think about, because you might think of some things where you’re like, okay, a seven star experience for the maid service might be that we do the cleaning and we know when the client’s going to be home. So we leave the oven on with freshly baked cookies for right when they get home. Or maybe something safer that doesn’t involve leaving an oven on in the client’s home.

Stephanie: I can already see where you were going with that.

Amar: But like something along those lines. And the interesting thing is that as you think through those things, you realize like, oh, maybe we could actually do that. Or, oh, maybe a handwritten note — maybe we can’t leave a handwritten note for every single client, but could we have an office manager write three handwritten notes a day to give out to cleaners before they go out, and they just select which three it is? And you get all sorts of ideas around the service.

And so that was one of the first times that I think the ZenMaid team really began to consciously think beyond the ZenMaid software. I think that that’s something that a lot of tech companies fall into — that we’re all just in our computers and in the code and all of that stuff that sometimes we forget about, like what Jim said — Jim is our designer for ContextGuys — what Jim said on the design call of, “Oh, I would have never even thought about that about the other softwares.” That I feel like is a very almost technical kind of mindset that I’ve been in in the past as well. But once we opened our minds beyond that, we’ve begun to find lots of ways to really help our clients and to help so many people that aren’t our clients yet in so many different ways. And that’s been really fun and really rewarding.

Stephanie: I love that exercise and I’ll definitely be taking my staff through that, even just cleaners too. Your cleaners — like taking it through at every level of the business, like what would this look like? And it’s like, okay, we can’t do that, but could we do some manner of it? And like for us, at the first reoccurring cleaning, we have the cleaners write a handwritten thank you note, “Welcome to the Serene Clean family.” They leave behind a candle, those little — so it’s like, okay, I can’t make you cookies or cook you dinner, however, what is something that makes you feel that way?

And so I really like that and I definitely wanna explore that further. And yeah, my conversation with Matt Ricketts earlier this week, we talked about delight a lot and that’s really what we’re talking about here — is like, how could we delight and titillate at every level? You know, and that, there it is.

Amar: Exactly, yeah. And you’ve heard me talk about that a ton — that you have to get the basics right before you can get to delight, but delight takes a little bit of thought upfront. It doesn’t necessarily take a ton of effort. And that’s why I love it so much, that it feels like when you have delightful features or delightful experiences, that actually you can create them with a relatively small amount of effort. It’s just genuinely being thoughtful about who you’re serving, whether you’re talking about a Michelin star restaurant, you’re talking about ZenMaid, or you’re talking about Serene Clean, right? It’s just a mindset that allows you to delight your clients.

A Quick Break

Stephanie: Quick little break here. If you have ever been listening to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast and thought, “Oh my gosh, Stephanie would die at this story” — well, guess what guys? I wanna hear that story, okay? We are looking for guest applications for the show. And I know many of you have never been on a podcast before, but those are my favorite episodes, to be frank — is the owners who are just here to share their stories. So if you are an owner who wants to share their story, or perhaps you would like to have a free consulting call with me and ask me your questions live for everybody else to learn from, that is also an option. And then finally, if you know somebody in our industry — you have a friend or somebody that you look up to and have learned from who you think would be a great guest option for us — please go to the link down in the bio and we would love to see you apply or nominate them and we will take it from there. And I would love to have a conversation with you and get to know you more closely. Back to Amar.

The Customer Portal

Stephanie: No, I totally agree. And I just mentioned the customer portal, so I’d love to talk about that. And it’s funny because when we first brought it up last year at the retreat, I was kind of so-so. And I was like, why do we need this? And then we did the whole AI challenge that we did, which was super fun, where everybody broke into teams and it’s like, you have an hour and a half, come up with a portal. What would your ideal customer portal look like? And so that was so fun. And by the end of that, I was like, oh shit, I want a customer portal ’cause I can see it now. That’s so valuable. And so now we’re building it and it’s really exciting.

