How Cecilia and Blake Run Two Cleaning Companies in Two States

Vic: It's Victoria here from Cleaning Company Blueprint, and I have the lovely Cecilia and Blake from Rosie Cleans in both New Jersey and Alabama, and we're going to dive deep into how they're doing with their new location. If you haven't watched their previous video, we will link to it below. And you guys, we did that video about six months ago, and at that time your new location had passed 25K in revenue in three months. So that's insanely fast.

So now it's been six months. How's it going?

Blake: Specifically the Alabama location, a few high-level marks: we are on track to basically do 50% more in revenue this year than last year. Last year we hit 100,000, so we feel like we'll hit at least 150 for this year. Maybe a little more. And year to date, we're at about 200K since we launched. We're a little over 200K since we launched.

Vic: You guys, that's amazing. There are people out there who are not even doing 50K their first year or second year. So that's a huge success. And I know Cecilia, you started your company first, brought in Blake after you guys fell in love and got married, and you were in New Jersey, then made the move to Alabama. So how is the New Jersey cleaning company doing with you all the way in Alabama?

Cecilia: Oh, well, it's been doing great. You know, when you shared your win the other day in Convert Labs, I checked my numbers too, and we actually hit the $2 million mark as well. So pretty amazing. I was like, oh look, we're here already. And the funny thing is, big numbers like this, we track everything, but it's not in the back of our minds like, okay, how much did we make, how much did we make.

We feel comfortable knowing that something is consistently coming in. And I think that's kind of a big lesson for us, because when you're starting your business, you're like, oh my god, I need to make this much money, I need to pay the bills, and you're stressed, you're checking your phone, what could I do next, all these things that stress you out. Believe me, I lived like that for many years. I did.

But we made that change, and now it's like, you know what, as long as something is coming in consistently every month, then we're good. The grass will always be greener, but you know.

Vic: Exactly. And I feel like anybody who runs a company feels exactly the same way, where you could be doing more every day. But at the same time, we didn't start these businesses to create a day job for ourselves. If we wanted a nine-to-five, we would have nine-to-fives. We wanted a little bit more freedom in our time and in our lives.

And so you have to embrace that, where maybe nothing happens today, and that's not a bad thing. My cleaners are out. But that is a big difference. And I love it, the two million milestone is huge. And it is so funny, because for anybody watching this, it's not like either of us has $2 million just sitting in the bank account.

That's not how the cleaning business works. But we've done two million in revenue. Our profit margins are around 30%. Anywhere between 20 and 40% is normal in the cleaning industry, with our model, depending on how much you spend on marketing, SEO, if you have virtual assistants. Those are the things that factor into what your profit margins are, but let's just assume 30%.

And that's really good. That's good money, you guys.

Vic: So you're not pushing as hard as you probably know you could be. Am I hearing that right?

Blake: Yeah. Yes, we think we can do Lamborghinis for everyone next year. But for this year, we're just okay with it. We're a working ranch.

Cecilia: Right, that's a good segue into what I was going to say. One of the big differences since we last talked is the New Jersey location. We've had a VA there for years, but until two months ago, Blake was doing everything for the Alabama location. He was answering the phone, doing all the follow-ups, everything. So we finally felt it was time and we hired a VA.

Blake: And that transition changes things, and it takes some learning, and we're still learning and refining, but she's made progress already. She's already made a huge difference in my availability. I'm able to be much more available to do the farm work that I need to, without interruptions. That was the biggest thing. You have no idea what you might be in the middle of.

I might be injecting a cow with some medicine or something. What do I do? So now that's made a really big difference. I'm able to do more of the farm work that I need to, but still see the business grow. And that's the one thing with replacing yourself. Nobody's ever going to do it just like you do.

You think, I would have done this, but sometimes you have to step back and remember the 80-20 rule. Are they doing it 80% as good as you did, and the business is still growing, and now you have more time freedom? To me it's a thumbs up.

Vic: Oh, that's such a good point. And so your VA, your virtual assistant, how did you find them?

Blake: She actually, that was one thing that really set her apart. She contacted us, and Cecilia is actually the one who saw her email first.

Cecilia: Right, I think it was a blessing. It was great, because the reason Blake started to do everything himself is because it was like, you need to learn how to run this business with your eyes closed. Once you're ready, then you say, okay, I know how to do it, I could teach it to somebody else. So I'm telling you, it's God. We're people of faith, so we're always thanking God for everything that comes our way.

Vic: Oh, our internet connection is cutting out. Is that mine or yours? Are we freezing?

Cecilia: We might be freezing up.

Vic: You were, but now you're back, so let's just roll with that. I don't know if that was on my end or yours.

Cecilia: Yeah, that was kind of weird. So we quickly replied to her email and got on the phone with her the same day.

Vic: And where does she live?

Cecilia: From the Philippines, actually. And she is like three hours away from where my original VA is, which is crazy. So now they could communicate, but they're three hours away from each other. They do have Slack, which is great, and it's really good. And you know what really helped, and this is another lesson learned, is we started early to document everything.

So we have our templates and stuff that we use, so that we don't have to rewrite and reinvent the wheel, because everything is there. So on our onboarding, Blake, you gave it to my lean and all set up.

