How Joyce Built a $20K/Month Cleaning Business While Working Full Time

Vic: Okay. I'm so excited to present Joyce. Joyce and I did a discovery call about a year ago now, and she approached me as somebody who works full-time in senior management for somebody else's company. She has two young kids. I believe they're both under the age of 10. I'm sure Joyce will correct me if I'm wrong.

She runs half marathons for fun. So Joyce is, you know, the most ambitious, courageous person that I know, and she's had more stumbling blocks than anyone else I know with her cleaning business. But she's reached 20k a month, and she's learned a ton. So I'm going to bring her on the stage, and we're going to start asking her questions.

Stick around to the end because I'm going to ask the most common question that we get at the end of the video. Welcome, Joyce.

Joyce: Thanks for having me. I'm so excited for this one.

Vic: I remember our discovery call, and I remember saying to you, "I'm putting you in the hot seat in a year." Do you remember it?

Joyce: Yeah, and I was like, "Bring it. Let's do it."

Vic: And so about a year ago, you decided to start your own cleaning business. This is not something that you'd already done before. So walk us through that journey from, "I think I want to do this thing," to actually doing it. Like, what made you go, "I want to start a cleaning business," out of all the businesses you could start?

Joyce: Yeah, a couple of reasons. I have always been fascinated with people that started businesses. That's just kind of been a dream of mine, but I had no idea how to do it.

Vic: Mhm.

Joyce: Another was, you know, at one point I was a bit frustrated in my career, and was just looking for other options. And I needed something where I could still be there for my family, keep my job. We have a lot of obligations. There's mortgage, you know, school activities. So what can I do but still start a business?

And I stumbled on a Reddit post by Rohan. I read every single step. It seemed to really make sense to me. So that's just how I got started.

Vic: So you just found this Reddit post and you're like, yeah, I'm going to start this cleaning business. And then you found us. I'm sure you did like a Google search or something and you found us on the YouTube channel. Is that right? Or through the community?

Joyce: Through the community. That's where I found you and kept watching all the videos.

Vic: Amazing. Okay, so I'll put up the Convertlabs.io links so people know what we're talking about. So the community is attached to Convertlabs.io, which is the software that Joyce decided to use to run her cleaning company. So it's her scheduling system, it's her booking system, it's her website. It literally is as close to a business in a box as she could get in terms of running her business, right?

And so for you that made the most sense because it was the least amount of work to get started. So from idea to launch, about how long was that?

Joyce: Okay, so I started the business 3 days after one of my birthdays. And I just kind of thought, should I wait until the kids got out of the house 10 years from now to start a business? And I knew I would not care. I would not have energy. So I wanted it now while I was motivated.

So I set it up. And within 2 weeks, I think I binge-watched all the videos and would listen to them while I was walking in the neighborhood. So after I set it up, two weeks later, I had my first Stripe charge.

Vic: Oh my gosh. So where did that client come from?

Joyce: I started with Thumbtack and I didn't know what I was doing. It was almost a 4,000 square foot home, four bathroom, one time deep cleaning. I quoted 200. But I was really excited.

Vic: And your cleaner was not.

Joyce: And I had no cleaner. I had to find a cleaner to do that job.

Vic: Okay, so the book and scramble. As you know, we talk about book and scramble all the time. Because people will often ask, do you hire cleaners first or do you get your clients first? Like which, you know, and it's like chicken or egg. Either way, you're going to book and scramble when you're first starting.

And then eventually, you have a cleaner. There's less scramble. And lots of feedback from that cleaner. So how did that cleaner, did they give you feedback and say like, "Whoa, this was way too low of a charge," and you went, "Oops"?

Joyce: No, they took it. They were like, "Okay, 190 is the pay." So I made no money on it. And it was an hour away, got everything wrong. But I still have that cleaner with me. She referred her sister to clean with me. So it's all fixed now, but I still remember she booked three more times and I wrote an email saying, "Your new price is much, much higher." And she hasn't booked since that client.

Vic: Fair. Fair. But I mean, that obviously isn't a problem because you're at 20K a month now. So the journey from that very first lead to the 20K a month, let's talk a little bit more about that. So first, let's talk about the model that you're following. So are you using independent contractors and how much are you paying them approximately?

