How Rohan Gilkes Built a Cleaning Business Empire and Taught Thousands to Start One

Vic: Welcome to Cleaning Company Blueprint. I'm Vic, and today we have Rohan, who's going to sit in the hot seat call with me talking all things cleaning business. So we have Rohan here today, and Rohan, you and I met, I mean never in person, always online, but we really started talking when Kevin approached myself and my sister Jen and said hey, do you want to do a course with Rohan and I, and we recorded that course for this YouTube channel, which is below, so that's how we know each other. But you started this whole thing off, and in almost every single hot seat call, in fact it might even be almost every single one, somebody can comment and tell me if it is, in every single one somebody has mentioned how they found their cleaning business structure, how they found how to do everything, and it's always, I saw Rohan's Reddit post.

So I want to work backwards to: you're from Barbados, you moved to America, you became an accountant, and then you posted this thing on Reddit showing everybody how to launch, grow, and scale a cleaning company in 30 days. Crazy.

Rohan: Yes, so I was born and raised in Barbados, and I got a scholarship to go to university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I studied accounting and finance. I started working in accounting and I knew I did not love it, but it was okay, I could do it, I had the skills to do it. And then I transitioned over to finance, and at that point I was working for Freddie Mac, a large company in the DC Metro area, and I figured that, you know what, I could just do this until I'm 65 years old, or maybe I can try to become an entrepreneur and try something. So I started reading everything I could learn about SEO and internet marketing, and it had to be something where I could start it with very little money, because that's what I had, very little money.

I stumbled across a guy in Texas that started a cleaning business, him and his wife, and I figured I could probably pull this off. I found a guy in Spain and he built my first version of the website, it was terrible, and I then posted that website on Craigslist, and the first day somebody came and booked a $159 cleaning, the first day I posted it, and I was like, this could be interesting. My goal at the time was to do about $400 a month so I could pay my car payment and insurance, that was my goal, and by month number three or four I was doing about $10,000 in sales, about $4,000 in take home pay, and I was like, this could be life-changing. And one random Sunday I decided to post about what I had been doing on Reddit, and that led to me meeting Kevin, and meeting you, and meeting like hundreds of other people virtually that have built businesses now, and together we're doing well in the hundreds of millions of dollars per year from this.

It's been a crazy journey.

Vic: Yeah, it's a wild journey. So what was your scholarship for, were you an athlete, were you particularly smart with accounting, how did that happen?

Rohan: Yeah, I got a scholarship just from high school, I had good grades. We have a standardized exam in the Caribbean called CXC, and I got really good grades and I got a scholarship based on that.

Vic: So you were a good student.

Rohan: Yeah, I was a pretty good student.

Vic: And now you teach, I guess. So I've always been curious, because we didn't find you through the Reddit post, my sister found you, it was in the pandemic. Jen, who does the editing of all of these videos, found you, it must have been at the end of May or beginning of May, you did a Twitter thread, somebody she follows retweeted it, and it was just perfect timing, Rohan, perfect timing. And for context, we're not cleaners, we don't work in cleaning, we own a cleaning company, this was very much a career pivot, but we found you through the Twitter thread.

You've also been on Clubhouse during the pandemic, I remember that, Clubhouse was hot, but people still always refer back to the Reddit ones, so that one obviously had the largest number of followers. But I've always wondered, because we thank you every day, every day in our journals, and anybody asks us how did you know how to do this crazy thing and we're like, this guy Rohan, and everybody always has that little spidey sense of, where's the scam, where's the catch, right? Because you didn't need to share this stuff. The bottom line is you could have kept this totally to yourself, you could have created franchises for your business, there's a million different things you could have done, and instead you decided to share it, and that's the piece that I've always liked, because I have the same philosophy, if you learn something and it helps you, pass that on, that's the right thing to do.

But you decided to do that and it had a major impact in your life as well. So why did you initially decide to share this on Reddit?

Rohan: It's because of a small list of people that I learned from on the internet. When I was trying to figure out entrepreneurship, even though I had a business degree, everything I learned was after I graduated. I would follow this guy called Shoemoney, he had a Shoemoney blog, there was another guy called John Chow, and they would do local affiliate marketing, general affiliate marketing, e-commerce type marketing, they would do marketing for dentists where they would get paid per person that walks through the door, all this really cool marketing. Through them I learned about affiliate marketing, customer acquisition, a whole host of different things, and they were so open about sharing it that I felt like I had an obligation to do the same thing.