Blake: Yeah, we kind of had it down pat, what has worked to get us to this point, and we just had to transfer that to somebody else and show them. It's not complicated, but there's a learning curve, just learning the flow of things, when it's best to do this, when it's best to do that, when not to do this. And there's been a few of those where it's like, no, we don't, I forgot to tell you about that, but from now on. Nothing where the wheels have come off.

It's kept on going. So it's just growing pains.

Cecilia: Right, but it's also a good segue. We're teaching that kind of manual work, but we are working on tech and automation. It's huge. When we started testing out our Rosie voice AI, our AI agent answering the phone and giving prices and quotes, it was amazing. She sounded so on point, gave prices. We had this workflow, the girl that we worked with is amazing, and it routed them through the booking form.

It was amazing. But people in New Jersey were not ready. And I was so bummed.

Vic: An AI voice agent that was trained on your business. I love this.

Cecilia: Yes, I know.

Vic: I want to know, so the people in New Jersey, what happened? You would listen to the recording afterwards and be like, oh, that person wasn't feeling it?

Cecilia: Yeah, you could tell, it's like the one-word answer. It's like, oh, this is Rosie on a recorded line, I'm here to help you, how many bedrooms and bathrooms do you have? And then blank. So I was like, oh no, you have no idea what you have here, the tool that you're talking to.

But anyway, we're working on restarting it again. I think it sounded a little bit less personalized the first time, but the second time, when OpenAI did this whole thing with their new voices, it just made it so much more personable and so much fun, you could say. So we're working on setting that up, but I think what the game changer is, is that it's able to give pricing.

Vic: Oh yeah. That's what people call for.

Cecilia: Right. They're calling to find out if you have room in your schedule and how much it's going to cost. That's it. Everybody knows that. That's why we're on Convert Labs. When I look at your website, for example, I see right away where you are, what you do, and as a client, I can find out how much it is, and can I book right now?

Vic: That's it. It's the simplicity of that, and all the other cleaning business websites frankly don't answer those questions right away. You can barely find out where they work half the time. What city are you in? I don't know. What kind of company are you? I don't know. Are you a cleaning company? Are you houses?

Are you commercial? Do you do gutters? And some people will try to add a hundred things that they do. Really, just doing the one thing is the more important thing to do. And then answer the question about how much it costs. We don't need to be scared of answering that question. Our competitors go, oh, we should charge more, and then we all just keep raising it up.

Cecilia: Exactly. We shouldn't be scared about our value. If you have your proven systems, we have Google reviews to prove it, word of mouth, you know what sets you apart. Talking to other people, they say, oh, that company didn't do that, but you did. Just learning what other people are saying about other companies and comparing it to yours, and you're like, oh, you are worth your pricing, your value. And if somebody tries to undercut that, then they're not for you.

Vic: And that's fine. Your best clients won't care if someone else is cheaper, because they want your quality. And so your AI voice agent, is it too robotic, or is it just good?

Cecilia: At first the first version, it was good, because it's like, wow, we never heard this before. And then we tested it out, but people weren't ready. This time around, I think it was last month that we were trying to test it out again, it's really good.

Vic: Unless someone tells you, you wouldn't know.

Cecilia: You wouldn't know that it's AI.

Vic: You wouldn't know.

Cecilia: And so I think it's the way, Blake, we've been talking about it, it's the way it's going to go anyway. And that's where it is right now. Imagine a few years from now. I don't know what all it's going to change, but it's changing things fast. I really want to push that, because when our second VA started, I actually had her answer the calls for me, and she was doing good.

But then I was like, let me switch it to an AI to help her, because then she could listen to the conversations and extract and be more of a support for those that didn't close. So it's kind of like we're not replacing people, we're giving them tools to use, but to use wisely, because not everybody knows how to use this. So there's an education part that comes in. It's just replacing that guesswork.

Vic: Yeah, that's amazing. I'm really excited for the AI voice agents once they have it sorted out. I haven't personally played around with it yet, simply because my feeling is that people who phone, first off, it's a demographic, much older folks who call. Anyone who's Gen X and younger tend to prefer to text or email.

They don't want to have that personal phone call, and they're also busy, they have jobs, they're busy, that's why they're hiring us. So it tends to be my retirees who are the most likely to want to chat. They want a good 20-minute phone call. And so if I feel like answering the phone, you guys, I do.

If I don't, they'll get the autoresponder that we've got set up through Open Phone. We'll link to it below. It's now called Qo, and I might be pronouncing it wrong, but whatever. It's our phone system that allows us to text, call, record all phone calls, and send autoresponders, which I love. It sends them the link saying, please book online, if you have questions, here are the frequently asked questions.

And the majority of the time, our ideal clients will actually book. Sometimes they won't book, and if I was desperate, like in my first year of running a business, I would argue you need to answer every single phone call. But once you're in year three or four and you're comfortable, you're making enough money, you're like, I don't want to answer every phone call anymore, I don't have to. It's not that we're not for retirees, we are for retirees that are looking for quality and autopilot.

We're not for retirees that want to change their appointment every time, that want to dictate what the cleaners do every time. We are very much a simple cleaning business that solves the problem for people that are too busy to clean their homes. That's it.