Joyce: So what I now know is follow pretty much the guidance for Cleaning Company Blueprint to the T. Don't tweak it. So they get 60% and I keep 40% for advertising, overhead, subscriptions, taxes.

Vic: Yep. So what's your percentage point from that would you say approximately? I know that's tricky, but like 20%, 30%? Obviously it's not 40 because you pay your cleaner 60, so.

Joyce: I guess maybe 30%, but it's heavily being reinvested this year.

Vic: Yeah. And so talk to us a little bit more about your reinvestment. So I know one thing I really appreciate about you, Joyce, is that you're able to test things and then share in the community what's been working for you. And I mean, you've tested more than anyone I know. Like for everybody listening to this, if you want to know, you know, did direct mail work? Did you even do lawn signs? I think you did.

Joyce: No.

Vic: Okay, skip one.

Joyce: I did flyer the neighborhood.

Vic: You did local flyer ads. You did Google local service, you did Thumbtack, Yelp, pay-per-click.

Joyce: I've probably texted over 500 realtors. I did get a couple bookings from that.

Vic: Yeah. Yeah. You're the master of testing. Like there's nobody better at testing than you are because you're willing to invest a bit of money and then look at, did this work or not, and then pivot, you know, the minute you're like, "No, this is not a channel that works for me." So something's working. What is it?

Joyce: So right now, I'm really focused on local search engine optimization. And I stumbled upon Facebook marketing because no other channel worked. Like none of them worked. They were saturated, the cost was high, the lead quality was poor, they weren't sustainable.

Vic: Yeah.

Joyce: So this was more of a Hail Mary marketing avenue. You know, I just thought if this does not work, I don't know. TikTok? I don't know. I probably would have gone there next, but Facebook's working for me right now.

Vic: Yeah. So meta ads where you're connecting directly with them, and you were working with an agency that's helping you, right?

Joyce: Yeah. And I think one thing I did have to get over. They just shared that you have to put your face for the local community to see you. Not a lot of people feel comfortable with that, but I just thought, okay, I can take a few comments that are negative for the sake of, you know, helping my team.

Vic: So did you get comments that were negative?

Joyce: Oh, yeah.

Vic: Really? Oh my god, tell me more.

Joyce: I mean, when you put yourself out there, you know, people will say, "This is the worst service." You have the option to leave it or take it down, but you know, you will get comments.

Vic: Yeah. If you're not getting negative reviews or feedback, then you just haven't grown enough. It'll come. That's fair. So the agency manages your stuff. Do you pay them a fee and then they manage all the ads and then what happens? Do they call you? Do they DM you? Do they text? Do they book online? Like what's the process?

Joyce: Okay, so it starts with you having a creative. You introduce yourself and there's a lead magnet. So it's just get a quote, click this button. So it goes through a form. They need to fill out the square footage, bathrooms, is it one time or recurring service? From there, we get a lead. A lot of them, they're probably doomscrolling while at work or in bed late at night.

So we do try to call them, but a lot of them say call me the next day. The next morning, they're not buyers who need a clean in the next 7 days, most of them. They're thinking about it. So a lot of them book within 30 days or 60 days after engaging, which really works with my schedule.

So I do try to call them twice. Then we just do a quote, since we already know the square footage, number of bathrooms, what type of service, and then there's automated follow-ups that, you know, keep going out until they opt out or not.

Vic: So from the buyer's point of view, from the person who's like, because I'm doomscrolling on Facebook, I see an ad and it's a picture of Joyce and her husband and her kids. Like it's very raw. It's not polished, right? You're not doing like an AI fancy version of yourself. You're doing, you know, like a family photo. Do I have that right?

Joyce: That's right. They say native, non-AI, someone that is local, really resonates with the local community.

Vic: And you're wearing your branded T-shirt for your company. You're smiling. You're being yourselves, but you're like, "Look, we're local. We're happy. We want to clean your house," right? For busy professionals.

Joyce: For busy professionals.

Vic: Okay, so you're fine-tuning your market. You're not just trying to reach everybody. And then you have like a form that they're doing where they're saying, you know, this is my size of house, this is how often, and you're filtering out people that want just one-time cleans. Is that right?