Amar: Yeah, it’s very, very cool to see. And that’s finally coming together. That’s what I mean though — is that we’re coming up. So that was 10 months ago that we had those prototypes and we’re only just starting to code it now because software’s complicated and it hasn’t been the top priority and all of that stuff. But now it’s really exciting to see that now that Jim has started working on it. And I mean, honestly, it sounds like there’s a good chance that it’s going to be out in July. That’s really the timeline that the team is looking at.

I hate to make any promises there, just because especially as we’ve gotten bigger, just the amount of testing that we have to do before releasing something has just gone through the roof. And as ZenMaid users have seen, when we first release something, we have the team kind of on alert because even with all of the testing, there’s still oftentimes these little quirky things that we weren’t able to take into account. So we try to just be there to fix things as quickly as possible with every new release.

But yeah, the client portal’s going to be really cool. Our goal with that, and one of the goals that we’re sort of taking ZenMaid towards, is we’re trying to make the maid services and their owners look like heroes, right? To just look like they are pillars of the community and just have the best customer experience and are looking to delight their customers and everything. And so that’s really the goal of the client portal — it’s to make you guys look good, right? And so it’s actually pretty limited functionality because we think it’s more about the presentation of it and that sort of stuff. But also we know from talking to owners that we don’t want to give the clients too much power. So it’s like, hey, pay your bills, update your credit cards, look at your past history, and this is going to look really good and really professional, but it’s limited. It’s like, you can request a reschedule, you can request a cancellation. Well, it’s not like you request a cancellation — you can cancel, but it educates the person on the actual cancellation policy that’s in place and some of the stuff that we were talking about with the last design call and stuff.

Stephanie: Yeah, and that’s what I’m so excited about. I kind of just went through and audited, what is it that clients are emailing us about, right? Because some things are complex, but so much of it is, “When’s my next cleaning? When’s my cleaning two months from now?” And this is where I’m really excited of it saving so much time of superfluous questions that are important — and we want to get that customer that question — but if we can do it faster and they can do it themselves, it’s just like how I see, if I can give my cleaning techs the resources to answer or fix a problem themselves, that stops them from messaging us.

And that’s one less message that we have to answer and be pulled away from our work for, which is the work, I understand, but when you have limited administrative resources — or you, owner right now listening, it’s you, right? And you’re answering 7,000 things from customers and cleaners and you’re probably cleaning too. Anytime we can reduce the amount of emails we get by even like 5%, and the customer is happier because they didn’t have to write an email — they got to log in and find this. So it’s such a win-win.

And those are the types of things that make me really excited. Like, you won’t necessarily know — it’s like when a customer walks in and they didn’t realize how dirty their house was, so they maybe don’t see the difference, but over time you see the difference and it adds up. That’s exactly how I see something like this — we may not notice that we’re getting 10 less emails a week, but our stress level is going to go down because they’re just answering the questions themselves. ‘Cause you don’t know what they were — they’re just checking the answers. So I get really excited about things like that because that’s the type of shit that’s going to make owners’ lives easier without them even realizing it.

Amar: Yeah. And honestly, one of the most dangerous things that I hear from maid service owners and from entrepreneurs in general is, “I can just do that.”

Stephanie: Sure you can. Yeah, sure you can.

Amar: Exactly. Like I can do, you know, other than the technical kind of coding in ZenMaid, technically I could do any of the non-coding jobs at ZenMaid. Doesn’t mean that I should, right? Like I’m successful because I don’t do those things, because I have other people who do that — and not only do them, but do them better than me, right? So that’s really what you’re looking for.

But I think that there’s a lot of people that might be listening to this that are like, “Oh, email’s not that big of a problem for me.” And it’s like, yeah, maybe it’s not, or maybe you don’t realize that it is, but when you do get to the size that Steph’s at, it will become an issue. You will notice those things, and so they add up even before you start noticing them. Anything that you can get off your plate that someone else can handle — even if you don’t know what you’re going to do with that time — the point of being an entrepreneur is to just keep opening that time. I guarantee you it’ll fill with something else to do.