So once I learned, and I started to make money, and I realized that this was going to be a big business for myself, I knew I couldn't make all the money, and I figured there's other people that could join, and that's what led me to share.

Vic: Yeah, that's amazing, and that's exactly what we ended up doing with you guys, it was the same thing. We have different skills, Jen being able to edit and me being able to talk to people, and so it organically becomes this thing that is now the YouTube channel, which is really cool. So when you launched your business, what year was it?

Rohan: This was 2012.

Vic: So we're now June 17th, 2024. You've now taught at least 3,000, I mean we really don't know because it's the internet and you've put it all out there and anybody can follow it, but let's assume around 3,000 people, because that's the number that I know Kevin uses. And you've had various software versions over the years, so you created your first website, then you created software, is that accurate?

Rohan: Yeah, so as the business was growing, real quick I got up to $50,000 a month, and I was using a hodgepodge of different tools, I was using Zoho and a Google Sheets type platform, I was using PayPal, I was using a WordPress custom build that I created to funnel the bookings, it was all over the place. As I was getting bigger I was like, the only way I'm going to scale this is if I create some software that can manage this whole thing, from customer acquisition all the way until you delegate the clean, all the way until you charge the card, all this stuff I need to be able to do it. The stuff that was out there wasn't really that good based on how I knew the business had to work, and it needed online booking, that was very specific how it was done, all these things I had figured out, so I said I can build a piece of software for myself just for my company, and that's what I did. After I built it, it was working well, I mentioned it on Reddit, and somebody said man, I would love to use your software, because we know it's built in the way that these businesses currently are working really well, and so I thought, I could turn what I built for myself into a separate company.

I hired some folks from Upwork and they transformed my software into a SaaS, software as a service, that other people could use for a monthly fee, that became Launch27, and that became my first big software exit.

Vic: Yeah, that's amazing. And so then you sold Launch27, so that's no longer yours, correct. And in the meantime Kevin followed your original Reddit post, then he reached out, you guys organically became friends because of similar mindsets I imagine, and then you started coaching, right?

Rohan: Yep, that's it, we started coaching. Kevin also built Convertlabs.io around that time, because after Launch27 was winding down Kevin had already built a version that focused only on the lead generation on the front end, the lead generation and lead followup tool which Launch27 did not have. So Kevin built that, and after I sold Launch27 Kevin continued building and building what became Convertlabs, and then we started coaching people as well, and just keeping the vibes going. Back in the day we used to be in a Skype group, it was like 50 people in the Skype group, and that's how the Facebook group started, and that's how the whole community started to blossom.

Vic: Yeah, it's amazing, and the patience that you have, I have to say, because you're a good student, and when you're a good student you listen, you follow the directions, you take feedback, you move on, and there's a lot of people that ask you a lot of questions, because you're seen now as the expert in this field. I know for myself, because people are starting to do it to me and I'm like, dude, I just have a cleaning business, I'm just sharing my stuff, so I do commend you for the patience, but also for not giving up on us and for continuing to inspire people, because I imagine that would be frustrating when you get people that maybe don't listen as well.

Rohan: Yeah, we encounter that. For the most part, especially new entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship can be daunting, it can seem difficult, most people have not had the opportunity to make money outside of a structured job, and there's a lot of mindset changes that have to happen around that, there's different work strategies, there's a different learning speed, so there's quite a few things, especially for new entrepreneurs it can be a difficult transition. We try to spend some time talking about mindset and some of these changes that people have to make, because it's not just like working a regular job, but once you master it the upside is well worth it.

Vic: I'm so glad you brought it up, because Jen just mentioned to me before this, she said make sure you talk about mindset, it's the number one thing, and I said don't worry, I know it's going to come up, because it is. Jen was saying, and I wish she was here but she's driving kids doing life, when she took the course with you, she took the 30-day Zoom option through Twitter, and it was every day on Zoom, and you and Kevin still offer these every once in a while but not all the time. When Jen took it she remembered the first day thinking, oh I got that, I got that, and she kind of brushed over it, and when she told me about it I was like, yeah, we believe in big things, we've done big things, we got this. But for us it still is, to this day, every day I swear to God Jen and I are coaching each other on the mindset piece, because it's the biggest shift you make in your life, to realize that you're the owner, that it's on you, and that you can and you will figure it out.