Joyce: Right now I do take them. Like a move-in, move-out, or I just want it done once to test out. We still take them.

Vic: Yeah. I mean, they'll still come in, but if they can't afford your service, there's a way for you to be like, get out of here.

Joyce: Yeah, they'll either tell me that they're like, "You're not reasonable. This is so ridiculous."

Vic: Yeah. Fair. I mean, we're not doing cheap cleaning. It's not the Cleaning Company Blueprint way. So that's fair. You'll definitely get some pushback on that, especially if they're doomscrolling. They're in like a negative state of mind as well, and they probably haven't done their research on how much it actually costs to hire a cleaner. So that's amazing. And then how many, do you know your numbers in terms of how many you've booked from this process?

Joyce: Over 50 at this point.

Vic: Incredible.

Joyce: And a lot of them are recurring, so weekly, bi-weekly. So it definitely helps my recurring numbers through this method. Out of all, I've tested all the methods, this has been the best avenue to get recurring clients for me.

Vic: Amazing. And then you have a virtual assistant because you work full-time. You're a mom, you've got the kids, and you're a runner. Like, you're busy. So you've hired a virtual assistant, so you've had to train them on how to manage this whole process, right?

Joyce: Yeah. And before I started, you know, it was pretty chaotic. I did implement the entrepreneur operating system. So there's a scorecard. We built the procedures together. I trained her on the weekends, or I would record Loom videos, and then ask her to make a procedure. But when I set up the scorecard, you know, I kind of saw she did things differently, but it was still green for that metric, and I just kind of thought, well, you know, that's, I guess that's fine.

It's not how I would do it, but you know.

Vic: Yeah, you have to kind of like let some things go. So talk to us about the difference between your day job and now, because you work in management in your day job. So you manage people on a daily basis, and you're a very systematic thinker. The fact that you even just talked about EOS, your entrepreneur operating system, did I have that right?

Joyce: Yeah, yeah.

Vic: Yeah, so it's a strategic way of like figuring out what you need to focus on every day. So what's the difference between your 9-to-5 job and how you operate, and then your cleaning business? Like what have you learned as a result of owning the cleaning business?

Joyce: I think the main thing, there's a lot of transferable skills. I would say it made me realize what was revenue generating at my work versus busy work, because in your business, you have busy work or things that move the needle. You have to really prioritize that. Also, cleaners want to feel appreciated. My team wants to feel appreciated. My VA wants to feel appreciated, so you have to kind of, you know, do that as well.

Vic: Yeah, so it's kind of constant praise, yeah, positive feedback. Like you're amazing. Like multiple times a day. Probably more than you thought you needed to do, right?

Joyce: Yeah, I guess, but yeah, I want to keep everyone happy.

Vic: That's fair. That's fair. And then so let's talk about things that have gone wrong. I think I said this, like you've had your fair share of what we call Nancy's. Nancy is a high maintenance, low reward client. So she is very demanding. She loves to micromanage the cleaner, even though she would never say she's a micromanager, of course not, but she very much is.

And threatens one star reviews, doesn't like the price. Like out of anyone I know, Joyce, every time I talk to you I'm like, oh God, what do you got for me today? So can you tell us, you know, what's happened, kind of the negative experiences that you've had with your cleaning business?

Joyce: There's a couple. I think the worst one, I felt terrible about. It was a house with no air conditioning and they texted me there was roaches and rat poop in the drawers, and when the cleaner came there she was cussed out. I just felt bad.

Vic: Wow. That was one, you know. She was cussed out. What does that mean? So like the client was telling her, why are you not cleaning? Like I paid.

Joyce: She walked. She walked that job, but it was just a terrible job, like a biohazard and not safe.

Vic: Clean feces, and I mean, if you want to know why, watch the news right now with the cruise ship that's, you know, stuck in the Atlantic Ocean. As an easy explanation, I've had to explain it so many times. We do not clean feces, urine, blood, whether human or animal, because it's a biohazard and it's a health hazard for the cleaners.