Stephanie: Oh, a hundred percent. And when I look at — I’m not the one answering those questions anymore, but my administrative staff is and my managers are. And when I look at when we have a crazy week, which is like every week lately, it feels like cleaners are being crazy and all of these things are happening. If I could reduce the amount of emails that they have to answer by 5%, that mental headspace of them telling me, “Oh, I’m feeling overwhelmed, I’m feeling overwhelmed” — that’s the type of shit that actually makes a difference for them, of just the clients are able to answer their questions themselves.

And we try to do that with our cleaners as well. So like, yeah, a hundred percent. It’s like, this isn’t even technically my problem anymore, but it’s going to help my company. And that’s what I’m very excited about for sure.

Amar: Absolutely.

Stephanie: Yeah, and it’ll make us look even that much better, that much more — I feel like we really do have a strong brand and professionalism, but this is the type of shit that puts us over the top and makes us stand out when the competitors do not have this thing. And for the smaller owners, this is going to be killer because it’s going to make you look so good. And that’s what I’m very excited about.

Amar: I kind of overrated the — or I thought the feature was overrated for the longest time as well. And then — I’d already kind of come around to it, but when we did that AI build day and we split the team into four and everyone came back with their versions of the client portal and stuff, it was like, oh, okay, I can really see it now. So that was really cool.

A New Training and Onboarding Tool

Stephanie: Yeah, making us look good. And so the next project I want to talk about, because this is — as I do believe I said this week, this will be, in my opinion, the biggest drop that ever occurs, like most valuable thing that I’ve gotten outside of the scheduling software itself. We don’t have a name for it yet. Drop your guesses — drop your suggestions in the comments, guys.

Amar: Yes, please. We need help with this one, yeah.

Stephanie: Yeah, because we’re having a hard time. And it is basically training software. The ability for us to build out orientation and training within however we want it to look within ZenMaid, and have our new staff go through, because that is — I mean, you guys know how much time I put into my orientation, how much money we invest in this in the form of training all the softwares, the hours it took to make all of this. It’s important because turnover is our biggest problem. Staffing is our biggest problem. It always will be. So it’s like, how can we make that less overwhelming and make sure that there’s consistency? Well, that’s why I’ve invested so much time, energy, and money into solving this problem. And so when you were like, “Hey, we’re looking at building this,” and you already — yeah, you vibe coded it, you showed it, we’re already in the feedback rounds — it was like, oh shit. And I said to you too, I was like, this is going to be a game changer.

Amar: Big, yeah.

Stephanie: I’m so excited how much money I will save by not paying for Trainual. Like I was like, I am doing everything in my power to make sure that this is as good as it can be so that I can selfishly save money.

Amar: Yeah, yeah. It was funny. So just for context for the listeners — essentially we’re working right now on building out a little app that helps you to create training programs that you can use to onboard new cleaners when they join. So it’s not necessarily something for ongoing — maybe like checklists, like ZenMaid obviously has checklists — but this would be for when your cleaner first signs up and maybe in the first two weeks or whatever training that you want them to do. Right now, I think we have 33 templates that it’ll be coming with, but then we’re talking to Steph about her being able to provide the training packages that she has available and being able to provide them directly through this and stuff.

But yeah, it’s essentially just meant to make it so that your training and onboarding is more consistent and hopefully at a higher quality. But honestly, if we can just help you guys to just get a better hiring system in place, that alone I think is going to be a big unlock for a ton of maid service owners right now.

And so, yeah, that was essentially just a little problem that I was thinking about and we were talking about and we decided to kind of vibe code. We knew of Trainual, but it wasn’t until you looked at it and were like, “Oh, I’m paying Trainual multiple hundreds of dollars a month to do essentially exactly this.” I think that’s when we kind of realized, oh, we might be onto something here. And so we’re definitely going to be offering a 100% free version of that. We may end up having a small paid plan if folks want to add their own branding and stuff like that. But yeah, if you guys are listening to this, we have no idea what to call this thing. I want to keep “maid” in the name, more so than — that “maid” is, I think, what we want to have in the name. We already have MaidPop.io, but “maid board” just doesn’t sound right.