One of the things we say all the time is, well, if that person can do it, why can't we, and the blueprint is so simple to follow that our entrepreneurial brains actually take over far too often, and we have to remember to just follow the blueprint, to put our passions into other things, not into this business.

Rohan: Yeah, that can be very difficult for people, because human beings inherently, we're creative, and we want to bring our creativity and our skill set and our decision making and all these ideas to a business, and it's really hard to just say, let me do the most simple, predictable thing that has been shown to work really well for the highest number of people, and don't change a thing. That is a lot tougher than the other version of it that involves creativity. Once people figure that out, sometimes they figure it out based on their income, they're like, I'm making some money following the path, but let me go tweak it, and you change the wheels and add your own spices, and then start to make less money, and sometimes you make that transition back, but it's hard, it's even hard for me sometimes now if I'm starting a new project, just do the basics and nothing else.

Vic: Yeah, and nothing else. And that's the thing, the thing with this particular business that was challenging for me in the first year was that there's a lot more time between phone calls or emails or texts, and I'm used to life being hard, I'm used to jobs being hard, I'm used to working my butt off, and I'm not saying I don't, I do, it's just different now, what I work on is more about my brain, because Convertlabs works, the bookings work, the cleaners are amazing, because I've practiced what I preach with my recruiting, I hire really great people and then I get out of their way. But getting out of their way is the hardest part, because we want to get in there because we have time, and it's like, oh my God, no, go find something else to do. And I know you're working on a million things, but that brings me to, what would a day in your life be like, can you walk me through what your life is like today?

Rohan: Yeah, so right now I'm living in Las Vegas, I typically wake up in the morning, my team for my cleaning business uses WhatsApp, so we're all in a WhatsApp group, my team is in Barbados and the United States and the Philippines. In that group chat I basically log on to see if there's any fires, any fires that are too big for my admin team to handle, something crazy, so I log on for that, it's typically nothing, and I figure out what's happening during the day, just get my finger on the pulse of what's going on for that particular day, but that takes about 20 minutes.

Vic: What time in the morning is that at?

Rohan: That's about 8:00 a.m. for me.

Vic: So before your cleaners go out. I might do the same.

Rohan: Yeah, absolutely, trying to get that out of the way. If it's a day where I have payroll I still do payroll, because I like to have my hands still in the cash, so I still do payroll, and that's it for the core business. Then I may start to think about, right now I'm thinking about expanding, how can we grow, more customer acquisition ideas, we have a VA that does outreach, so I would check with that VA to see if they've grown their list of property managers or whoever else they're trying to find, if there're any responses, what's happening there. Then in the afternoon I may work on some technical stuff, let's say I'm trying to add some additional pages to the website, do some design work, any SEO stuff that I'm doing.

Then probably by 2 or 3 p.m. I may be on some calls, maybe some Zoom calls, some coaching calls, and my day pretty much winds down about 6:00 p.m., and that's about it, but it's very flexible, a lot of this isn't super structured, I may skip the morning check in and check in the afternoon depending on what's happening, so I have a very flexible day.

Vic: Yeah, and I know every time I would jump into a meeting with you and me and Kevin and Jen, it would almost always be that I was returning from yoga and you were returning from the gym, we're here in the middle of the work day, which shows that flexibility. But you're working long days, actually I'm surprised, in all honesty I thought you would say a lot less time spent on it.

Rohan: Yeah, well, I feel like it fluctuates, because I can go months sometimes without working in the business, months and months, and then sometimes I'm like, you know what, there's a particular thing that I feel excited about now, a potential growth area, so some more effort. This is where I am right now, but I would not be surprised if in the second half of the summer I go two or three or four months without really doing anything intensive in the business.

Vic: Yeah, because you don't need to necessarily. And what you're very good at is the entrepreneurial part, right, that all makes sense to me, because you're good at the start, seeing the problem, finding the solution, moving forward with it. I know for me the mundane, day-to-day stuff in this business is mind-blowingly boring. And it's funny, you mentioned you were making $50,000 a month, and it's interesting that you mention that number, because that's the exact number.

We've formed a millionaire Mastermind, I know this isn't your jam, but the millionaire Mastermind is a group of people that all bill at least 50k a month, and we meet once a month, and we needed a marker, it was like, well, what revenue do people need to be at to join this group, so we chose 50k, it was a random number, and each of us had reached it. So it seems like that's a natural number for most of these businesses to be like, okay, now we're successful, is that fair to say?