Joyce: I think where I'm kicking myself is there's at least two cases and I literally told the community and I told my husband, I wrote out, I have a bad feeling about this person. I'm a people pleaser and I think, you know, this time I might be able to win them over and make them happy. And I lose money on that deal or get a bad review. And I know you have a rule, it's did they ask more than three questions?

And they broke those rules. So I now have a rule and I ask everybody to check me if they ask more than three questions. We just say we're not a good fit.

Vic: I love that. We're not a good fit. I love that, and that rule came from the community, came from Kevin who started Convertlabs.io. So kudos to Kevin for defining it. I would have come up with like a much more complicated explanation as to why someone's not the right fit, but really if they ask more than three questions and it is already on your website, it's a very clean website.

It's got very clean frequently asked questions, you know, and our ideal clients look at the website, so that's first. So they don't need to ask a million questions. But secondly, you know, they're not fussy. And fussy folks ask more than three questions. So it's an easy way to define, like you're going to get a Nancy if you have more than three questions.

You also had a police incident recently. So can you tell us a little bit more about what happened with getting the police involved? This is kind of everybody's worst nightmare. So that's why I want to put it out there so people know, like yes, this does happen. However, it's not the end of the world.

Joyce: I mean, I just said we'll fully cooperate. I talked to my team. You know, they speak Spanish and I said, have you seen, you know, mucho dinero, and they're like no. And we don't even remember that job. It was from 3 months ago and I just said okay, we'll just fully cooperate.

Vic: So for context for the viewer, Joyce's cleaners were accused of stealing $5,000 from their bedside table in cash and they reported it 3 months later. Do I have that right?

Joyce: No, they reported it within a week. I guess the police department reached out and then, I haven't heard back from them. I don't know what else they want from me.

Vic: Yeah, and you just gave the contact details of your cleaners and you said, yeah, no problem. We did this job on this day. They're claiming this.

Joyce: Yeah. I don't know. We'll see. That team cleans my house, so, and I trust them, so I don't know. We'll see what happens.

Vic: Yeah. I mean it's pretty hard to, yeah, but that does happen. And I know emotionally, like how did you feel that day that you got that call?

Joyce: Terrible.

Vic: Yeah. Were you like, I'm going to quit? I'm done.

Joyce: No. Oh no. I had a feeling I'm not the only one. I think the hotel industry or cruise industry, you know, people misplace Apple Watches, AirPods, heirlooms. Often our cleaners just organize it. It's part of their job to do light organization, so it's just, you know, usually turns up later. I didn't see any warning signs for this couple, but you never know.

Vic: You never know, and as many, you know, you could analyze every single thing and sometimes bad things happen, you know, like it's not your fault. It's not the cleaner's fault. It's probably the client's, but I mean we don't know, you know, maybe they did. Like you don't know. That's what the police's job is.

So yeah, bad things happen. But you keep going. And that's the thing with you that I love working with you, Joyce, because I know, like out of anybody, she's going to have another story. We know Ash and Adam, who I've done a hot seat with. They shared a really great story of a client that accused them of stealing a cat.

You know, we laugh about it now, and the cat was hiding under the couch because it didn't want the cleaners to bother them. They found their cat, crisis averted. And I'm sure Adam and Ash used the same line of, "We'll cooperate with the police." But that's amazing. And then so in terms of lessons, like you've learned so much, so fast.

What do you think is, you know, maybe the most expensive mistake that you've made so far? And what would you do differently starting over if you had to start over tomorrow?

Joyce: My most expensive mistake is probably direct mail. Don't do it.

Vic: Did it really cost $10,000?

Joyce: No. Well, I used two campaigns over 2 years for one and 6 months for another.

Vic: Direct mail, and then how many clients did you get out of that?

Joyce: Gosh, less than 10.

Vic: Okay, so don't do direct mail.

Joyce: Yeah, or like vouchers, like Valpak.

Vic: Yeah, don't do any of that. Valpak, wow, that's still a thing, hey? Where it's like little coupons in the Valpak?

Joyce: I did get one recurring off of it, bi-weekly, but maybe if they stay with me 10 years, I'll recoup that.

Vic: Okay, so direct mail definitely not for the win, but Meta ads definitely for the win for you right now. And then let's talk a little bit about Google Local Services because I know you tested that. What was your experience with Google Local Services?

