How Ash and Adam Hit $25K a Month Cleaning Two Cities in Under a Year

Vic: Okay, so we are live with Adam and Ash of Cincy Maid and Wexford Cleaning. And the two of them just posted today in our community that they're at almost 25K revenue, monthly revenue, which is amazing. And you guys started when?

Adam: I say October 1st was our launch date.

Vic: 2025?

Adam: That's October 1st of 2024.

Vic: 24. What year are we? Yeah.

Adam: October 1st of 2024 for Pittsburgh, and then January 1st basically. Well, January 1st for Cincinnati.

Vic: Seven months for Pittsburgh. Have I got that right? October to the end of May. Seven months. Five months for Cincinnati. Okay. Dude, you guys are going to beat us.

Adam: Yeah, that's the idea.

Vic: Has that always been your goal? What did you think this was?

Ash: We want to log into the Convertlabs.io dashboard and see Cincy Maid one or two, cleaning one or two, and then see you guys training. Okay, cleaning like three, three or four. But close.

Vic: But close, because we know you're good at this too. So we're all right. We certainly didn't reach 25K that fast. We did reach 50K relatively fast. But yeah, you guys are like, that's amazing. So I'd love to hear your backstory. Like first off, I know you guys, but for anyone else watching this, they know nothing about you.

So let's give them a bit of an introduction in terms of how you even ended up in the cleaning industry space and why you decided to do this at all.

Adam: Well, Ash, I'm not going to steal the thunder, but I'm going to take this one. I'll lead and you can come in second. So my background is I'm from Pittsburgh. I went to University of Pittsburgh. I've been a sales manager. I pretty much done everything in the front of a car dealership on the sales and finance side.

And then my last job I was a salesperson and a general manager at a boat dealership. And whenever that ran its course, you know, I'm in my 40s, I decided I don't think that I can work for anybody else anymore.

Vic: Okay, wait, hang on one second. What did you study at university?

Adam: Economics. Engineering first and then economics.

Vic: Okay, interesting. So that kind of makes sense. I did geography. Doesn't make any sense to what I do now.

Adam: College teaches you how to learn.

Vic: I agree with that. And then okay, so boat sales. I can't actually believe we've never talked about this because I want to buy a boat. So let's talk after the call. This will be boring for anyone else, but yeah, really want to get into it.

Adam: As far as how this came about, when that happened, I met Ash three or four years ago and I'll let him tell the story of how we met. But we've been friends for three or four years. Never when I met him did I think we'd be in business together. We just hit it off.

We had a lot of things in common. He's a smart guy. His wife's very intelligent too, and she is involved in our business as well. But yeah, Ash, why don't we just skip the BS and you tell her how we met.

Ash: All right. Well, this is why I love you guys. I grew up in Cincinnati, went to college here, and then I worked overseas for 27 years.

Vic: Okay, wait, what did you study in college?

Ash: Business management and IT.

Vic: Oh my god, you guys. This is like a shoo-in for you. You should have all the skills to be insanely successful in running these businesses.

Ash: So I moved overseas. I worked in Switzerland, then Belarus, then Jordan, and then Dubai. In Dubai, I started my entrepreneurship. I opened my own restaurant business and we were doing well. Then COVID hit and kind of closed everything up, and we decided to move back to the States. So we moved back to Cincinnati and I was basically retired for lack of a better word.

I just didn't want to go into the corporate world. I've been on my own for a number of years and I was just playing poker, having fun, living the life, and I met Adam on the poker table. We hit it off, and we both enjoy golfing, so we decided to golf together, and we were golfing one day when Adam's like, you know, I quit my job at the boat dealership. And I was like, what are you going to do now?

He's like, I have no idea. I was thinking maybe opening up a cleaning business in Pittsburgh. And we got to talking. I was like, hey, why don't we do it together? And why just Pittsburgh? Why not do it in Cincinnati also? And then potentially we could add other services to it and have it become a bigger thing.

We watched the Cleaning Company Blueprint. We binged it actually, one by one. It was like a 21-day course. I think I did it in a day and a half.

Adam: Once we get an idea of what we're getting ourselves into, we had some discussions and stuff and then we just took the plunge.

Vic: And how did you guys even hear about the cleaning industry as a potential? Like you could have done anything.

Adam: You know, you're putting me on the spot here. I think it might have been as easy as just searching YouTube for business ideas that maybe didn't take a lot of startup capital, maybe good first-time businesses for a first-time entrepreneur. Because that was the big jump for me, and I think people need to understand when you're working for somebody your whole life, even if you're managing the place, like I managed a boat dealership, I was a sales manager at a car dealership. I was making a lot of big decisions, but it's different.

And the barrier to get into business was always, it seemed insurmountable to me. It seemed like something that I would never maybe wrap my head around. And I think that's how it started. I just searched for business ideas and somehow came across Cleaning Company Blueprint. And I liked the honesty. I didn't think you guys were trying to hard sell things like some of the other people on YouTube and social media.

So I think that's why we were drawn to you.

Vic: It's so funny because so many people will say they found it through this Reddit post about side hustles and side gigs in order to replace your income. But I love that. In terms of starting a business, you have the business skills, but knowing that it's on your back whenever anything goes wrong. And I love, you guys know how I feel about the cleaning industry.

Like I just love service-based businesses now, because there's so little startup cost, there's so little barrier to entry, and the demand is through the roof. What would you say, when you guys first started, if you were watching the channel today, and this is your very first video, and I'm sure there's somebody out there where this will be their first video, what would you say to them in terms of how to get started, what to do, give us your best advice, I guess.

Adam: Ash, go first.

Ash: I think our biggest strength was finding partners in each other that see eye to eye. I think if we had partnered up with other people that had a different vision than what we jointly share, we might not have made it, because you really do have to have the same vision working with someone in order to be able to execute it. So our vision was always treat the cleaners well, empower them, make them feel like they're the boss almost, as opposed to what the industry in general treats them like, which is almost like indentured servants. You know, like go clean, I don't care how messy it is, I don't care what it is, you're making minimum wage, don't complain to me or I'm not giving you a job, and making them feel like they're worthless.

So our first goal when we first set off to do this was, that's not how we're going to do business. We're going to empower them, see what they need, when they want to work, how they want to work. If a job is a disaster, we're going to let them walk away. We'll deal with the clients and tell them, hey, we're not cleaning your house.

And that's helped us find some really good cleaners. And I think that's the key. You need to really find some superstar cleaners to start off with, because initially they're your lifeblood. You don't have a lot of work, but the work you do get, you want to nail and keep. Get the reviews. Once the reviews start coming in, then that's going to start generating more people calling and saying, hey, I saw you guys have great reviews, I'm going to try you out.

So I think we got lucky. We found great cleaners in both cities when we first started off. They got us some good reviews. They did excellent work for us and they started asking us, hey, I need more work, I want more work, because they like how we treat them. They like the structure.

And we've been honest and transparent. I think that's the important thing. Be honest and transparent from day one with both the customers and the cleaners and you'll have no issues. If you try to upsell the customers and cheat them and stuff like that, they're going to realize it and it's going to come back and haunt you.

And same thing with the cleaners.

Vic: Don't you feel like our BS meter is like so strong right now? And I believe that for everyone. Like anybody watching this, I believe it for the clients, I believe it for the cleaners. Like people can spot BS a mile away. And I bet you, Adam, when you were selling cars and boats, I bet you sold more when you leaned into honesty. Am I right?