Stephanie: No, MaiTrain, maid, yeah.

Amar: Yeah, I don’t think those are the one. So yeah, open to suggestions on this one. But yeah, I mean, maybe we could just get like maitraining.com, but I don’t know.

Stephanie: Yeah, no, I agree. That’s kind of boring.

Amar: Yeah, exactly.

Stephanie: We need some zazz. And yeah, it’s just — when I think back at the processes that we’re just constantly evolving and implementing at Serene Clean, and I look back at what was transformative — it really is an orientation, a structure, a process, like, when you start here, this is what experience you are going to have and it’s consistent. And if I had implemented that — I mean, I just didn’t know what the fuck I was doing — but if I had implemented that year one, I would have been like, oh my gosh, I can’t imagine. So that’s why I’m so excited for the newer owners coming in, that they’re making this from day one because we’re making it easy for them to do it.

It just makes me so excited, because having that consistent experience for new staff is so freaking important. And I’ve just gotten feedback from so many staff of like, “I’ve never had such a thorough introduction to a company,” or feeling good about — they know what’s expected of them and they know how it works here. Our orientation teaches you not just what to do in the house, but how you operate in this business. What is expected of you, and what you can expect from us.

So I’m so excited to keep working on this. And I actually just asked my managers for feedback on what’s a non-negotiable, what do you not like about Trainual? And I actually was like — they’re not super jazzed about it. They’re like, “Nah, take it or leave it.” So if we could replicate this, hell yeah, get us out of there. And I’m just like, yes.

Amar: Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, perfect. Well, we just need a good brand for it and we can get it out there.

Solving Every Bucket: Staffing, Clients, Operations

Stephanie: Yeah, and that’s the cool part — just like, because of all of this technology, we’re really cooking with grease and things are coming up rapidly. And it’s not just to solve the scheduling, but it’s to solve all of — like I believe you’ve categorized the problems. I totally agree. It’s like three buckets, right? It’s going to be the staffing, it’s going to be the clients, and then it’s going to be operations, right? And historically ZenMaid has solved operations. Like that’s what ZenMaid does. And now with these add-ons — MaidPop, now that’s talking about the marketing and sales, okay? And training and onboarding for staff is the staff side of it. So we’re looking at solving different areas and that’s really exciting.

Amar: Exactly, exactly, yeah. And there’s just so much there to do. And I think it’s just like with each passing year, I just get more and more confidence that we’re the right company to do it. I don’t see many other companies taking this industry as seriously as we are. There are definitely a couple out there — I’m not trying to throw shade on anyone — but I think when you think from the technology standpoint, yeah, I’m just thinking it through and just really seeing a lot of opportunity.

At the same time though, the work with the core ZenMaid product is never complete. And just in case anyone’s wondering, like what are they doing with all this other stuff — not to worry guys, we have a full team of like eight developers or nine developers that are completely focused on the core product and on making it better every day. And then I get to work with a bit of a red rebel team or whatever that gets to work on some fun stuff and vibe code some things that we just think could be really valuable to the industry in the future. And you know, some will hit, some won’t, and that’s okay.

Stephanie: Yeah, it’s just exciting ’cause there’s just so much room to grow when it comes to solutions that still focus only on cleaning businesses. And that’s a beautiful thing — it’s serving this specific industry very well. And even with the podcast, like you said, taking it seriously, it’s like, okay, I don’t even know how many episodes — this is like 150 something episodes in. And it’s like, we’re just getting started and we’re not stopping.

Like where a lot of people peter out — it’s not easy, but we take this seriously because we know the impact it’s having, because you guys are sharing how helpful this is. And that just fuels us even more of like, this is important and we are providing so much value. And for me, that just is very invigorating of like, this is going to help somebody. And that’s really exciting to me.

Amar: Yeah, for sure.

Book Recommendations

Stephanie: Talk to me about books, Amar. I want to — ’cause I’ve just been getting so many good book recommendations lately. And you had mentioned one to me the other day, probably weeks ago, I don’t know — time, I mean, it means nothing — but you had recommended one to me. And was it the algorithm one, I think?