Joyce: My challenge was I had it on a 4 million a week budget, and I'd get two calls a month. They were $80, and they were like worst, terrible quality clients. So it just was not working.

Vic: And you're in Houston, Texas, so I'll pull up your website here in a second so people can see it. In Houston, it's quite competitive there, because it's quite large, right?

Joyce: Yeah. Oh, yeah. It is pretty saturated for the common marketing channels.

Vic: Absolutely. So I just typed in Best Cleaning Services Clear Lake, Texas, because you named your company Clear Lake Maids, and you're in the three-pack, which is amazing. So that means your SEO work is working for Clear Lake, anyway. I know Clear Lake is not a large area, so let me just scroll out here. Sorry, can you see my screen?

Joyce: Yeah, I can see it.

Vic: Okay, great. So we've got Houston here. Have I even got all of Houston? I think that's all of Houston, right? This white area? It's huge. Like, what's the population of Houston now? It's a few million, no? Like 8 million?

Joyce: 8 million. Like, for including the surrounding areas.

Vic: Okay, so like a quarter of the size of Canada. I'm in Canada. So like, that's an insane number of people. So I'm really glad you didn't name your company Houston Maids, because you're trying to get 100 clients to reach a half million a year. You know, 200 clients is about a million a year.

So you don't need a massive search base for your company. But then you've got it here. So in your H1 heading, which is what this is, professional house cleaning services in Houston area, spot on. And then you've got the beautiful widget where you're showing exactly how much it is, so they can enter in, you know, whatever their size home is, how often they want it, and you can see the price right here.

So this helps you to filter out the tire kickers, which is amazing. So this is perfect. And it's working, because when you look at the Google three-pack, you know, you can just do cleaning services, I know League City was next door to you, but I'll just do that. And then you can see it, you know, comes up right away.

Oh, and now you're second on the, here, I'll show this page instead. You're second on the three-pack when I did that search there, which is amazing. So this is free leads. This is what Joyce has learned, within our community, in terms of, you know, not having to pay. These, up here, are the Google ad, the sponsored results.

So this would be the Google local services, and these guys are paying as much as $80 a lead, right? It's just insanity. But you've done all the right work to do the SEO stuff here. And I did a search the other day for fun, and I wanted to see what AI mode said.

So let's do this live. Let's see. Yay! Oh my gosh. Amazing. And our ideal target audience, they use AI all the time. You know, they're busy professionals. Of course, in the last year they've started embracing AI tools for search. So the fact that you come up second, specifically noted for their pet-friendly approach, light organization, and laundry assistance.

Love it.

Joyce: I didn't know I did laundry, but okay. One more load. And light organizing.

Vic: Apparently you do according to this. But the fact that you're right underneath Molly Maids, which obviously is huge, is an incredible success, and in only a year. Like, you know, other people are paying thousands of dollars to try to figure this stuff out and you have. So kudos to you for that, Joyce. That's amazing. We're getting comments in from the community, by the way. They're all going, "Go Joyce! Yay Joyce!"

Joyce: Thank you guys.

Vic: I will open it up to the audience shortly so that they can also ask questions. But before I do that, I want to know, if you were to look at yourself from 2 years ago before you had started your company and, you know, you're watching this video at lunch and you're just thinking about it. What is the very first thing that you would tell that version of you that's out there thinking about doing this?

Joyce: I don't know. Just do it and learn along the way. The only change I would make is before you name or start your company, because SEO is so important. If you think of how much marketing spend it takes to acquire a customer, like tens of thousands. If you name your company right by looking at the search volume, you know, the keyword difficulty.

I know you say you name it the city and then what you are. I would have done a little bit more research, but I didn't know.

Vic: Yeah. You don't know what you don't know. And I will say Clear Lake, it is smaller and League City's right beside Joyce. So what she's referencing right now is that if she had named it League City Clean, she would get more leads easier. However, both of those names are 10 times better than the majority of cleaning company names that are out there.

Okay? So most of them will be like Sparkle Cleaning Solutions or Kaleidoscope Clean or, you know, and it's just like that. Google and AI is handing us money on a silver platter if we simply name what people are searching for, which is the words cleaning and then the location. So name your company that.