Adam: 100,000%. And actually I was lucky. I worked two places for a really long time, one in the car business, one in the marine industry, and I was lucky enough that both the owners, while we may have had disagreements on certain things, they never took advantage of customers or anything like that. So I was always able to be honest, and anytime I had to train salespeople or whatever, it's always about honesty.

Communicate the truth. Do a good job at communicating the truth and it'll all work out in the end as long as everybody's reasonable. And one of the things that you said somewhere along the way, Victoria, is you said there's no such thing as a cleaning emergency. And that's fantastic because it's true. There's no such thing as a cleaning emergency.

And I think that's important to know, that these people aren't getting bent out of shape or shouldn't get bent out of shape about anything that we do unless something bad happens.

Vic: And has anything bad happened in the last seven months? Like truly bad?

Adam: Actually, one time, if we go back through the channel, there is a live call. Well, it wasn't live, it was recorded on a Zoom where you guys were dealing with a poo crisis, if I recall. Or vomit-gate.

Vic: That was it. You had a client that was disrespectful, left a bunch of vomit in his house for the cleaners to clean and didn't understand why your cleaner didn't want to do it.

Adam: Well, it didn't stop there, though. A short two weeks later, the same cleaner, who by the way is our all-star to this day, was viciously attacked by somebody's dog while on the job.

Vic: We had that three times too.

Adam: That was a first for me.

Vic: She's fine?

Adam: She's fine.

Vic: That is so brutal. And that's, you know, for anybody listening, the policy in place in terms of contain the dogs. It doesn't matter how nice your dog is. We're all dog lovers. I've got a dog and a cat, but they have to be contained when the cleaning's happening, because those kind of accidents do happen. Poor thing.

Ash: And I think another thing that helped us out is we put our pride in our pocket. No matter how experienced we thought we were, no matter how smart we think we are, we were open to learning. So if we go back seven months now and see how we handled customer calls compared to how we handle them now, right now we could tell, this is going to be a good job, this is not going to be a good job, this is going to be a troublesome client, this is not. I mean, at first when we answer it's like, oh, we have a phone call, whatever we need to do to book it, let's get it.

Now it's like, all right, you know what, I don't like the sound of this person. I'm going to pass on this job.

Vic: Okay, tell us what the warning signs are. I know I've said it so many times on the channel, but I want to hear what you guys think. Like what makes you go, your spidey senses?

Ash: Well, I had a call the other day. First of all, they don't want their whole house cleaned. They just want certain sections of it cleaned every time. Like, I have a glazed bathtub so you can't use abrasive stuff, you have to use this. And I have this wood that is really special so you have to use Endust, don't use Pledge.

And she was very nitpicky about everything. Initially I was like, well, if you have those products available, my cleaner will use them, we're not going to make her buy it. If you become recurring, she may start carrying it. And this was for a one-time clean. And then she'd call back and add more things and call back.

I think if a client talks too much and asks way too many questions, that raises a red flag for me. We're professionals. We know what we're doing. You should just rest easy. Let us do our job. And if we don't do a good job, complain to me. But don't start your complaining and your nitpicking two weeks before the job even starts.

That's a huge red flag.

Vic: They're really nervous about handing over the reins. They've been doing the cleaning themselves. They have a particular way about how they do it and they feel like they're hiring someone to replace themselves. And Adam, do you have any?

Adam: Yeah, I mean, the next-day thing is a thorn in my side. Because there's no such thing as a cleaning emergency. Why didn't you plan this ahead? And I think you said it before in the videos. It's not our problem that you didn't plan well. We had one actually the other day that I remember.

They needed us there like tomorrow, but they already had the carpet cleaners scheduled. And it's like, well, if you thought to schedule the damn carpet cleaners, you should have thought to schedule the house to clean the rest of the house. It's not our problem. And actually, one of the things, I know this may be a little off topic, but don't be desperate.

Anybody that's out there, desperation has been the root cause of every mistake we've made in the last seven months.

Vic: Oh, that was gold. Desperation has been the root cause of every mistake we've made in the last seven months. 100%.

Adam: When you have nobody calling and somebody calls you and it's a pain in the ass job, don't take it. You don't need the experience. You don't need to see how the mechanism works. You don't need it in my opinion.

Vic: It's so funny. So Jen and I just launched a second business because we could. So we were like, let's do lawn mowing. And so we now have Oak Bay Lawns. And so I'm kind of in it again, which is really fun in a lot of ways because we've been running our cleaning company now for four years.

So we don't have that beginner jitters or nervousness or desperation at all with the cleaning business. But with the lawn care business, I now have two guys who call or text like, hey, have you got any work? And I'm like, oh man, that feeling of having to take every client.

Ash: Here's the difference.

Vic: And this is, you know, it's only been a few weeks. So far, all three of the clients, we've only had three clients, first two are both bi-weekly, and this third one will be weekly after today. So only three, all organic, except for today, I think that came from Google pay-per-click, which I just set up yesterday. So anyway, but all three of them have had overgrown grass, like a lot.

So kind of like a deep clean of a house, like a house that has not been pro cleaned in a long time. There has been absolutely zero pushback on price. So today's job, which is an emergency, it's not a real emergency, it's an I've really irritated my neighbors for the last three months and now I'm getting notifications kind of emergency. And so the guy, he's taking care of his folks in Vancouver, so he has to take a boat.

It's a whole thing to go back and forth from the mainland to where we live on an island. And so it is for him an emergency. And so therefore, the charge is $720. You guys, I could go out there with a weed whacker and weed whack the crap out of this lawn, but because I've got a guy with a truck and his supplies, they don't blink an eye.

And I'm like, this is going to take him maybe two hours to do. Now, I know he has to take the debris and he has to bring it somewhere else and he has to pay to dispose of that, there's extra charges, but there's no way it costs 700 bucks. This guy, he's like, yep, okay, do it. I'm like, huh, I wish that was the same for house cleaning.

But for house cleaning, I get, well, can you use this tool or this tool? Lawn care, I've got to tell you guys, it's got to be your next business. Now to be fair, I only have three clients, so it's not a huge data set. And all three I closed, so we're three for three right now, but doesn't really mean anything until I have like a hundred.

Ash: Isn't that wild though?

Vic: That is wild. Like I had no idea. I knew that industry was ready for this model, but nobody's done it yet in my city. So I don't know if you guys have done research in your cities in Pittsburgh and Cincinnati yet, but I would take a look, because the same set-it-and-forget-it bi-weekly, weekly.

I wouldn't do monthly mowing. That's too big of a gap. And people are happy to pay it. They just want you to do the damn job. That's it. Okay, so let's talk about what's next for you guys. What are you guys working on? What are you excited about? Ash, I know you've been working on some stuff.

Ash: Go ahead, Adam.

Adam: Okay, what's next for us? So we are in the infancy of rolling out a little marketing idea that we had targeting condos and apartments and things like that. So maybe some people that aren't getting targeted by other cleaning companies. And also we like the idea that it's standardized work, meaning every apartment looks the same and every townhouse looks the same and every condo looks the same.

So it's easier to gauge, because one of the things we did find out is that we have a sweet spot, at least in Pittsburgh for sure, and I think a little bit in Cincinnati, of the type of houses that we're cleaning.