Cecilia: And we have both, where we're marrying that whole modern automation, but also the personal human touch. And I believe that's why, I always say five-star reviews start from the very first conversation. As soon as you pick up the phone, they hear your tone, they hear how you speak, and all of a sudden they say, okay, I trust you. And I'm like, just from saying hello.

Vic: You have an edge though, Cecilia, you're very good at it. And having Blake be in Alabama, who's from Alabama, who has that beautiful Alabama accent. People trust local. As soon as you outsource something to a virtual assistant, you're kind of losing that edge in a way.

Cecilia: Yes. More training, more troubleshooting, to try to maintain that edge that you have.

Vic: Exactly.

Cecilia: And we've seen both. That's why we're constantly trying to bridge the gap with the voice AI. But that's the way the industry is going, our cleaning industry. To me, when I started Rosie, I saw that the cleaning industry was so backwards and so analog, and I wanted to do something different. And I think it still is, to some point.

Now with Convert Labs and other systems, obviously it has changed a little, but you still don't see it, there's still a huge opportunity in the market to continue to do this.

Vic: And we love our boring businesses, and you guys have been entrepreneurs for a very long time. Cecilia comes from the fashion world, Blake obviously from farming, but he's owned other businesses like vermiculture composting. I've run multiple businesses, and I'll do public speaking, and the one that everybody wants to know the most about is the cleaning business, because it's boring, but it pays the damn bills, and it's a problem that so many people have. We're solving simple problems for people.

Cecilia: Right, and so it's not sexy. The thing is too, you don't have to be making a whole bunch of money the first time. As you feel comfortable with consistency, that's the key. Consistency is the key. You don't want, oh, one month I made this and then the other month I made zero. But why?

Are you spending too much? What's going on? Because this, from your very first clean, you should kind of be profitable, depending on the model that you're working with. If it's employees it's a little different, but if it's independent contractors, from the get-go you're not spending the money there. You're covering everything for your monthly Convert Labs or your subscriptions, but your business should already be profitable from the very start.

Vic: Yeah, I totally agree, especially with your software costing 200 a month. Open Phone, 20 bucks a month. Insurance, 30 or 40. These are low costs. And then your independent contractors, if you follow our model, it's 60% to them, 40% to us. We cover our costs, they cover their costs. You're now in profit.

We ran into somebody who had started a cleaning company a couple years ago, and they've wrapped their car, they've done everything wrong, and right away they're like, yeah, we still haven't been profitable in two years.

Cecilia: My gosh.

Vic: Spending money on the wrong stuff, and they're doing the cleaning themselves.

Cecilia: Oh no.

Vic: Oh, bless your hearts. They just haven't done a Google search to find this channel. For those of you watching, you've got an edge just because you found us. So I want to talk about a couple of things. How do you get your leads for both your cleaning companies, and is it different in one state versus the other?

Cecilia: You want to start with yours?

Blake: I would say for Alabama it's a good mix. Most, I would say probably, off the top without really knowing the exact number, 70% Google leads and the rest Thumbtack leads. Thumbtack, for a while, was kind of dead, and we were paying for the leads and it was like, is this even worth it? But lately, especially now that we have the VA to immediately respond to those leads and continue to follow up with them, because that's one thing I wasn't able to do with my time before, is lots of follow-up.

She's just there to do whatever is necessary to follow up with leads. So between those two, that's the mix for Alabama, Google and Thumbtack.

Vic: And when you say Google, Blake, is that organic?

Blake: That's organic, yeah, just from SEO. The very first six months we did LSA, but quickly we saw we were definitely getting some traction. We didn't feel it was necessary to continue that past a certain point, especially once our SEO really started to kick in, and so now it's just more organic.

Vic: Yeah. Okay. So for anybody watching this who is like, what is he talking about, we've got lots of videos on SEO. It's search engine optimization. It's getting found on Google, and now also getting found on Perplexity, on ChatGPT, on all the things. It all relates, and it takes time and patience and consistency, and it doesn't happen your first six months.

So that's why Blake is explaining that they paid for LSA, which is Google Local Services, also called GLS or LSA, Local Service Ads, where you pay per lead. What was your cost per lead, do you remember?

Blake: The most we paid one time, I think that's when we were like, wow, we don't want to do this. One of them was like $70. Some were more like around 35 to 40, kind of the median range.

Vic: That's not bad. Yeah, that tends to be what happens, people will start getting leads and they're paying between like 25 and 40 bucks. And that's fine, because if you're charging 200 plus, especially if it's a $1,500 to $3,000 client, paying 40 bucks is no problem. As soon as Google makes it a 70 or $80 lead, all of a sudden your business brain goes, wait a minute.

And oftentimes that pushes the gas pedal on SEO, because then it's like, I'm not paying Google 70 or $80 per client that I might not even book, because they might be looking for carpet cleaning instead of actual house cleaning. So, okay, amazing. And so the SEO stuff, we'll link to the other videos, but was there anything, did you hire an agency? How did you get that going?

Cecilia: Yeah. So I initially started, and yeah, I hired an agency. He's great, he's an individual, he's been doing this for a while, and I just thought, I don't have time to do SEO, because I did it in the beginning, from the backlinks and this and that, and I could only go so far. And then maybe by my third or fourth year in business is when I hired an SEO.