Amar: There’s The Goal and The Algorithm.

Stephanie: Okay, yes.

Amar: I think I recommended The Goal to you. So yeah, so I’m a pretty voracious reader — I read a ton of stuff. It’s all listening to books, but I have quite a bit of time for thinking and just really kicking back on high level problems for ZenMaid and everything, which I’m very blessed ’cause I very much enjoy it. But a couple of good books that I’ve read recently.

So The Goal is one that I highly recommend for all business owners, really. I do have to warn that, especially if you listen to the audiobook — but probably all versions of it — it’s quite cringe. It’s a little bit difficult to read because it’s almost this made up story about — like not almost, it is a made up story about essentially a guy trying to save a factory. And then through this story is interwoven a bunch of interesting business lessons around — I mean, honestly, it primarily comes down to bottlenecks and the theory of constraints. But you’d think that if it was just that, that after the first chapter, it’d be like, “Oh, couldn’t this have just been a blog post?” But actually as you go deeper and deeper into the book, it really gets a lot more nuanced than I think is really quite interesting.

What I can say is that since reading that book for me, which was only like a month and a half ago maybe, it feels like I’m much more acutely focused on the problems that are actually holding ZenMaid back from the next level of growth, rather than just sort of being like, “We’ll keep improving everything and things will improve along with that.” And now it’s like, no, no, no, all of our resources are going towards day 74 or Project Nova or whatever it is internally at the company that we’ve identified as, this is the bottleneck to essentially unlock more impact in the industry. And so that book’s very, very good, but again, requires a tiny bit of a warning. It’s one of those where, trust me, it’s worth it.

Stephanie: Okay, okay.

Amar: But trust me, right?

Stephanie: I love a fable. I mean, I’ve read many books like that and I think I’ve read several business books that are created around a fable, and it feels almost cringe or childish, but the lessons are there and I love that.

Amar: Exactly, exactly. And that was one of the things where it’s like, I wasn’t really able to get through it for — I probably owned it for years now, but I finally, after seeing enough really smart people recommend it, I finally was like, all right, I gotta listen to it. And I was like, damn, I should’ve listened to this sooner. So yeah, it’s always like that.

The Algorithm is by the former president of Tesla and it’s him working under Elon Musk and talking about their approach to kind of unique problem solving and everything. It’s funny, they actually talk about the book The Goal in it.

Stephanie: That’s funny.

Amar: Yeah, which is quite funny, but the way that I would think about it is, The Goal is this fable way of teaching these kinds of lessons, and then reading The Algorithm right after that, which is about half the size, is almost the applied version of The Goal. It’s, this is how we did it at Tesla. Here’s examples of it at Lululemon. Here’s examples of it at software companies, and it goes through a bunch of different things. And so both of those I’d recommend.

And then the last book is this book that I think just came out maybe like a week ago. That’s how quickly I read that — I read it like last weekend, but it couldn’t have come out more than a week and a half, like two weeks ago at the absolute most. It’s this book called Incorruptible by Eric Ries, who wrote The Lean Startup. And he essentially talks about how every company gets ruined over time as there’s more and more investors. And what he’s talking about — like corruption, like almost like corrupted data on a computer, rather than corruption like somebody bad is taking money.

And so, yeah, the argument is that it’s nobody’s fault. It’s just the way that the incentives align. And there’s a good chance that both for ZenMaid — ’cause I’m about to look this up — and also for Serene Clean, our founding papers or whatever that are filed with the government probably say that we exist to serve the company shareholders, right? Because that’s what makes sense when you and I are the owners starting the company. But the problem is what happens when you take a little bit of money from someone else, or like for me, I don’t own 100% of ZenMaid. And so now you’re letting other people in and the company documents say that what’s in the best interest of the overall company is what’s in the best interest of just those owners — not the team members, not the customers.