Vic: Oh, that's good to know.

Adam: Both cities have a lot of big old houses. And those are incredibly harder to clean than the newer cookie-cutter subdivision type houses. And a lot of our work has been in those cookie-cutter subdivision type houses. And when it's not, has been when it's more difficult, meaning we have maybe a cleaner call us or something like that.

Vic: So demographics thing, like who do you think is booking your services?

Adam: So we actually compiled data on that. But I don't have it off the top of my head. I do think it's a younger demographic than probably what a lot of people would expect. More millennial, more in their 30s.

Vic: Like that makes sense to me. If they're going to buy a cookie-cutter type house, that's probably what they can afford.

Ash: It's actually split. We have a lot of the millennials, 30s, and then we have those same people ordering our monthly service or bi-weekly service for their parents.

Vic: Yes. We're getting a lot of that too. A lot of people like my age booking for their parents. Like, you know, mom and dad don't do this to me.

Ash: My parents can't keep up the house anymore. We'd like to hire someone to go weekly, bi-weekly, monthly to clean their house for them. A lot of people say, you know, I used to clean my house, I've got a bad back now, my knees are shot, I can't scrub anymore. And so they decided, so we really have like two market segments, the elderly and then the millennials, the younger crowd, that make up our bread and butter.

Vic: And then us Gen X in the middle. We're not our target demographic.

Ash: You're worthless to us.

Vic: Yeah, we have the exact same situation. And it's actually really sad. Some of the elderly folks, you realize, especially for our clients that don't live in the city, their parents might only have interaction with their cleaner. Like that's it, that's their only human connection. It's really sad. But at the same time, we've got 92-year-olds, 94-year-olds that are still living independently, which is amazing.

But I will say, for anybody listening, having them add weekly cleaning doesn't solve their problem. So oftentimes people will think, I'll just increase it. And of course as a business person, I'm like, great, you're now weekly. But actually oftentimes I have to call and say, hey, heads up, you guys need some more home care with actual nurses or healthcare workers, where we can really only clean, and there are times where they just need more.

So just heads up on that. I had to convince a family today. I was like, no, you don't need more cleaning, guys. I'm sorry. I'll take your money, but give it to a nurse. Like, that's what you need. And then Ash, you've been playing with AI. So can we talk AI?

Ash: Yeah, we can. You know I love it. So I've been diving into AI. A lot of custom GPTs to do a lot of my donkey work for me. The strategic advisor lets me do market research and find out which market segments, which zip codes, which demographics I should be targeting, which ones are spending the most, which ones are complaining the most on social media, which ones are unhappy with their current providers and why.

And that helps us take those pain points and target them with the right messaging, with the right pricing plans, and so on and so forth. I've been using Zapier a lot to automate a lot of my processes. So I have a backend spreadsheet that keeps track of my revenue month to month from each city. And now basically whenever our backend gets a new booking, it automatically plugs it into my Excel sheet.

So that takes a lot of the busy work out of my day. And I'm just constantly looking at new ways to be able to use that, those automation techniques, not to do my job for me, but to alleviate the repetitiveness of it and let me actually dive into it and be able to dissect it and see what's what and make more charts and more graphs to be able to understand the numbers better. We also have our customer service GPT. So whenever we get a new client, I just copy and paste information onto it and it gives me a nice onboarding email that I send to them that explains to them what to expect, what our expectations are.

So arrival times for the cleaners, it gives them a little cushion so if they're late, the customer doesn't have to worry about it. It explains our payment policy, how we put a hold on their card so they don't freak out if the day before the cleaning all of a sudden they see a charge. There's not an actual charge, just a hold. We call them after each cleaning, well, the first cleaning, make sure they're happy with everything and try to get reviews.

So it's made our life a lot easier using AI as opposed to having to do everything manually each time. And I'm exploring more and more ways to integrate AI to help us be better at what we're doing.

Vic: I love it so much. Okay, so I'm going to show the folks that are watching what that looks like, because you just said a lot of really valuable information. So Ash is using custom GPTs, which means he doesn't just go to ChatGPT and say, send an email to this client for me. Because if you did that, you would get okay copy. It would be very nice, but it would be very generic, and it wouldn't be specific to his business.

Ash: And it won't have my business tone, my anything. It won't even know who my business is. It's just going to be generic vanilla type of copy.

Vic: Oh, and it's the worst, right? So I'm going to share my screen here and let's see. It's easier with two monitors. Well, I'm doing it with one. Let's see what happens. Can you guys see this?

Ash: Yep.

Vic: Okay, awesome. So you can see this is my custom GPT. I have a gazillion. Don't spend too much time looking at that. But over here, my Oak Bay Clean customer service agent. I can onboard a new client, reply to this email from an unhappy client. These are just prompts, like ideas. But I can write, onboard this new client, and then I would give it all the details from our Convertlabs.io booking system, which is our software that we all use.

And I would give it their name is John, lives at, I'll say, one, two, three street, whatever. Move in, move out. And I'll say, let's say two-bedroom, two bath, or give me a date, June 1st, 2025, 9:00 a.m. Okay, so that's actually more typing than I normally have to do. I normally just copy paste.

I just give it the basics so I'm not revealing too much information about our clients, because that would be a privacy issue. But as you can see, I have created this whole customer service agent that knows who our ideal clients are. It knows our boundaries very well. So what we do not do.

So you can see here, this is based on a standard well-maintained condition, and it's an estimate. This has reduced our complaints. Like, I can't even. It's ridiculous how low our complaint ratio is now. I think it's under 0.5%. The norm in this industry is 2 to 5% of people will complain. But more than anything, it's not so much their complaints I care about.

It's just that my peace of mind is so much better because I've told them all these things and I've written it down. And as a result, they're happier. We get better reviews because we've said, hey, we don't do X, Y, and Z. And so they think we're more professional than the other companies who don't tell them anything.

And look how fast that was. And then copy paste, bring it over. Now, what you do that's different for me, Ash, is you add the Zapier. I still haven't embraced that yet. But you have your Zap go where it saves it in your drafts folder. Are you still doing that?

Ash: Yeah. So now when we get a new booking, it automatically copies the stuff from Convertlabs.io onto the custom GPT and then it creates an email in my draft folder. So basically at the end of the day, I can just go to my Gmail, open my draft folder, I'll have five emails there if we had five new bookings that day. Just proofread them, make sure there's no gibberish that ChatGPT decided to hallucinate on or write something that wasn't supposed to be there, which it doesn't, not all the time.

Most of the time it's getting it right, but every now and then I find something I'm like, okay, I don't want this there. And I delete it and then I send. So it saves me a lot of time. You still have to be involved, you still have to have the human in the loop and proofread it, make sure everything's correct, that it copy-pasted correctly, but I find maybe 10% of the time I have to make a little edit or a little change and 90% of the time it's doing it well enough for me that I'm just happy to send it and be done with it.

Vic: So how many hours a day would both of you say you're actually working on this business?

Adam: Well, I'm working, I'd say 12 hours a day, but during those 12 hours, I'm golfing, I'm going to the gym, I'm playing poker. If the phone rings, I'll answer it, I'll deal with it, I'll hang up. And then I'll go back to doing whatever I want to do.

Vic: Best answer ever. Adam, is your answer the same?