Vic: Was there like a maid summit that introduced him?

Cecilia: Yeah, that's right. There was the maid summit before we even knew about Convert Labs. And yeah, he's amazing. So when he started working for New Jersey, and then shortly after we stopped doing LSA, I said, you know what, let's do the same. What we were spending on LSA, let's switch that to SEO.

So he takes care of that. If we had time, I would love to do what you guys do. I know every day you probably spend a half hour to do it, but I really don't want to, in all honesty.

Blake: I don't do it because she doesn't like talking to people as much as I do, and she's more introverted. So it's her contribution to the business, the SEO and the back-end design, all the other stuff.

Vic: But in all honesty, it's boring. It's probably the most boring part of this business. It's why nobody does it. We had somebody, this is funny, comment on the channel about the SEO video, and they're like, great, you're giving all the secrets away, so everybody in my city is going to be doing this.

And we were like, yes, if only. Nobody does this, you guys. So few cleaning businesses understand it. And it is basic, it's boring. It's getting people to link to you, it's answering the questions over and over again through a blog. It's just the basics. OAS asked, how long has the New Jersey business been open?

Cecilia: Seven, eight years. 2018.

Vic: 2018. Okay, yes, seven years. And Cecilia started that without having the systems in place. So she did it the very hard way around. And again, that's how I know you're an entrepreneur, because you're like, I'm going to figure this out.

Cecilia: I did.

Vic: And you did. And then you found the systems, the software, and also the community. We will get you guys inside the Convert Labs community to link to your SEO guy. I know you've given his contact out to lots of people. He's very affordable, so she doesn't want to post it for everybody out there, he's a little insiders club here, but inside the Convert Labs community, we'll have Cecilia and Blake linked to him.

Certainly worth spending that money on. And just to give us a sense, I'm assuming it's under a grand a month.

Cecilia: Yeah, or about. Yeah, for real.

Vic: That's totally money well spent. And so in terms of marketing costs then, are you spending any money in New Jersey on marketing, or is it all organic?

Cecilia: It's all organic now. Yeah, I haven't used LSA for a while. And I wanted to, you kind of hear everybody, oh, I listen. I was doing it for a while, but then I was like, no, let me just stop.

Vic: Listen, you're really good at getting reviews. How many reviews do you have in New Jersey now?

Cecilia: Right now, today, 367.

Vic: And you're not using, like, nice job, because we use Nice Job, which is automated, because this is the thing that I'm like, I'm not doing it, I'm outsourcing that for 70, 80 bucks a month. Take my money, you get the reviews for me. But this is enjoyable for you, it keeps you engaged, you know what's going on with your business, you have a personal touch with your clients. And I'm assuming now your VAs are doing that, or are you still doing it?

Cecilia: Yeah, I get them to help me do the follow-ups. But I still like to get on the phone and find out, because, like I said, it has to start from the very first of your conversation to the time they are done cleaning and then the follow-up afterward. It's got to be a full experience. To me, that brings me pride.

It's like, oh wow, because we created this out of nothing. We all are people that come here without experience of customer service or sales, you come from another world, and all of a sudden you have a business that deals with people. You have to know how to deal with people. You can't automate everything.

So to me, I do enjoy that part, and it gives me a sense of satisfaction that I'm like, okay, we did good.

Vic: 367. You don't need to pay a dime for marketing when you have that many reviews, because your SEO kicks in. But also, your ideal clients, what do they do? They look at Google reviews.

Cecilia: That's right.

Vic: They're too busy to make a phone call and talk to you for an hour, but they'll be doing their research, and they're going to go, oh look, they've got 367. And then they're going to read them, and they're going to read the worst. They're going to go look for the one stars and see how did you respond. So one stars are not a bad thing.

I actually argue you don't need them, because they show what our boundaries are in how we respond. And then for Blake, for Alabama, I already know the answer to this, but tell us, how many reviews do you have?

Blake: We just got a new one today. I think we hit 76, right?

Cecilia: 77, I think.

Vic: 77. Okay. Amazing. So, and you're still heading into year two of the operation. So that's really good, right?

Blake: We just started at the very end of November, the very end of '23. So yeah, 76 reviews done by hand, and they're all legit. I also noticed that some people will just have a ton of fake reviews, and it's so obvious.

Vic: Guys, be better. If you're going to fake it, at least be better at it. They're so bad when they're fake, but yours are all legit, and they're amazing. So congratulations.

Blake: Thank you.

Vic: Yeah, that's so great. And so let's talk about what you do to find cleaners in your city.

Blake: Well, that's actually very relevant right now for us, because I just put a job ad up on Indeed like five days ago. We started with two cleaners, we're up to four right now. Some work more than others, but we're already at that point where it's like, well, if we had that other person, this would have been easy to work out. So we're back in that, and I've heard you say before, kind of always be hiring, or at least be thinking about, okay, who would we hire next, where am I going to look.

Last time it was just rockstars, it was so good. But this time they're kind of trickling in, some that maybe, and some where I definitely got to talk to this person ASAP. I've only had it running for about five days. But one thing I wanted to explore is looking more for people who are already in the business.