That's why I say don't name it Houston Cleaning because Houston's too big. You don't want that many clients looking for you and it'll be way too expensive because you're competing with a much larger pool. Whereas if you name it something like, we have Dana in our community, she's got Hudson Yards Cleaning, New York City. And she's already getting organic leads within 2 weeks of launching, which is insanity.

Like free organic leads because they type in Hudson Yards Cleaning. It's so obvious. But you know, she was going to start hers with, it was going to be a Paro Cleaning. You know, which meant something to her but didn't mean anything to the person typing in. You know, they're hanging out in Hudson Yards in New York.

Then they're typing in, I'm looking for cleaning services, right? So yeah, but you could always start another company if you want. What's next? Are you going to?

Joyce: I don't know. I'm just kind of exploring. You know, the business kind of runs itself. I feel like if I turned on ad spend, I would just set it on fire with terrible clients. I just like it to grow and get more recurring. We, you know, execute each one flawlessly. Get a five-star review.

I just want to do that over and over again. I plan to expand to one city over, you know, maybe in a year or two by opening another Google location. But yeah, really just put more structure, maybe stop working weekends, just learn as much as I can about AI. I don't know. We'll see.

Vic: I love that Dana's here and we just talked about her company. So there you go. There's Hudson Yards Clean. So awesome. Okay, so the question I want to, that we get all the time, is walk me through what a typical day is like for you. So you're working, I'm assuming 9:00 to 5:00. You work from home or do you go to an office?

Joyce: Okay, so I do have to go in the office two days a week. My commute is at least an hour each way. So during the week I usually check in the mornings for any late cancels or someone called in sick. That happens a couple times a week. My assistant starts 8:30. So if it can wait, I just have her handle it.

She can get a hold of me on WhatsApp, but you know, she just asks me if there's unusual situations. I always ask her to decide first and then run it by me.

Vic: That's good.

Joyce: I want her to try and solve it first. But yeah, she handles everything from leads to rescheduling, onboarding, to payroll, all that.

Vic: Oh wow, she even does your payroll. That's cool.

Joyce: Yeah, she does payroll. And in my commutes when I first started, I would just voice to text on WhatsApp. She'd ask me a question and I'll just answer, like during my commute. Just to be available to train her. But it works. I miss her on weekends. I miss her when it's 6:00 and I get a complaint.

Vic: And you're like, "Oh no, I have to deal with this."

Joyce: Yeah, yeah.

Vic: So you go to the office, you're there from 9:00 to 5:00. You're checking your phone at like lunch breaks or, you know, behind the scenes. You go to the bathroom, you see your phone, your WhatsApp if there's an emergency. And really there's no such thing as a cleaning emergency, but in Joyce's world, she does have a lot of the crazy folks.

So she has her fair share of like having to deal with customer relationship stuff. And then you come home 6:00-ish, dinner with the family. And then it's kids activities like all day long. So I'm at the baseball field or tennis or scouts or something. But you're still, you still have your phone on you.

So you're able to like jump into, you know, a conversation or fix any issues. And then what are you doing on the weekends? So you're still working on the weekends, but what are you actually doing?

Joyce: So I got into sourdough. And you know, I was training for a half marathon and I like to run. I go to the gym.

Vic: Yeah. I love that you got into sourdough, too. Like of course you did.

Joyce: I don't know. I actually have a lot of free time. Isn't that wild?

Vic: Yeah. Do you watch Netflix?

Joyce: I don't know. I don't really, like I mean I will watch a show, but we'll do like one episode a week, I guess.

Vic: Oh wow, okay. So the big difference between Joyce and everyone else is that she's not spending 4 hours a night watching television. Is that fair to say?

Joyce: Oh, no.

Vic: Yeah. That's not interesting to you.

Joyce: No.

Vic: Yeah, that's great. Okay, I love it. All right, I'm going to open it up to questions from the audience. If you guys have any questions, please put it in the chat. And Joyce, feel free to ask me any questions if you like. You've got me for a few more minutes. So, you know, I'm here.

Joyce: I guess my question is, when did you kind of turn your brain off from like, let me stop messing with my business and making it worse, and go find another hobby?