And so it’s a very interesting book and it’s talking about, can you be like Costco? Can you be like some of those other companies, or like Patagonia, where I think you can legally become a public benefit corporation where you can put it into your actual founding docs that, “We exist to make maid services and their owners successful, and that even in the event of a potential sale, that is our ultimate goal, not to maximize reward to the shareholders.” And it’s one of those things that theoretically, that’s like me giving up control, but in many ways it’s me protecting the company mission so that no other person that ever owned equity in ZenMaid could come in and could screw things up in a variety of ways that people might. So that’s been a really, really interesting book for me personally. I don’t know how interesting that would be to maid service owners necessarily right now compared to the first two, but at some point I think that should be considered. So yeah, that was the last book that I’ve been meaning to tell you about personally for a while.

Stephanie: That’s really interesting. You know, honestly it makes me — ’cause I have a trust, I have a living trust, and obviously my business is part of that, right? So if I die, what happens to the business? Being not married and no children, right? So you have to be like, what are you gonna do with this thing, right? And where does it go? And I see it so much as my legacy of like — I get it, I’ll be dead, and hopefully that doesn’t happen, right? But if it were to happen, it would be very upsetting to my ghost if I saw Serene Clean go all the fucking way away from what I wanted.

It’s so specific of like, no, this is to be the best place to work, to serve our customers, to serve the community. And there’s so many things financially that could be done that hurts all of those things, but benefits the owner, right? Like I could be making so much more money if I wanted to, but I don’t because that’s not the purpose of it. It is one of the purposes, to make a living, but not the only purpose, right? And so that’s what it reminds me of — thinking through what happens when you have other stakeholders. And you see that in companies all the time of like, okay, more stakeholders, now all of a sudden things shift and it’s not what it used to be. So that’s really interesting. I’d love to read that one.

Amar: It’s been an interesting one for me because when I read it, initially I was like, this is why I didn’t want any other stakeholders. And all the other stakeholders in ZenMaid are friends or people that believe in the mission. It’s not like outside investors or any outside party. It’s like my initial co-founder, or current CTO, and one of the very long time team members that have equity in the company.

But what I realized is that if we got the documentation and the mission and everything codified with the government and put in place, I’d be a lot more open to actually taking on outside investment, but being like, “Hey, you’re welcome to buy in, but it’s not about you, it’s not about your money.” Like, we can likely give you a great return over time ’cause we’re taking a very long-term approach to this industry and to adding value to this industry and all of those things. But when push comes to shove, it’s about making maid service owners successful and continuing the company mission to further that, not to make the individual shareholders wealthy. So yeah, I don’t know — that’s just one that’s been bouncing around for a while. So it’s an interesting thought.

Stephanie: Yeah, no, I just love it. And I do like exposing myself to things like that, where it’s like, okay, it’s not specifically applicable 100%, but it just makes you think. And I think that’s why reading is so important. That’s — you know, when people are like, “Oh, Stephanie, how do you talk the way that you do?” I was like, reading.

Amar: Yeah, exactly.

How the Podcast Has Changed Stephanie

Amar: So you’ve been doing the podcast now for like 150 plus episodes and whatever. How do you think that hosting the podcast has impacted you with Serene Clean and as a leader, and then maybe just overall, right? Of just like, everyone gets to hear you on the podcast. So just almost a meta question is, how has the podcast changed your life?

Stephanie: That’s such a good question. And it’s also very applicable because it has greatly influenced so many things — not just myself and self-development, being able to speak, being more confident. I mean, the podcast has built my confidence so much because being rewarded for being yourself, it feels very good. It’s becoming a problem, I’m not gonna lie. Literally the way I behave has become kind of unhinged, honestly. Like I’ll say something in a meeting and I’m like, “Holy shit, Stephanie, you need to stop yourself. Like somebody stop me.” Because I’m getting so — I guess — rewarded for being unfiltered and just saying what I think.