Adam: No, he's better at that than I am. I struggle with that still to this day, so I won't pretend. I still struggle with, it seems like the phone rings in the most inopportune times no matter what I do. I just told Ash the other day, well, today for example, we always get into an argument.

Not a disagreement, because he picks up the phone on a half a ring. You're good, Ash. So it rings to both of our phones. It actually rings to his wife's phone as well. And for whatever reason, he picks it up really quick, which is funny, because when we were getting into this, he was like, this is perfect because you like talking to people, you like selling.

He's like, I'll do all the backend work, I won't do anything. So basically, I don't have a job. Between him and AI, he took my job.

Vic: That's amazing. So you're supposed to be answering the phone, but Ash is just too damn quick.

Adam: And he's good. He's closing on all the leads.

Ash: Like the way we set it up was my wife would deal with the cleaners. She'll do the hiring and the managing of the cleaners. Adam would do the customer service, dealing with customer complaints, the sales and all that stuff. And I'll just sit behind my computer and do the stuff I like to do, being an introvert.

And we do have another person too. My dad is involved, which is nice, even though it's frustrating at times. I'm sure it's equally or more frustrating for him to deal with his son, but he's a wealth of knowledge. He has a lot of business experience. He's our accountant slash financial guy. So that's really helpful.

Vic: Even though you've got an economics degree, one of you, which one was it, Ash?

Ash: No, I studied economics.

Adam: Economics.

Adam: When the business started and the phone started ringing and I started answering it, I realized I enjoy talking to people on the phone and booking people. So it feels good, right? Like it's almost a race to see who can answer first. And then he has the ability to put snide remarks like in passing about how he closes all the leads and stuff like that.

So whatever, but he's the best. I mean, honestly, we wouldn't be where we are without him. I don't think we'd be where we are without any of us.

Ash: Yeah, I think the four of us make a great team. I wouldn't be able to do the taxes and all that stuff that your dad does. I definitely couldn't deal with all the cleaners ghosting me or background checks, their headaches and their complaints and their little nuances that my wife deals with on a daily basis. And what you and I do I think is invaluable also.

Vic: But one thing that's important, if anybody's listening out there, is that you don't need this many people, right?

Ash: No.

Vic: Like you can do this by yourself. Now you may not be able to explode, but you can certainly do this by yourself and grow slightly slower and make a fantastic life. It depends on if you have a day job. There's so many people do these with full-time jobs. And you guys both had the fortune, and so did Jen and I when we started our company, of owning our own time, right?

We didn't have a lot of money coming in the door. We needed to make money and fast, but we owned our own time. And so a lot of people that have full-time jobs, they have a boss still that's dictating what they do with their day. I just want to say, if you are working full-time, don't expect to reach 25K a month in seven months because you simply cannot answer the phone from the golf course or from the poker table or whatever, however these guys are doing it.

But we can, right? So cut yourself some slack, but you'll still grow. You know, Tommy, who I did a hot seat call with, totally happy with 5 to 10K a month, because he has a full-time job that pays his bills.

Adam: Yeah. You will eventually grow almost in spite of yourself, in spite of how you're doing. Now, it may be at a different degree, but if you're truly honest, that you run an honest business, you look for the best cleaners, you're picky about your jobs, you will 100% grow and get to where you want to be. It's just a matter of how much time.

Vic: And any other lessons, tips, or tricks that you would share with anybody? I know Adam, you use lots of what we like to call psychology voodoo or sales voodoo.

Adam: It's not psychology voodoo. It's actually things that, if you don't know about it, then it's happening to you. I think, to channel a poker phrase, isn't there an old poker phrase, Ash, that goes, if you can't spot the fish at the table, you're the fish.

Ash: If you can't spot the sucker at the table, you're the sucker.

Adam: And it's like the sucker in the first two minutes, you're it. So if you aren't familiar with some of the things, because the stuff I'm talking about, I'd love to say it's proprietary, some of it is, but it's not. It's just general sales knowledge. And it's not about deceiving people or anything like that.

It's about taking control of the situation and it's about leading people the way you want them to go, whether it be leading them to close them or whether it be leading them to another cleaning company that might better be able to meet their needs or fulfill their needs.

Vic: Isn't that funny? I remember when I first met you guys, because you guys booked a discovery call through the channel. You found us. And so you booked a discovery call and I remember Adam, when you first came on the call, you were like, I'm great at sales, I can do this. And I was like, whoa, you don't want to be good at sales on this.

You need to be decent at sales, but you actually need to be really good at stopping yourself from getting the wrong clients with the wrong cleaners. And now, I think it took you like a month, then you were like, oh man, Ash is better at this than I am.

Adam: I don't think he's better, but you know.

Vic: And Cecilia is saying, don't change the way you do business for anyone.

Adam: Yeah, that's true.

Vic: And that's who's successful in this space. And you guys know it because you're in the community. The community, for anybody who doesn't know, there's over 700 of us that own cleaning companies for the most part. There's some landscapers in there too, but mostly cleaning company owners that are on Convertlabs.io. And anybody who's actually making real money talks about how you say no to the wrong clients. So what you guys said about don't be desperate, that's the best advice ever.

Adam: Yeah. I wish I would have taken that to heart, because I believe somewhere along the way one of you guys said that. But when you're starting out, you want to have these big numbers, because to me there was pressure, because everybody knew I was starting a business. So you want to say, hey, look at how successful we're being and all this stuff.

So when somebody calls, you want to close everybody, and in reality it's more of a matchmaking game than anything else. It's matching customers with your company and then matching your cleaners with those customers.

Vic: That's exactly what it is. And that's the service space. And I think it's so different than when you're selling a thing like a widget or a car. Even cars I would argue should be more matchmaking, but they're not at all. Actually, that's a whole other conversation we can have for another day. But I look at the car industry and I see so many opportunities to change it, so it's better for women in particular.

Like colors of cars drives me nuts, that they're like, why can't I get the Dolce and Gabbana designed car on the outside? Do you know how well that would sell? Anyway, that's my little rant about cars. But I just think in this space, you're absolutely right. It's 100% matchmaking. You don't have to sell anybody hard on getting a cleaning service.

Now we are incorporating a little bit of sales, but people don't have to do that.

Adam: I have done some cold outreach.

Vic: Oh good, tell us about that. Who have you been calling?

Adam: So it's a little bit of that. Well, we've done a couple things. So Ash has reached out to a religious organization in his community in Cincinnati, and that's provided leads and bookings. We've also targeted those condos and things like that. And to give an example, the first time we ever did this in Pittsburgh, Ash and I came up here, we just stopped into a condo complex, and I talked to them.

I said, hey, does anybody, is there anybody here that you guys refer residents to when they need house cleaning? They said no. I didn't feel like they wanted to even talk to us. I said, well, look, here's our card. I think I gave them a 10% discount card or something like that. Well, what was it, Ash, four months later, we get a phone call and it's somebody.

Ash: Oh yeah. We asked the ladies at the desk and they said to call you.

Adam: So that stuff does work, and that is actual sales stuff. But the actual talking to the customer on the phone, you're exactly right, it's not very salesy.

Vic: Do you want to share the idea you had about how to get the concierge on board, or do you want to keep that?