That's one thing we've not really done for Alabama. We did that in the very beginning when we launched New Jersey. We found somebody who already had their own cleaning business, and she got us started. So that's something I might explore this time, to find somebody that way. I know they have great experience, because they're already doing it.

And that's one thing I know that Rohan even talked about, from the very beginning, it's just, find somebody, can you handle more cleanings, just keep doing what you're doing, we'll do what we do.

Vic: Can we fill your schedule?

Blake: Yeah, exactly. And Facebook, a lot of people still use Facebook groups, local groups, like Huntsville community groups, where you would post saying, hey, I'm looking for a cleaner, who have you got, and then have a conversation with them.

Vic: Right, it works. I personally don't do it anymore, but only because we are now getting cleaners approaching us, which has been amazing. Kind of like getting organic leads. I'm getting organic leads for cleaners. But I always start with Indeed simply because of time, I don't want to weed through. A lot of people I find that are working for themselves think they don't need you, and so I have to convince them that they do need us.

And I never want to convince anybody of anything. I'm attracting my tribe, I'm attracting the people I want to work with. And so the last three or four hires for us have come in organically, where they've called saying, hey, I'm a cleaner, I've heard great things about working with you. I'll give you one tip that anybody watching this should take.

You know how you think so much about getting reviews from your clients? Well, we forget to get reviews from our workers. And Indeed has a review button where you can ask for reviews from your workers, especially if you've already hired them through Indeed, because they know everything. So we do that, and we only have I think four maybe five reviews from our cleaners.

It's like pulling teeth to get them to do it. But the ones that do it, there's nothing better than somebody talking about what it's like to work with you and your company and being honest about it. So when somebody does a search for our company name and then reviews, the Indeed reviews also come up.

Blake: That's awesome.

Vic: Which is great. Yeah. And nobody does it. There was one company in Canada that went bankrupt. They were just brutal. They were everywhere for about a year. And they basically took this model and made it a national model way too fast. And what happened was they couldn't pay their cleaners. They were doing annual membership plans for their clients, so clients would pay like three grand upfront for the whole year, and then all of a sudden they weren't paying their cleaners.

So they had some serious cash flow, some dodgy stuff going on. But here's what I noticed. They had hundreds of Indeed reviews. And I'm a former recruiter, so I was looking at that being like, does that mean you're working with thousands, because percentage-wise, that's exactly it. And so they went all in on the independent contractor model, but to the next level, where there was no care and attention.

And so the reviews started getting brutal, and at first they were amazing, and then all of a sudden it was like, hasn't paid me in two months, doesn't care about me, just wants more clients. And so they went kind of crazy on the leads, crazy on the cleaners, and really missed this middle part, which is the actual service part, how to run a successful long-term business. But they did get reviews, and nobody else is doing it. I can guarantee, if we looked up Huntsville cleaning companies, there'll be Merry Maids maybe, or Molly Maid, and people will review them.

But all the small guys like us, they don't bother asking their cleaners for reviews. And it is just as important, if not more important, than asking your clients, because to get good cleaners, they're also looking at what's it like to work with you.

Blake: True. I haven't thought about that.

Vic: Exactly, people don't. Recruiter tip, take it, run with it, and it will help you grow your business on both fronts, because it helps the clients and it helps your cleaners. And mental note for me, I need to ask for more reviews from our cleaners. I always forget, but I do need to.

Cecilia: And we also just hired two new cleaning techs as well, through Indeed as well. So Indeed has been working with us in New Jersey, and it's minimal.

Vic: Yeah. How much do you think you're spending per hire?

Cecilia: I always know that. The thing is, I do a $5 sponsor every day, and I think this last time, for two people, I spent $207.72.

Vic: I know. That's great.

Cecilia: I know. And then I got two great people to work with.

Vic: Worth every penny. You're going to make thousands of dollars, they're going to make thousands of dollars.

Cecilia: Yeah. I know a lot of people hate Indeed, and I understand it, but to me it's kind of like saying you hate Google. It doesn't matter, that's where people are looking for work.

Vic: You gotta use it. Yeah, it's like you just have to use it. So that's great. And then let's talk biggest mistakes you've made, whether it's in Jersey or Alabama. What do you think the biggest, I can't believe I did that, mistakes you've made?

Blake: I don't know if we've had a catastrophic one. The first thing that comes to mind is probably not the best example, but the thing that I've started doing, and I don't think even Cecilia does this in New Jersey, but just for my peace of mind. When it comes to new cleanings, new clients, the day of the cleaning, of course we check in and say, how was your cleaning experience? They don't always get back to you.

Sometimes it's the same day, sometimes it's the next day. But I do not charge that client until I hear from them and I know that it was a good experience. Some people just say, yep, I'm going to press that charge button as soon as I know I can. And I guess I was kind of that way at first, because it's, well, that's just the way you do it, the job is done, you charge the client.

And some things were not done right. Our only one-star review that we've had was from one of those experiences. It was a new cleaning, a new mother, and she was expecting her home to be just, like, a museum, spotless. It wasn't bad, but it was bad enough where she gave us that one-star review.