Unfortunately, maybe fortunately, unfortunately, it has seeped into every area of my life, but it has absolutely built my confidence. My ability to speak, my ability to not interrupt has been incredibly — just the ADHD of it all, it’s actually been really good, because once you see how annoying that is, you stop it. ‘Cause it’s the only thing that’s been able to stop me from interrupting is actually the podcast. So that’s like a little one, but it has helped a lot of me being —

And it’s really interesting, I was getting my hair done the other day and I’m just talking, or I’m getting tattoos, I’m just blabbering on, right? And people are constantly complimenting how well-spoken I am and my vocabulary and my ability to articulate thought. And that 100% — it already was kind of there, but it’s been honed because I re-watch almost every episode and I’m clocking like, “You should have asked this, you should have dug into this more.” So I think it’s made me a much better — well, again, I’m already a curious person, but it’s just — we’re all animals, right? And so I’m getting rewarded for my curiosity. I’m getting rewarded for being an inquisitive person. And so I’ve seen that in my personal life, it has improved that because I’m just a really good listener and I make people feel heard and seen. But it’s not fake, it’s genuine. But that’s just been turned up to 11.

So when it looks to my personal life and how it’s affecting me personally that way — when it comes to Serene Clean, it 100% has affected that because I’m getting exposed. Like, I can’t tell you how many times, every Wednesday in my operations meeting, I’m like, “I talked to an owner, they’re doing this, this, this. What do we think about that?” And so it is exposing me — yeah, from smaller owners, every company size, I am being exposed to things that maybe it’s not a revolutionary huge idea, but it’s like, this is how they’re solving this little piece of this puzzle. And so it is improving Serene Clean just by being exposed to ideas. And I know that for our listeners, they’re experiencing — I’m experiencing that in real time with our listeners of like, I can’t wait to take this back. Even this week, talking to Matt Ricketts and being able to ask all of these questions of, “How do you do this? How do you —” I’m just like a rapid fire. I want to know, how do you do this aspect that I don’t understand? And so I feel almost selfish sometimes ’cause I’m like, this is gonna help Serene Clean, and that’s so exciting.

And from a leadership perspective, absolutely hearing what works, what the demise of companies — meaning when people have had everybody quit, when people have had to rebuild — hearing that people one, have had that happen, and that they made it through is very exciting because I’m just like, okay, you can make it through any horrific thing. It also helps validate that it’s not just an us problem. It’s maybe an industry problem. Like, okay, this is hiring, right? Like that’s always going to be a struggle.

And just that feeling of, okay, everybody is having the same problem here. We can do things about it, but it is — you know, misery loves company. You know what I mean? It feels less like, “Oh, there’s something wrong with me.” It’s like, no, you know, only half of the people show up for interviews, actually less than half. Like you have to — I actually am about to do an episode on how many people we need to start applications versus hire. It’s like 500 to one, literally going off of the numbers, and it’s like, okay.

But yeah, I mean, my brain’s jumping around a little bit here, but when I think about it, yeah, the podcast has been so wonderful for me in a lot of ways. It has also — I mean, it’s been challenging too, ’cause there’s sometimes you don’t want to be on camera. You don’t feel like you have anything to say. So there’s definitely weeks where it’s just like, I don’t even know what — but then luckily Serene Clean inspires so much of the content, ’cause things are happening in my business. And so, yeah, I think that’s a great question. It’s affected me, it’s affecting my business in positive ways.

I think it can be negative sometimes because my cleaners sometimes watch, you know what I mean? And so it’s like, I’m sharing things to the public that I do not share. Like I don’t tell my cleaners how much internally —

Amar: Yeah.

Stephanie: So now all of a sudden, the podcast is forcing transparency that I do not give my staff. So it is freely out there. If they want to seek out and see how much Serene Clean is making, how much I make, all of that, they can. So that’s really interesting ’cause I’ve always dug my heels in and I’m like, uh-uh, they don’t get to know that. But because the context is there of like, yeah, we bring in this much, but the profit is like this, right? So it’s not just the flat number. They have the context that they want to understand.

So that’s been a bit nerve-wracking. Or if I talk about problems that we’re having, I’m very careful about not ever saying names if it’s something negative. And there are still things that do not go on this podcast because I’m like, that’s not — you know, they still work for me. And there have been things that have happened huge in the company and I have not made up, as it’s been like, that’s not appropriate. And it’s not for outside consumption, even though I’m like, “Oh, this would make a great episode,” but I can’t talk about it.