Adam: It's not that we want to keep it. I think it's still in the works. I think that's one of the things I'm careful to talk about, because that particular thing has been successful, but not wildly successful. We're still tweaking that. But unlike my, hey, we've got three, now we know everything. So we're not being close to the vest on that. It's just I don't want to do somebody a disservice and lead them down a wrong path or something.

Vic: Fair. I think cold calls in the commercial space are definitely what's normal. In the residential space, it's kind of weird except for through the apartment buildings or through complexes or property managers or whatever. Are you venturing into commercial? Do you think you will, or do you think you're going to stay mostly residential?

Adam: Well, that's one thing we've noticed, I'd say, in our short history, is that the commercials, they're calling us. Offices and all of that. They say, hey, do you guys clean offices? We'll say yes. And then it's a little bit different of a model. The houses, we don't have to go do walkthroughs and all that stuff.

We can get the dimensions, how many bedrooms, how many bathrooms, square footage, and comfortably price it based on what they need. The offices, typically what we try to do is do a walkthrough if we can, have a cleaner come with us and give us an estimation of how long it will take her to clean that office space, and then we'll draft a quote and deal with it. We had, I think, what, four recurring commercial jobs right now ongoing. We've had some others.

We fired one for sure.

Ash: We fired one. It was a restaurant. They wanted the kitchens under the equipment, stuff like that. We're like, we don't do that.

Vic: That would be really hard to do.

Ash: But we realized that the commercial is more seasonal. Like in the winter when residential kind of dies down because people are just stuck at home because of the weather and they'll do their own cleaning, companies, we had a lot more commercial calls, and that's probably beginning of the year. They're looking to renew contracts or get a new contract for a year's worth of cleaning. And so looking at our data, we had a lot of commercial calls and opportunities like January, end of December, beginning of January, February, those died down now, and now the residentials are just exploding.

So for next year, basically part of our marketing strategy might be to, starting in December or maybe end of November, start targeting more commercial spaces that are going to be looking at renewing contracts or finding a new cleaning company to do their offices, because they usually do a yearly contract with companies. So that's one thing we're looking at, the seasonality of the business. We're still, it's our first year, so we're learning when the ups and downs are in the industry, and we're going to adjust our marketing budgets or marketing strategies depending on what segment we want to go after during which season of the year.

Vic: That makes so much sense. And I think also, Ash, with your analytics and use of AI, the way that you can bid on contracts is going to be so much better than your competitors. Another thing just to plant this in your mind, do you know about sam.gov? So those are government contracts. And now this is long game stuff, but because you own your own time, you can go on to sam.gov, look at your state, your city.

You can even do federal, and in your case, Ash, because you've got so much international experience, you could even bid on contracts that are overseas as well. So American embassies need cleaning in different countries, and of course they'd like to hire an American company. So if you're interested in the international side of things, you could do that. But basically government contracts are usually three years long.

And now, I'm in Canada, you're in the US, we have a very different political landscape, let's just say that. It should all be transparent. It used to be, prior to whatever's happening now. And when I say that, I mean it's transparent in that you have to, any government agency has to be clear about how much they've spent, which companies they've hired, that kind of thing.

So it's all publicly available. Which means if you're smart, you can look at, okay, I want this contract, they got it two years ago, and just keep your eye on it. It's not the same as bidding a commercial contract with a company where they're going to hold all that to their chest. When you're dealing with government, it's paid for by the people that are paying the taxes.

So therefore, it has to be transparent. This is international, by the way. Australia would do the same, UK would do the same, New Zealand would do the same. So I would keep your eye on those for sure, and start, the local governments will often have workshops to help small businesses bid on these contracts, because they don't want all of the business going to the big companies.

Now this depends on what kind of state you're in, I have no idea. But I just know in Canada, I took a ridiculous amount of workshops on both my provincial level and the federal level and then the city level. So for example, locally, I bid on the 911 call center cleaning services. So think that through.

911, it's open 24/7. There are people in the space on the phone dealing with emergency calls. Now, as somebody who owns a cleaning company, what's going to be the issue there with the cleaning? Noise.

Adam: Absolutely.

Vic: That was their number one concern, was what kind of vacuums, what's the decibel level of the vacuums? Does your cleaner, are they familiar with talking in low voices? And then it was a totally different bid. I love doing it though. And it was totally interesting for me to just learn the process. And then here's what I did.

I didn't win the bid. Completely fair. It was one of my first times bidding on one of these. And you can ask for feedback. 90% of people don't ask for feedback. So what do you do? You ask for feedback. You get the feedback. You write it down. And then the next time, so it's going to come up again in three years, I've got my notes.

So if I want to bid on that, I'm going to bid on that again. And these are worth a lot of money because it's 24/7. So it's a lot of work. And then the other one I bid on, now this is very Canadian, so this won't apply to really I don't think any country in the world, but I'll tell it to you because I think it's interesting.

It was a liquor store. Very Canadian. So we have, I don't even know, does Australia do, anyway, for alcohol, it's sold, there's a government kind of agency. There's a certain number of stores. And so it worked out to be 276 liquor stores. And they made it so that it seemed like I was bidding on cleaning.

I wasn't. I was bidding on the organization of cleaners to the stores. So it was exactly what Convertlabs.io does. And so my whole bid was about how we manage the flow of cleaners to stores. And again, I didn't get the bid. But at that time I didn't know to ask for feedback, so I just let it go.

I calculated it was worth like $300,000.

Ash: Wow.

Vic: So anyway, Blake just asked, I'll put it up here, how often did the 911 center require cleaning? I think that one was three times a week. It was a lot. And I got to walk the grounds. So I saw everybody sitting at their things, and they do a big group walkthrough. So you put your name forward, and then that's the other interesting thing.

So all the names are publicly, I found out exactly which cleaning companies wanted to bid on this, and then I looked at how many people showed up, and it was like 30% of us showed up. So like when you're first starting out you think, oh, there's 50 companies that know what they're doing. Well, they still don't show up to that first meeting, and that's pretty important, right, to do the walkthrough with the organization, meet the person, ask questions. And then the questions all have to be told to everyone.

And so then they write them as an email so everybody sees the same answers. So that transparency piece, which I love, is the best thing ever in these government contracts. And Cecilia said your chamber of commerce can help too with SAM as well. So there's so much good training available as a small business owner.

So you just have to tap into it.

Ash: Yeah, absolutely, if you want to go in that space.

Vic: Like I still don't love commercial because of cash flow. So imagine if we had won one of those bids for like 300 grand. Well, our company's only making from residential about 5 to $600,000 a year. That's our revenue. And that's me working less than a couple hours a day on it. And then Jen works about an hour a day on the behind the scenes stuff.

And we're like these guys, we don't want to work that hard. I want to be on the golf course if I golfed. I'm actually at the gym. We're doing yoga. But not that you're, Adam's like, I'm still working hard, but I don't want to work busy work.

Adam: Smart. Work smart.

Vic: We want to work smart, not hard.

Adam: Work smart, not harder. You got it.

Vic: So anyway, so if we had won that one, imagine how crappy that would have been for cash flow. I would have hated it.

Ash: Especially if you're paying your cleaners on a daily or per job basis and not monthly, you have to put all that money up front before you recoup it.