Vic: It's such a great question, because I am such an entrepreneur. I'm the type to just keep tinkering with the business and try to make it better. I would say after about 50k a month when my sister said to me, the majority of what you're doing is nonsense. And I was like, what are you talking about?

I'm working so hard. And she's like, the business is working, stop it. I'm like, okay. I still do it occasionally. I'll come up with some like genius idea and then, you know, I waste a whole day doing something that's like nonsense. And then after the whole day is done, I'm like, what did I do today?

Absolutely nothing. But, you know, in our case, our leads are coming in organically through SEO. We've existed since 2021. It's now 2026. We have over 300 five-star reviews. We are in a small city. We're not competing with lots of other people, right? So it's just a lot easier for us now. And I also think, and you mentioned it earlier, you know, that it's impacting your day job now and how you work in your day job, because we learn how to work so much more efficiently here in this space and then can apply it to other jobs.

Joyce: Yeah, and let's talk about customer service. So I don't know, this maybe something I need to go unpack with somebody else more qualified, but when I handle conflict, I just shut down, avoid, but this forces you to deal with someone that is pissed. They're yelling at you. They're talking about all this other nonsense that's not related to cleaning.

You got to calm this person down and just ask if you want to reclean or partial refund. You know, you just have to go deal with it. So after getting practice with that, I think that it's kind of helped, you know, with managing just different personalities better and just not being afraid of a hard conversation.

Vic: Yeah. And you know what? I don't have to have those conversations as much anymore, because we onboard our clients so carefully now, right? So the minute we get a booking, we clarify. First off, they're always booking online, so nine times out of 10 they booked online. 10% of the time they'll call and I'll answer the phone, and I'll walk them through it, but most of the time they're booking online.

But I onboard them in terms of asking them clarifying questions. Like, when was the last time your home was cleaned? Was it within the last 30 days? Yes or no? And then if it's a no, then we had what's called a first-time clean, which other cleaning companies will call a deep clean, but we don't call it that because we know people get really mad when they think your deep clean is not as deep as their deep clean.

And it's just too subjective. So now we define it. And then we say to them, "And by the way, your home is never going to be spotless in one clean. That's not how cleaning works. We got to do it every 2 weeks. How are Wednesdays for you?" You know, so we just control the conversation a lot more and we make sure that we're constantly saying recurring service is the way to go, and no, it will not be spotless in one clean.

And then if they want to go away, that's fine. They can go and get upset with some other company that has promised that they could do that, because we know we can't do that, right? We'll do our best, but it's not going to be perfect. And then we say we have a reclean, a 24-hour guarantee.

If you need a reclean, please let us know the specific spots, send us photos, and then we'll arrange a reclean within the next 7 days. Then if they call and they're irate, first off, I don't answer that phone call, right? So that's the big difference between beginning and now, because I'm like, you know, I can tell from their voicemail that they're so angry. And so then that triggers, "Oh, would you like us to arrange a reclean?

Please send us the photographs." And like sometimes people are just emotional and they want to just dump on a cleaner. And I'm not available for that, you know? It's like, "No, I'm going to force you to be mad tonight in your house and maybe you'll write a one-star review, but I'm not scared of that one-star review." And then the next day, they'll get the email. I've scheduled it to go out at 9:00 a.m.

I'm very specific in my communication. I only communicate between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., right? So I don't care if they think this is an emergency. They should have planned their cleaning well ahead of whatever their deadline was, right? So if key exchange is at 5:00 and we didn't do a good enough job, that's on them, right?

Even though, yeah, we should have, you know, we missed something, but hey, we have this reclean guarantee. And so a lot of that just has gone away. That's the honest answer. Like I just don't deal with angry people like that anymore, because there's no world where we get dumped on. Like no. It's just a full stop.

That person needs therapy and I'm not going to let them dump on me. All right, so Daisy asks, "First week great job, Joyce. My question is what's been the best channel to find cleaners?" Great question, Daisy. Thank you for asking it. So where do you get your cleaners from?

Joyce: You got to try everything. I found a good one off of Facebook, and then she referred someone that was good. I asked all of my church friends. And I mean, it was first who wants a cleaning, and they're like, "You're too expensive." But my cleaner needs more work, so you know, you can see if any of your friends want to help their cleaners. That's a way. And next door. But I would rotate.