And the fact was, I probably wouldn't have gotten that had I not already charged her. But I had already charged. She said, I can't believe this company already charged me. So I learned my lesson from that one. I said, okay, well, I don't have to charge the same day. And like I said, that may not be the best example of the mistakes we've made, I'm sure we've made some others.

So does anything come to mind for New Jersey?

Cecilia: I would say it's more of a lesson. It's letting go. Oh man. Letting go. Especially right now, I'm setting up all my AI agents from New Jersey. I'm going to test it out and do the same for Huntsville once I get it all in place. But at first, the first hurdle was when you're hiring somebody like our VA, and then letting them do everything, and you letting go.

The thing is, now with AI, I trust it, but it's still going to have some things that you have to approve. But once you let go, you feel the freedom. So I'm getting there, I'm very close. This is where I admire Blake, because Blake is like, our VA is doing everything, I'm not answering the phones.

Blake has easily embraced it. The Convert Labs lead form, as you could see from our site in Huntsville, I also adapted it for our site in New Jersey. I don't use Convert Labs in New Jersey, I use Launch 27, but I use their tech, and that form is amazing. So with Blake, he gets bookings every day, automatic bookings.

And I'm like, you've got to know this, you've got to know that, and that's just me still. So it's more of a lesson learned.

Vic: Yeah, I understand that one myself. When we had two virtual assistants working full-time for us, it was a full-time job for me to manage the VAs, and I was like, what am I doing? And now we don't have any VAs. I just use AI a lot, and all of our communication is almost entirely written.

Because for us, one of the biggest problems we have is when people hear something different than what I've said. And I'm very good on the phone, and I have to not be so great, because I have to lower the expectations so that they're wowed. Otherwise they assume that because I'm a clear communicator, my cleaners will be. But some of them are ESL, they can't be.

And so I kind of force the clients to do everything written, and I explain to them, this is going to help you, because the cleaner might be ESL and we need them to run it through Google Translate, so let's have all instructions be written. But then the other thing is that I can also clap back when they're asking for something that we don't do. And because it's been written, either by text or via email, it's just clear.

Cecilia: It's so important to set the expectations early, and that's what we tell our VA. Don't overpromise and underdeliver. That's why everything is on our site. You want to know what we clean, you want to know what we don't clean, what's included, what's not, it's there. So if anybody says, oh, some person said deep clean the oven, I go, I never used the word deep clean, and I never ever deep clean the oven.

Vic: I'm glad you don't use deep clean. We, for first-time cleans, because everybody has a different idea. Deep clean means very different things to different people. It's subjective, completely subjective, and you can't have something subjective be a service. It has to be clear. So for us we call it a first-time clean, we define it: within 30 days, have you had a professional cleaning?

Well, no, but I do it. Okay, so you do it, but you're not cleaning 300 houses a year. So we just refine it. And I actually love this, because we're talking about onboarding here. That's the term we would use. So onboarding of clients, onboarding of cleaners. And so I'm going to share this little thing.

Can you see it on your screen? Okay, great. So this is our Stan Store. I'll put this up on our banner here as well. Because Blake, you guys were the first ones to buy the 22-Day Cleaning Company Blueprint. I know you don't need it. We love and support you, you put it out there, we'll get it.

So awesome. This is the book version of this YouTube channel, basically. So this supports people who like to read. They want a plan, they want, how do I set this business up from day one. And then the other thing that we've added recently is the cleaner onboarding template, as well as the client onboarding templates.

These are for your own business, they're just 10 bucks. So if you're struggling and your clients are saying things like, hey, you said you would do this, but you did that, well, that's an onboarding issue. So to fix it, you can use this template and then modify it for your own business. This is really cute, we have a few people in our community that like focusing on bachelors.

So guys that are going for a date and they're hoping that the lady will come home with them at the end of the day. And so it's called the Bachelor Boost Marketing Kit, and it's to help people that are trying to go after that crowd. It's a great crowd, a few that I can tell whenever they've got a date, because they're like, I need to clean tonight. Hey buddy, we got you.

Anyway, it's really fun. And then the last thing here is the Canva crash course. So for anybody who's like, hey, I want to learn how to make these documents in the way that Vic and Jen have done, and really it's all Jen, Jen does this. We've got the Canva crash course with video tutorials, literally everything.

So anyway, just flagging that because it is new. And thank you guys so much for supporting our little digital product. This is what Jen's been hard at work at. And there was another question I wanted to get to in the comments. So how are you guys dealing with money back and chargebacks from clients?

This is a huge problem for our business. So before you answer, when they're talking about chargebacks, they're talking about Stripe, so Mastercard, Visa, or Amex, their clients can call and say, hey, I don't want to pay this. Oh, you as a cleaning company don't get any money. We've never once had it in our cleaning company, so I can't speak to it.

But have you guys ever had it?

Blake: I think once or twice, and that's it. The one-star review we had is the only time we had a chargeback, because I'd already charged. And the reason being is because we adopted this way early, make sure we know about the feedback from the client before charging them. Obviously if it's recurring that's fine, but when it's first-time cleans, we do wait till we hear from the client.

Vic: And just a tip for anybody listening, if you don't know this already, probably for everybody, I would say 90% of the drama of the cleaning business comes from first-time clients.