Vic: Plus, I had a meeting with a guy who works for an agency that helps businesses get bought or buy or sell your business. And so I met with him and I said, hey, I'm considering bidding on this thing. And he said, don't do more than one of those, Vic, because your entire model is built on people paying 200 bucks every two weeks. So if all of a sudden you have this one huge client, as great as that is for your numbers to be able to say we're doing 800K or we're doing a million or 1.5 or whatever, well, if it's only one or two clients bringing that in, you don't actually have a great business.

And I thought that was really good advice, because I was like, I just thought everybody wanted more money. Doesn't it matter if I can show that I have a business with 1.5 million?

Ash: Well, I think the more diversified your customer base is, the safer you are in the long term.

Vic: And there's that economics degree coming through.

Ash: Something like that.

Vic: I love it. Okay, what else have you guys got for us?

Adam: The interesting dynamic with us, I know you're from Canada, so football's not a thing for you, but it's very hard to be a Steeler fan and be in partnership with a Bengals fan. It's very hard. It's hard now because the Steelers are on the decline.

Vic: So Jen and I just got season tickets to the BC Lions because I have been an NFL girl forever. But we are right next door to the BC Lions and Snoop Dogg is playing opening night, which I think is amazing. And so I'm becoming more of a.

Adam: We do have football. It's just only three downs. It's so different. But the one thing I will say, the nice thing about Ash and I is we complement each other. Like I'm the guy that if we're at the poker table, I'm carrying conversations. Ash is reading everybody and analyzing every single hand. And that kind of partnership, it's actually something I've never been a part of before.

I've always been around a lot of like-minded people, and while we have the same values and we have the same vision, the way his brain works is definitely different than mine. And it's a good thing. So it's kind of a yin and yang effect.

Ash: Yeah. We challenge each other. We have disagreements, but they're not arguments. It's just different points of view. We talk it out, and one of us will see the point the other person's making, and we'll go with it. The good thing about having two cities is if we disagree on something, we can A/B test it.

We say, all right, let's try this in Cincinnati and not Pittsburgh and see how it works. And if it doesn't work, we're like, great, let's just can it and keep going. If it works, great, all right, now let's apply it to Pittsburgh. So that's kind of a nice thing to have these two cities, because we can try different things.

Adam: A perfect example of that that's recent this week is that Ash wanted to start, instead of assigning jobs to cleaners, invite cleaners. And my position was I agree that we want to move to that, but I feel like it's a little early. And so we compromised on, guess what we're doing, we're inviting cleaners in Cincinnati and we're assigning in Pittsburgh. And to be honest with you, now, small sample size, but it seems like the inviting is working.

And the other thing is I can honestly say both he and I have had no problem saying, okay, you know what, I disagreed, but now I see that that was a good idea, I agree with it, let's move on. So where I may have had reservations on that initially, it's looking like, at least at this point, like I was wrong and that that is a good idea, at least for our stage in the business.

Vic: I love that. So for anybody listening who's like, what is he talking about? On Convertlabs.io, when you have all of your service providers, which are your cleaners in this case for a cleaning business, you have the option of either hitting a button that says invite, and then the cleaner gets a text notification as well as an email to say, do you want to accept this job? And it has estimated payout.

And you can turn that off if you want, but I don't know why you'd want to. So you can show exactly how much you're going to pay them for this job, where it is, how often it is, if it's bi-weekly, weekly, one time, whatever, and then they can accept it or they can decline it. And this seems very simple, trust me, I know it is, but for this industry, this is a game changer. Like it's everything.

I absolutely love it. But I had the same reservation with it, Adam, because I was always the one that was like, no, this cleaner is better at this kind of job, so I'm just going to assign them. But eventually you will reach the point where it's a time thing and where you'll start to go, okay, I've got four or five cleaners available, booking came in, invite whichever ones. And you know in your head which ones aren't good at which jobs, so you just don't invite them.

Ash: Exactly. That's really the only difference. If you have some cleaners that you really want to get jobs to, invite them first. Give them 24 hours to accept, and if they don't, then go to round two and invite the rest and see who wants it. But at the end of the day, you need to find a cleaner for that assignment.

Vic: And you're nicer than me. I give them an hour max. And sometimes if somebody's really bugging me, I invite them to all the jobs that I know they can't do just so that they can see just how much they've blocked off their own schedule.

Ash: So that's one of the arguments I made to Adam. We have some great cleaners that are just busy all the time with other crap. And I told him, hey, if they see how many invitations or how many cleaning jobs they're not taking, or we're not giving to them because they're so busy, they're going to free up some time to make that money themselves, and then all of a sudden we have the great cleaners having more time with us as opposed to not.

Vic: That's just it. I have a cleaning couple right now. A lot of people love working with couples, like pairs, two people, because they think, oh, it's just so much easier, they can get more done in a day or whatever. I personally don't love it, because couples always try to get more work in a day and they constantly are trying to move clients around other clients when changes happen.

And so I have one right now that, they'll text like, we're available on this Tuesday at 9:00 a.m. And I'm like, I've taken nine jobs today. Like, invite, invite, invite, invite, invite, grab it or not. But in the beginning, I was much nicer about that. I had a big, actually it was a wall calendar, it was massive, and I color-coordinated each of the cleaners.

So when jobs came in, I was able to look and see and move them around. Anyway, it was so much more complicated than it needed to be, and now I just use invite. Michael here has asked this question, starting a new business soon and trying to figure out the best pricing model in the area. What would be a good starting point?

Square foot, hourly, bed, bath. Would love to hear your thoughts. Over to you guys.

Adam: The easiest is bed bath to start off with. We started off with bed bath and then we added square foot to it, just because not all three-bedroom, two-bath homes are built equal. The square foot is almost like a modifier. Our base is always going to be bedroom bathroom. The square foot is just a modifier to increase the price in case it's a two-bedroom, three-bath home that's 7,000 square feet, because the bedrooms they turn into offices or whatnot.

So it kind of helps us modify it.

Ash: And just recently, I think within the last month, we started doing hourly, just because we were turning away a lot of business of people that didn't have red flags but also did not need the whole house cleaned. For example, my college-age student kids live in the house, I expect them to clean their own rooms, I don't need those rooms cleaned. So we decided we'll do the hourly. The hourly is not as attractive a pricing model as our package house deals, but they pay the cleaners really well.

Vic: The cleaners, what are you guys charging per hour?

Ash: $75 an hour.

Vic: Yeah, same.

Ash: And then if they're a weekly or a bi-weekly hourly, they get the discount, so it becomes 65 or whatever it is per hour. So it's still a great deal for the cleaners. They're making $45 an hour, up to, I think 38's the lowest on a weekly clean. So they're happy with it and they know it's two hours of their time, three hours of their time.

We have a minimum of two hours. I know you guys do three hours. Right now we're at two hours. We might shift it to three hours in the future, but we want to make it worth it. The cleaner shouldn't drive half an hour, do an hour, and then drive half an hour back for one hour's job.

It's not going to be worth it for them. So right now we're doing minimum two hours. And we've gotten some clients and it's kind of worked out. That's one of the things that we were kind of apprehensive about doing at first and then we decided let's test it out. Let's see, we're turning away a lot of business and some of it could be repeat business.

And we don't try to sell it. We don't openly promote it. Whenever someone asks, I just need this done, I always say, for the best deal, let us do your whole house, exactly, the best bang for your buck. It doesn't matter how long it takes us. If it takes us 10 hours or three hours, your house is going to be spotless.