Vic: You rotate around. Yep. Yeah, that you're looking for cleaners. So you're not paying like Indeed for ads or anything like that. You're finding them just through free social media channels.

Joyce: So I looked at the data for a year for Indeed, and I was never able to retain any of those cleaners long-term. They needed full-time work.

Vic: So you were like, "Nah." Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. Okay, the next one, and I can't see this person's name. So 7799 we'll go with. It's Milanova. You write, it's Reina. Reina. Reina, thank you. Do you know her?

Joyce: Yeah.

Vic: Oh, great. Okay, Reina. She's in our community, isn't she? My apologies for not knowing your name well enough. So she says, "Joyce, you inspire me every day. My question is what are the plans to expand your service to Northwest Houston? Kind of urgent, no pressure." So I wonder why that's kind of urgent.

Joyce: You know, there's a lot of opportunity, and I talked to another Houston company that refers me their extra jobs out of their area to me. But she said she has 60 cleaners, a co-owner, a sales team, and they're all over Houston, and it just seemed like a lot of work. I just feel like if I'm just in my little area with 150 recurrings, I feel like it's just an easier, less stress life. So I don't know about Houston rapid expansion.

Vic: Because you like the low stress.

Joyce: Yeah. Yeah. You know, high reward.

Vic: Yeah, I'm with you on that. I did an interview, it's going to be published soon, I think in the next few weeks on somebody else's channel about cleaning, and they are doing 1.6 million in revenue, and we're doing, sorry, 800,000 in revenue. And so we dove deep into our numbers. And, you know, because that sounds like he's doing double what we're doing, right?

But then I asked more questions, and his profit margins were 17%, and ours are 28. So when I run the math, he made 40 grand more than us last year in profit. He has an operations manager, multiple VAs. He's tried to sell the business 12 times in 3 months. He's burnt out. He's so done with it.

And I'm like, I mean, to me, it's so clear what you've done wrong. Do you want me to tell you? And I'm like, simplify every single part of this business. So here on this channel, you know, we really coach hard on pay your cleaner 60%, keep it simple. They know what they're doing.

They do not need you to tell them what to do. He has a whole training program and an employee program. And, you know, our entrepreneurial brains will always make more work for us, right? And what he should have done is found a really great hobby. Kept the business so stupidly simple and then use that free time, that creative energy that he has, and put that into something else.

In your case, it's running, it's taking care of your kids, it's bringing them to the sports stuff, but you still have an entrepreneurial brain. I see you sometimes coming up with ideas and then being like, wait, is this a good idea or am I just making work for myself? You know, and definitely I know I make a lot of work for myself. So it's easy to call it on someone else, because we can see it now, right?

Joyce: Yeah. Yeah.

Vic: Thank you for your questions, guys. This has been great. Joyce, I am so very proud of you. And like I said at the top, you know, you have gone through unbelievable ups and downs with your journey. All you have to do now is hold. And let the bookings come in, the meta ads are working, and you're going to reach 50k a month, and once you do that, we're going to get you back into this deep call.

I love doing the follow-up interview on what else has changed, what else you would recommend for someone else. So I so appreciate you and your contribution to our community as well. If anybody wants to join us and you're watching this and you're like, what are they talking about? What is this community? Sign up for our newsletter.

I'll put this here and I'll drop it in the comments as well. This will eventually change to just cleaningcompanyblueprint.com without the dashes, without the beehiiv link, but for now, this is what we have live. But if you would like to book a discovery call with me, a one-on-one where we talk about your situation, where you are, what you should name your company, whether it's going to work in your area, you just go to cleaningcompanyblueprint.com and you choose a time and we do a one-on-one together. So exactly like Joyce did a year ago.

I'd love to meet you and get to know you. And thank you to Joyce, and if people want to reach out to you, what's the best way to reach you, Joyce? Is it through clearlakemaids.com?

Joyce: Yeah, or you can find me in the Inner Circle.

Vic: Okay, perfect. Or you can find Joyce in the Inner Circle inside our community. So thank you, thank you, thank you. And that's all for us.