Cecilia: Yeah, I would say 99%.

Vic: Yeah, come from somebody who's never hired a cleaning service before. They have a certain set of expectations in their head. Or the 1% will be somebody who jumps from one company to another. And then the 99%, you've got to hold their hand more, and you've got to be better at customer service. And if you're getting a lot of chargebacks, oftentimes new business owners in particular will blame their cleaners.

I actually wouldn't do that. I would blame the owner, and I would say, you don't have your systems in place yet.

Cecilia: It sounds so harsh, but it's true.

Vic: It's true. You got people. Boundaries.

Cecilia: The one time that I got a chargeback, I actually won. I fought it, of course, because it wasn't my fault, and I knew that because I had it all written out, just like you. My templates and everything was emailed, was texted. I circled and highlighted, this is where it said. And Stripe was like, oh yeah, here it is. So always have your things in place, because if you don't, then yeah.

Vic: And listen, a lot of people are scared of one-star reviews, or they're scared of setting boundaries with clients, because maybe they'll lose that business. But I have two things to say about that. First off, the more you set boundaries, the better reviews you will get, because they know exactly what to expect. And they're nervous.

They're inviting someone into their home to solve a problem they have, and the problem is I don't have time to clean, I want someone else to do it. And if your business is now giving them more problems, then that's not a good thing. And then the second part of that is, don't be scared of the one-star reviews. But you can absolutely give a 100% refund.

Cecilia: Oh yeah.

Vic: You're going to get, Rohan calls them psycho sandras. You're going to get a psycho sandra. And poor Sandra out there, right? But if you get a psycho sandra, there's nothing you can do to make that person happy. The only thing they want is a 100% refund. And it sucks when you're a brand-new company, because that's real money and maybe it's food from your fridge, it's not worth the emotional energy to fight with someone back and forth.

And we've done it so many times where we had one that was $1,600, and Jen and I, because I was kind of digging my heels in, I was like, no, I'm going to fight this. And then finally I just went, fine. Psycho sandra, give them their money, we need to move on. What would Rohan do?

If you don't know who Rohan is, he wrote this Reddit thread over 10 years ago that created this whole industry basically. And he's right. Psycho sandra, it's not worth fighting over, just let it go. And a chargeback is much worse for your business, because Stripe can shut you down. So if you get too many chargebacks, you can't be on Stripe.

So I would take that much more seriously than getting a negative review.

Blake: I liken it to one of the things we did also. We did a lot of trading in the market several years ago, we still do a little bit. But one thing in our training, they said, when you know how options work and stocks work, the mechanics of it, sometimes you're going to have a bad trade, and there's a chance you could actually fix it and make it turn out to not be a bad trade, and you could save that money, mitigate the risk. It's going to take time, it's going to take a lot of energy, and you're going to have to really want that.

It's almost like a challenge to you, like, okay, I'm going to make this work. And I kind of see it that way with the chargebacks or the bad reviews. Anything that involves where I could just spend a little bit of money and be done with it and just say it's a bad trade. If there's a really bad client, they didn't like it, whatever, it's a bad trade, give them their money back, move on.

That's kind of the way I see it.

Vic: And two to 5% of your clients are going to complain. And so as long as you track that, in our case it's like 0.5% now, and simply since I made the switch from talking on the phone. I still chat on the phone, but I write it all down afterwards. And it's the written communication.

We're going to do a workshop in the next couple weeks with Russ Henberry. He wrote Digital Marketing for Dummies. He's my mentor when it comes to AI and building your workflows so that you leverage AI better, much smarter. And so Russ has agreed to do a workshop with our YouTube audience on building your strategic advisor.

So it's building your own business advisor based on your research in your market. What are people actually complaining about when it comes to cleaning companies? What is the problem we're trying to solve? So diving deep online to look at what are people actually saying in Huntsville, Alabama, about the cleaning companies, and then adjusting your communications, so you're solving the exact problems they have, using AI, which is how everything I've done now is from Russ's training.

So we're opening that up. I will announce it in the next couple weeks. I just have to pin down a date and a time with Russ. But that'll be really cool, really helpful. Have you guys built a strategic advisor yet?

Cecilia: I'm in the midst of doing all that. So it's exciting.

Vic: Okay. Yeah. So this workshop will be perfect for you. I have another announcement to make, which is that in January we're doing the course again. I can't believe it. But we're doing the daily Zoom. We'll get you guys to make one now that you've done this. This is just our third. For Kevin, it's probably like 20.

Cecilia: Yeah, so many.

Vic: For me and Jen, I think this is our third. But every time we do it a little different. So this time we're doing it on YouTube live. So in order to learn about it, subscribe. This is my plug for anybody watching. Subscribe so that you get the notifications, because every day we'll teach one actionable thing so that by the end of January they've got their own businesses up and running.

And you would think there'd be thousands of these companies out there for the number of times we've done this, but trust me, you guys, it is still wide open. I don't care where you are, there's an opportunity to start one of these.