And if they insist, no, I really just want an hourly thing, I'll say, all right, well, $75 an hour. And people are like, okay, that's fine. We're like, all right, great. And we book them.

Vic: And that's per cleaner, you guys. That's not.

Ash: Yeah, it's per cleaner. It's per cleaner hour.

Adam: The other thing for Michael too is don't, you know, the desperation thing we talked about before, definitely don't be afraid to be on the upper echelon of prices in your area. Ash knows when we were launching in both cities, I did a price analysis of all the similar type cleaning companies in the area, in each area. And we are definitely towards the top. I don't think we're the most expensive, but we're definitely probably in the 80th percentile or higher.

Vic: That's the sweet spot to be in. That's the best. So the other thing I'll add one more thing to Michael and then we'll move on to Megan's question here. Michael, the last thing to say is, since you're following this channel, find the Cleaning Company Blueprint, the 21-day, I forget what it's called, but it's basically the course, and watch the very first 10, 20 minutes.

We explain to you exactly how to do research on your competition. And so these guys did it, I did it, everybody's done it who has a cleaning company within the community, because you're going to call the top 10 companies that show up on Google and you're going to find out what are they charging, and then where these guys are, the 80th percentile, perfect spot to be in, because especially if you're using Convertlabs.io, you're going to have a better company than 99% of the companies in your city simply because of the systems you're setting up. So you can charge more and you can deliver a better quality service as a result. So not a sales pitch for Convertlabs.io, we do always talk about it, but that's just the software we all use.

Then let's see Megan's question. For someone just starting out, would you recommend one niche like residential? There's lots of post-construction maybe available in my area, as well as Airbnb. I'm in Florida. Which direction should I go?

Adam: Oh, that's a good one. I love residential so far. I absolutely love residential because you can build relationships better. But I mean, my recommendation is pick a niche. Don't try to be too all-inclusive. Like, I would focus, probably if I could do it over again or if I was doing another one by myself, I would pick one and I would focus on it. I would almost turn away commercial unless it was very easy in our territory. That's my recommendation.

Ash: This is where we disagree.

Adam: Go for it.

Ash: I think the niche picked us. Like when we first launched, we're like, all right, we've got a cleaner, let's see what happens. And I think one of the first jobs we got, early on we got some commercial jobs that we said, oh yeah, we'll do the restaurant, we'll do this, and then we learned, all right, this is a horrible business to be into with the restaurant, let's get rid of this contract, let's fire this client and let's not do that again. And it just happens that residential has been great for us.

We haven't done Airbnb. I think if, when we first launched, we had a bunch of Airbnbs call us and book us for regular cleanings, we would have loved that and we'd have excelled at that type of thing. We didn't. We also don't live in areas, I mean, she's from Florida, I believe, so they have a lot more Airbnbs than Pittsburgh or Cincinnati, which are not vacation hotspots.

So I wouldn't exclude any niche. Like Adam said, residential is the easiest, most stress-free niche to go with because everyone has a home that they need cleaned and a lot of them are recurring. So it's an easy niche to get into, but I wouldn't exclude, like I'm not doing Airbnbs. Try it out.

And if it's something that you end up being great at and love it and it expands for you, go with it. Don't be narrow-minded and say, no, I'm not doing this. Try everything. Like if we hadn't tried the restaurant, we would have never known. Now we know that for commercial, we're doing office spaces, your cookie-cutter office space that has a reception, cubicles, or an office that needs vacuuming, light dusting, wiping down.

That's it. We're not doing kitchen equipment, under the fridge, they spill flour on the floor and sauces and all that stuff. That's not our business. So just adapt to whatever is going on and learn and see what works for you, what doesn't work for you, and just go with that.

Vic: Yeah, I think that's a great answer. And I think for Airbnb in particular, and I have talked about this a lot on the channel, if not in the channel then definitely in the community, the issue is not in getting Airbnbs. Those are easy to get for cleaning because they always need cleaners. That's not the issue.

The issue is in finding cleaners that are available and willing to work between 11 and 3, because that's their check in and check out. And if you think about it from a cleaner point of view, the best way for them to make the most money possible in the residential space is to have one client at 9:00 a.m. and they clean until about noon. They take a lunch break, they drive to the next client, another client at 1, and they're done by about 4.

That is your perfect work-life balance. As soon as you do 11 till 3, that's one client a day now. So you've gone from having two clients a day to having one client a day, because you simply can't clean a whole house from 9. And so that's why I personally avoid them like the plague.

It's not because they don't call us. It's not because they don't try to book, and they try to bargain hunt, they try to price shop. And I'm like, no way. You guys should be paying the most, especially in my city where I am. And our rules have changed, they're not allowed to do what they used to do.

But where I am, we had no apartments for our cleaners to live in. So we were losing cleaners moving to bigger cities that had more accommodations, because everybody started buying these apartments to rent out as Airbnbs, because we were in a tourist hot spot. And then they were trying to pay less for the cleaning. And I'm like, don't even get me started.

You took away their homes, now you want to pay them less. And here's what's happened, you guys. As a result of the changes that happened here in our city, there's now like 4,000 one-bedroom, one baths available because our government stepped in and said, no, you can't do this anymore. And now my cleaners can afford to pay for their rent because the rents had to drop, and there's availability.

So now I have cleaners willing to work. If an Airbnb calls me and says, hey, can your cleaners work? I'll say yes, and we charge this. And then for the person that's asking, you haven't asked it yet, but I know you're thinking it, what do you charge them? The same as I would charge anyone else.

There are no discounts for Airbnbs. They want more for less. Nope. They get same for same. That's it. So then someone else asked here, oh wait, sorry, there's another question, last question, finding cleaners. Okay. And then I've got to run, because I'm going to see the Karate Kid movie tonight. So we'll do Michael.

So Michael asks, last question for you, finding cleaners has been a challenge to start.

Ash: 100%.

Vic: That is the challenge. Michael, what has been your best recruiting solution? Contractor versus employee. Thanks again for sharing your expertise.

Adam: You're welcome. Let me address the contractor versus employee and then Ash, you want to handle the recruiting. So the contractor versus employee, here's reality. We don't have a cleaning background. So if you wanted to go employee, you would have more control over your business, but you'd also have to be held accountable for processes and materials and things like that.

The one thing that's been a natural fit is it's an easy sell to the right cleaners that, hey, we're not your boss, we're a partner, and we're your marketing wing and your customer service wing and we're going to make sure you get paid, and they like the freedom. And yes, at first the cleaners, some cleaners get a little nervous about being a 1099 in the US and things like that. But I think once they get the hang of it and they see the freedom that they have, they see the freedom that they can say, no, I don't want that job, I'm going to go see the Karate Kid movie.

Vic: Exactly.

Adam: Have that control.

Ash: And then as far as the recruiting, I think Ash can shed some light on that.

Ash: Recruiting, I used your advice. We use Indeed. I use ChatGPT to create the ads. Like the post that I put on Indeed, it hits all their pain points, and that time I did it from the cleaner point of view. Like what are the cleaners' pain points, what don't they like about working for Molly Maid or some of the national brands, and I use those bullet points to show them how we're different and how we alleviate those issues that they're having with their companies.

Right now we're posting every other week in one of the cities. So this week we'd be doing Cincinnati, and we'd usually post it like Sunday afternoon until Monday evening. And then Pittsburgh would do it two weeks later, Sunday afternoon till Monday evening.