Rohan: Yeah, I think that's fair to say, because at that point you're bringing home double digit thousands per month, which for most people is more than they'll ever bring home from a paycheck.

Vic: Yeah, wild, right. I have to remind myself of that, because there's days where you have hard days in this business and you have good days, but I have to remind myself, oh, I just made x amount of dollars, which is more than most people make in a day, or a week, or a month, whatever the number is. So out of all of the people you've coached, is there one or two that really stand out, I know for me as a former teacher there's always one or two students you're like, man, I'm never going to forget that kid.

Rohan: Yeah, so two came to mind. One is, I know Christina hasn't been on, but Christina Tegbe from Houston, she started a company called So Fresh Made, and she quit her consulting job, she was a consultant for one of those big four consulting firms, she quit as her cleaning service took off, and she built that up to a good 700 or 800k a year. Then she took that money and funneled it into building an e-commerce brand called 54 Thrones, she goes around Africa finding products, it's basically a beauty brand, and that brand took off, she was just on Shark Tank, she got a $250,000 investment on Shark Tank, she was on Oprah's Favorite Things, she expanded into Sephora and Nordstrom, and she's doing all these amazing things, but none of this would have happened if she didn't start with her cleaning business and have funding for her e-commerce brand. The other person that comes to mind is Shenika, she's amazing as well, but the thing about her that stands out to me is, when we first met she was living out of her mom's closet, that was her room, she didn't have a laptop, she had an iPad and a phone, so she essentially built her business on an iPad and her phone, and now she's probably at a six figure business, and she's branching into commercial building services, into government contracting, doing all these amazing things, but not that long ago she was still living in her mom's closet building her business on her little iPad.

Just to meet people like that. It makes it difficult sometimes when I meet other people that are in a much better situation and they make excuses, because I'm like, think about Shenika, and think about all these other people I know that started from literally nothing and are doing all these amazing things for themselves and for their families.

Vic: Yeah, and do you think part of that has to do with where you came from, going from Barbados, I know in the mindset class you talked about how there's a lot of people in this world that don't have electricity, that don't have hot water, and for you personally you went from your nine-to-five job, you talked about how you went to a coffee shop, you worked until whenever you needed to in order to build this business, you didn't just do it in 20 minutes a day, you were all in, do you think part of that has to do with being from Barbados and being new to the states?

Rohan: I think so, I really think so, because growing up, when I think about coming home from school and the lights weren't on, and this happens on a rolling basis in the Caribbean, where maybe on Thursdays and Fridays there's no electricity, and then maybe next Thursday and Friday there is, you don't know. I would do my homework by these lamps, I don't know if you've ever seen those lamps, it says God bless on the side, I'll try to find a picture of one, but it was a kerosene lamp, so you have kerosene and the wick comes out, you light it, that's how I did my homework, many days. So I knew that living in the United States gives you some additional opportunities I would not have otherwise had living in Barbados, you live in a country where most people have credit and debit cards, most people have discretionary income that they're able to spend on convenience, the median income is top five or six in the entire world, so there's all this additional opportunity. And then the internet came about, so instead of having to spend $50,000 to start a business you can start one with $200 or $100 or $50 sometimes, you can put up something on social media and start a company.

So with all that, I knew I could do something, and this could change not only my life, it'll change my family's life, because the money that I could make in the United States in one month would be years of income for my family back home, years. So completely motivated, I knew I had to go all in, it wasn't a get rich quick scheme, I would, like you said, leave work and work some more, wake up and work, go back to work and work, lunchtime work, and I did that until I was able to rescue myself from having a job, and I haven't had a job since, I've been able to work for myself now for more than a decade.

Vic: Yeah, that's amazing, and I always think it's interesting, because when we do these hot seat calls I get to know a lot of people, a lot of different versions of success, but the running theme has been that you have to have this internal thing, whether it's that you lost your job, or that your life blew up, or you're getting divorced, we are definitely seeing this theme of people that are like, I had to make this work, it's the people that are like, I have to do this, and that seems to be the rare thing. Do you find that not everybody succeeds, I guess is what I'm saying?