Cecilia: And I think the key for us, when you're not just starting one business, but then scaling into two businesses to where we are now, people would often ask us, how does that work, who manages what. I'm still managing New Jersey and Blake is solely managing Alabama. The system that I had created in New Jersey was replicated for Alabama. Obviously he made some tweaks because it goes with his personality and how he wants to run it.

So we have autonomy, freedom to do, because we're two different people, we're not going to run it exactly alike. And then also we have two banks, two bank accounts, one for New Jersey, one for Alabama. But when we file taxes, we file taxes as one company. So basically we are a foreign filer in Alabama.

So that's how we run our two businesses legally.

Vic: Are you ready to start a third, a fourth, a fifth?

Blake: We've already talked about it. We haven't got any wheels turning on that yet, but I think that's a natural outgrowth of what we're doing.

Cecilia: Yeah. After AI agents take care of stuff, then, why not? Why not?

Vic: You guys could easily franchise, because your name is generic enough. It's Rosie Cleans, it's not specific to your locations. But you've learned enough over the last seven, eight years from New Jersey and now Alabama, you could fairly easily franchise it. The challenge will be, and Cecilia, you're smiling because I know you know, it'll be letting go, because if you guys franchise, you've got to just set up the systems and let them run it the way they're going to run it.

Cecilia: I know. I mean, the systems are there, right? But it's who's managing those systems. Just like McDonald's, you have the system, but not all the McDonald's are the same. But I think that would be really cool. Or just enjoy life as it is. That's the other thing as entrepreneurs. Yeah, that's actually probably the next step, to be absentee owners and just really enjoy.

Right now, every day we take our walks. How do we maintain our sanity? We take daily walks. For some reason I'm very awake at night, so that's when I do all my AI stuff, and I'm like, oh my god, I need to sleep. But during the day, I want to be outdoors in the sun.

There's still a lot to do.

Vic: You need that, because if we're not healthy, then the business is not healthy. So we've got to maintain our health for our businesses to be healthy. So that was actually going to be my last question. What advice would you give to yourselves if you were starting again right now?

Cecilia: Let's see. I would say, this is something I actually did earlier, so it's more of a lesson learned: decide what is it that you want to be involved in, what you want to delegate, what you want to automate, and what you want to eliminate altogether. Once you start delegating and automating, you will quickly see what needs to get eliminated. I wish I would have done that quicker.

That was a process for me, and I think as business owners we go through that, because we don't know.

Vic: Right. You don't know what you know. Exactly. And then the other thing I would say is always be learning. Never stop learning. That's what I love about the AI stuff, because I was really stagnant by year two or three. I had learned as much as I possibly could about this industry, and I was like, okay, this is it.

You just get two to three bookings a day, you hire one to two cleaners a month, that's it, it's simple. And I got bored. And then AI came around, and now I spend all my time learning and it's so fun. I've never learned this much this fast, and every day I go, oh my god, I've got even more to learn.

And it really has been incredible. I don't know what I'm going to learn next, but I'm excited about it.

Cecilia: We're in the same boat, Victoria. I'm telling you, AI has been my new toy, my new motivation. It's like, what else could we do next?

Vic: It's amazing. And when you're learning how to use it, and making your systems better as a result of using it, rather than, the vast majority of people who are using ChatGPT right now, it's something like 83% are using it for personal stuff, like what should I cook today, how should I talk to my mom, she's driving me nuts, whatever. And only 17% of us are using it for business, which is mind-blowing to me. And then I read another stat that was like, the vast majority of people that are using AI are actually spending 20% longer working, not 20% less.

And again, it's they're not using it right. It can be the world's greatest time suck. You can just get into this little chat conversation with your personal assistant.

Cecilia: You know, like Fabio, no, Valentino is the Grok AI. They have male and female, Valentine and Valentino, or whatever. Oh gosh. It's like someone from a romance novel, their response is like, oh, I was just waiting for the moment you contacted me.

Vic: I'm like, are you getting jealous?

Blake: Yeah, I was getting a little jealous of the AI.

Vic: Well, that's exactly what it's like. And it's constantly kissing your butt, constantly telling you how great you are, and there are problems with it, no doubt about it. But learning how to use it for business and using it better, so that we set those boundaries, so that we have those expectations be really clear, our businesses are thriving as a result of having really, really clear systems.

Cecilia: That's all it is.

Vic: But anyway, okay. Well, amazing. Thank you guys for being here and for being so transparent and honest, and for being such supporters of Jen and I and what we're doing. We really, really appreciate you.

Cecilia: And we appreciate you and the community and everybody we've met throughout the years.

Blake: Yeah, we've gained a lot being part of it, and hopefully we're contributing enough to even it out, because we feel like we've gained so much from being a part of this community.

Vic: And that's exactly what we're all about, is giving back. Because I don't even know what I'd be doing right now if it weren't for discovering the Convert Labs community, and Rohan and Kevin and all the amazing people that came before us. So that's exactly it. So in January we'll bring you guys back on if you're cool with that.

We're going to call on a whole bunch of the past hot seat folks and get them to come in just to give that little boost of motivation. I know when Jen took the course, she really appreciated hearing from actual business owners saying what they were dealing with. So we'll definitely invite you guys back in.

Blake: Awesome. We look forward to it.

Vic: Right on. Thanks, guys.

Cecilia: Bye.