Vic: I'm going to test that. That's you. I don't know why I've never thought of that. That's really smart, because I always say Monday morning, but you're right. If you do Sunday afternoon.

Ash: I mean, we realized that when we first started, I did it for a whole week once just to kind of get an understanding. I was like, Canada, she said Mondays, that might be Canada. What about Cincinnati? And I realized that Sunday evenings, when I posted Sunday afternoon, Sunday evenings we get a ton of applicants, and then Monday morning we get a ton, and then it starts dying down by Monday evening.

So for us it works. So I'd recommend for anyone, if you're not getting a lot of candidates on Sunday, Monday, try Tuesday, Wednesday, try Thursday, Friday. Find the day that works best and then just stick to that date moving forward, because it works for us. Now, recruiting is a challenge, and God bless my wife, she's our recruiter.

And I was telling Adam, maybe 30% of the people that apply and we reach out to and we set up Zoom calls with actually show up. So 70% apply and they message you back and forth, and once it comes to a Zoom call, they ghost you. Out of the 30%, 90% fail the background check. And so now you're left with 10% that you do the test cleans with, and not all of them are good.

So when you find a good one, you really got to treat them well and get them hooked on what we do and get them hungry for more work from us. Get them actually saying, hey, any more bookings this week I can take? And keep them, because you really need to nurture them and keep them. We don't micromanage them.

That's one of the things they hate, is someone being over the shoulder saying, no, you got to do it this way, that way. They're professional cleaners, they know what they're doing. As long as they pass the test clean and they've done a good job, they don't need someone bickering over how they do everything, what rags they use, whether they mop clockwise or counterclockwise. Let them do their job without someone hovering over them.

And that's why the contractor model works great, because they're free to do their job the way they know how to do it without someone being over their shoulder telling them, no, we do it this way, you got to wear this, you got to do that. And that doesn't work. Doesn't work at all.

Vic: Model and Indeed. Love it. And follow the blueprint. Again, it's in the video. I literally share exactly what I do. But now I'm going to test this Sunday afternoon thing. The other little bit that I would add on to that is that for whatever reason, it's the first 24 hours that you post an ad that you get the vast majority of your applications.

So that's why it's very important that you time when you post your ad. I've done it before where I've been in a jam and I've posted on a Thursday, and then I'm like, every single time I do it, I'm like, I know not to do this. It was just money wasted. And okay, so we have, I'll throw this one up, I've been lucky with recruiting contracts, but getting jobs has been a challenge.

I'm still waiting on my first clean. Any tips? Over to you guys.

Adam: Patience.

Ash: Patience. Perseverance. Get reviews. Have friends, family, anybody locally write you good reviews. Find friends, family, send your cleaners to test clean. Even if you're paying out of pocket for the first few cleans to pay the cleaner, it's worth it. I mean, that's what we did. I think the first clean we had was a friend of his dad's.

We didn't charge the lady. We paid the cleaner out of pocket. She wrote us a great review, and it's worth so much. Half our calls from Google LSA are people saying, you guys have such great reviews. And so the reviews really help. So get reviews. That's my biggest thing to start off with, is getting those reviews.

Vic: Yeah, reviews are everything. I skipped over, sorry, I skipped over this one. What is your current spend on marketing efforts?

Ash: So I actually just looked at that just now, because I was working on our, we have a customer acquisition cost where we're trying to get our cost of customer acquisition down, because obviously if you look at it at first, it's a big number, and as you grow it gets smaller. I think we spent between the two cities, this is including SEO, LSA, everything else that we spend, I think, I wouldn't include.

Adam: $200.

Ash: Yeah. Take SEO out, Adam, because SEO hasn't kicked in yet and it's not working for us yet right now.

Vic: So $200 cost per acquisition, per client, is what you were saying, Adam. Is that right?

Adam: No, no. Well, our target's way lower than that. And there's actually, it's different between the two cities, but our total marketing spend, when you factor everything in, now if we remove our SEO, because we do have a big SEO campaign that we're not seeing any benefit from yet, it's just kind of started, I think you'd be looking at roughly $3,000, $3,500. But that's two cities.

And also, it's a percentage of our revenue. So you don't have to do that to start. But what I would recommend is, figure out a way to get a few hundred dollars that you can start with a Google LSA and or a Thumbtack or a Bark or something like that. But when we were starting out, Victoria, what you told us is you got to buy leads.

And I do think that is unfortunate reality, unless you want to go hand cards out, because that will work too. You can certainly drum up some business that way. You can go to every single BNI meeting in your city.

Vic: So BNI, Business Networking International, it's free to go to your first two meetings. So you can visit the different BNI chapters. And to answer Megan, because she's also asking about, they're gig workers with cleaning experience, do you agree or disagree with us cleaning as we first launch for more profit in the beginning? I say pay your bills.

So if you have to pay your bills as a cleaner in the beginning because that's how you're going to bring in revenue, there is no shame in that. But you will eventually, the danger of being a cleaner slash business owner in this space is that the clients will always want you. And your ego, and I'm sure you're a great cleaner, but your ego is going to tell you you are the best possible cleaner in your city. Your clients are going to tell you that, and then you're going to believe it.

And it's not true. There are other great cleaners in your city. So just remember that when you're the only one in the field in your business, that's taking you away from thinking about your business from a top-down view. I hope that helps. But I mean, I've done the cleaning. We have lots of people in our community that started as cleaners first, then became business owners.

It is a bigger leap in a lot of ways, because you literally know what's best to do in terms of cleaning, and your ego will tell you that that's what you need to focus on, but it's actually about getting leads. It's about getting cleaners. This whole business, like Adam said before, it's a matchmaking business.

Ash: And Victoria, one thing I want to say too about the person that's having trouble getting started, leverage your connections. So whoever you know, tell them that you have a cleaning business. Tell them to be your eyes and ears on the street.

Vic: Absolutely. And just literally get out there and tell people. Adam felt really comfortable telling people. Jen and I didn't tell anybody. We kept this secret for the longest time because we didn't want people to know that we had started a cleaning company. And I say do that too. Like if you don't want to tell people, you don't have to.

You can just market your business as your business. It doesn't have to be you personally. Because I know some people out there are like, but I don't want to tell people I'm doing this. You don't have to. So okay. I really do have to go because the movie starts in like 15 minutes and I've got to travel there.

So I really appreciate you guys and all of the interaction from the audience. That was amazing. I hope this plays well and the audio wasn't totally terrible. If anybody does want to join us in the community, it's free for 30 days at Convertlabs.io. That's how these guys got started. That's how I got started.

So you just got to jump in and then we'll see you inside the community. You can talk to any of us. You can DM these guys. I think that's it. Do you guys have anything to add?

Ash: We don't plan on going anywhere. So we're going to be a part of the community for the long run. So anybody that you know, anybody's welcome to reach out to us if they want to.

Vic: I love it. And I want you guys to start lawn care next. I really do. I think it's going to be so fun.

Ash: We might have two more cities we're going to do cleaning at before we go into lawn care. So we'll see.

Vic: Oh, we didn't get a chance to talk about why you named your companies two distinct names rather than one big brand name, but let's park that. We'll do another round another time, and then I would love to hear about city three and four. Oh my god, sky's the limit. Okay, bye everybody. Thank you so much. Bye.