Amar: Yeah, or it’s like a statute of limitations. It’s like, okay, we’ll start the timer now and in 12 months we’re allowed to talk about this one.

Stephanie: Exactly, stay tuned, right, exactly. So I just — there is some thought of that, of like, what do I share? And is this too much? Is this too transparent when it comes to my company? Or like people bring up — I’ve been brought up multiple times of like, “Oh, what if your customers see this? What if your customers see this content?” And I’ve thought about it.

And honestly, even the swearing thing, I’m like, what if your potential customers see it? It’s like, if they see this colossal amount of content talking about be a good company, serve, do all of these things, treat your employees well — if they see that, but then they hear the word fuck and they’re like, “No, no, no, no, no, fuck that lady” — well then, that’s funny, that would be funny if they said that, but it’s like, that’s okay. It hasn’t happened yet. Maybe in a year I’ll be like, “Guys, I was so wrong. I lost this giant account because I said fuck,” but I don’t think it’s gonna happen. If it does, you guys can say, “I told you so,” but I really — it hasn’t happened yet.

And it’s like, you search my name, you search Serene Clean, this is popping up, you know what I mean? So it’s out there, hasn’t happened yet. Maybe I’ll get burned, but I have thought about it. And so it’s something to consider as well.

Amar: Yeah, I think it’s also just about being genuine and authentic and stuff. And for me, I definitely swear more than I should, but I’m not really interested in filtering myself the vast majority of the time. And so to me, it’s like, I’m sure there’s times that we’ve lost deals over things like that. And it’s just like, yeah, if it’s that, or I feel like I have to be fake all the time or have to filter myself all the time, it’s worth losing a couple of customers and a couple of deals over.

Granted, it’s easy to say that now, right? It’s easy to say that with where we are now. It’s not easy to say that when you’re starting out and you’re fighting for every single dollar and every single job. I think we’re both at the point where it’s like, hey, this doesn’t seem like it’s a good fit, let’s just go our separate ways, and there’s no harm in that.

Stephanie: Yeah, 100%. But great question. Thank you, that was very thought provoking.

Amar: Yeah, yeah, definitely. There’s one that popped into my head when I was listening to one of the episodes, I think a week or two back. And so I made a note of it to ask on this podcast.

Stephanie: Well, yeah, and I really think that when you are stuck in a room for — at this point, hundreds of hours talking to yourself, but knowing it’s gonna go out — it turns you into a creature. Like I can’t explain, at least for me. Like I’m making jokes that I think are funny and I’m laughing at them. So hopefully other people —

Amar: Yeah, no, it’s enjoyable for sure. I try to listen to most of them when they come out, and yeah, it’s always a good conversation. So hopefully listeners think this has been another good one too.

Wrapping Up

Stephanie: Yes, exactly, exactly. So thank you for coming on. I definitely wanna just talk regularly, touch base. I know we try not to inundate our listeners with like ZenMaid, ZenMaid, ZenMaid, but it is important to talk about — we’re actively putting things out there. We’re thinking about these things. And then just you as my colleague and friend, a CEO — I like seeing what you’re thinking about and seeing what you’re working on. It’s very fun for me, and yeah, I hope enjoyable for everybody.

So leave us, guys, in the comment below, if you have a suggestion for this training, onboarding tool that we’re creating — if you have suggestions, word “maid” in it, and then that’s it. Go wild, would love to hear your suggestions.

Leave a pumpkin down below if you’ve made it this far, because Amar’s wearing orange, he is colorblind. I don’t know if he knows he’s wearing orange, but we’re gonna leave pumpkins down below.

Amar: Sounds good.

Stephanie: Hit that like, hit that subscribe, and we’ll see you in the next episode. Bye guys.

If you enjoyed this episode of the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast, please be sure to leave us a five-star review so we can reach more cleaners like you. Until next time, keep your work clean and your business filthy rich.