Rohan: Yeah, I agree, there's this extra thing there. I always use the gym analogy, I know it's overused, but you can take 100 people, bring them into a group training at the gym, give them the same nutrition plan, the same coaching, and there's going to be a distribution of success based on some of the things you just mentioned, like, am I determined, am I dedicated, do I have the mental fortitude to work on something for a long time without seeing results, knowing that results are around the corner. A lot of people are not able to do that because they expect immediate returns. Do I have the fortitude to be patient while still working and not seeing results immediately, do I have consistency, do I have this bigger why, why do I want to be successful, is it my family, is it my kid, is it trying to fashion an amazing life for myself, that bigger why, what's my real motivation, all these things have to be in place, and once you have them you'll see that distribution of success.

And I feel like some of those things are coachable, it's not things that you're born with, you can learn discipline, you can learn consistency, you can learn patience, and if you can learn all these things you can do whatever, beyond just entrepreneurship, you can go from cleaning business to e-commerce, from e-commerce to software, which is what I did, I didn't know anything about software but I built a seven figure software business, because once you gather these skills you can unleash yourself and go after almost anything you can fathom.

Vic: Yeah, I love that you brought that up, I could go on and on about this part, but I love it. The bottom line is these skills are teachable, you can learn them, and once you learn them you can apply them to multiple areas in your life. What do you do when somebody comes to you and says, yeah, I followed the post, but I found this other guy and he's telling me to do it this way, and I'm asking for selfish reasons because I've had this a number of times myself, and every time I'm like, so why are you listening to that guy, but you can't really say that, so what would you say?

Rohan: Yeah, I get that a lot too, it's kind of tough, because there are people that are really good at presenting themselves as an expert in the field, they may be better than you, they may be better than me, they don't have the years of success, or they haven't built a seven figure business like you have, they haven't done any of those things, but they're good at presenting themselves that way. All I try to do is ask, can this person show their business, have you seen that they've actually demonstrated success themselves beyond coaching, because you could be really good at coaching and have never done the actual thing that you're presenting yourself as an expert at. So I ask some of these questions to dig in, and at the end of the day people are going to make their own decisions. You have a fantastic track record in building a business very quickly to high revenue, most people don't have that, and a lot of these people that sell coaching, sell courses, don't have that either, they just have this expertise at looking really cool in their suit or their nice background, and there's not much you can do except keep on doing what you're doing, because I haven't been able to solve that myself, but it's a good question.

Vic: And I don't want to speak for you, but I don't know that we necessarily want to do lots of coaching, because that's a whole other thing. So let's talk about that, because the cleaning business is its own entrepreneurial place, I have other passions, you have other passions, and then there's this coaching industry, and Tony Robbins is all over this right now, the educational online, and we've taken it to YouTube, because life has changed, a lot of us go to YouTube to ask how to do things, I do it probably every day, how do I fix this broken garden hose, that's what I did today, I went to YouTube, somebody posted a video, thank you, went and fixed my garden hose, so this is how we're doing it now. But there is this whole coaching world where people make millions of dollars, is that something you really want to do, or are you more interested in the software side of things?

Rohan: Yeah, it's something I'm okay doing on the margins, but I'm more interested in building core companies that I can sell, or core companies that I can keep for a long time and grow and get distributions, those to me are more where my entrepreneurship lies. Because there is a component of coaching where you have to tell people, hey, I've crossed the $20 million mark, and you've got to tell people these things, or present your expertise, you're like, my expertise is based on, I've been doing this for 12 years and I've helped hundreds if not thousands of people build massive companies, and then there's all the skepticism that comes with that, people are cynics, people are like, yeah right, oh yeah sure you have a company doing over a million dollars a year, over $2 million a year, yeah okay. So there's that whole thing, and then you lose your energy to fight back against some of that and push back and be like, oh yeah, here's my screenshots, and after a while I'm like, I'm better off just building a software company or growing my own business or doing some other project versus having to convince people that they can actually become successful, so it's kind of tough, so I keep coaching on the margins.

Vic: Yeah, and you and Kevin have been doing the 30-day thing, approximately how many of these do you think you've done, I know you've done 27 days, you've done 29 days, you did 21 days with us, you did 30 days, approximately how many times do you think you guys have actually done that?

Rohan: We've done it at least a minimum of eight times, we always do Januaries, so that's the last eight years, and then we'll sprinkle in two or so additionally per year, so all added up I would say maybe 20 to 27 times.

Vic: Yeah, that's amazing, I just think about the number of lives you've impacted, and I know for us this is why we're doing this, because we know there's somebody out there who's going to watch this and go, oh, I can do that, resonates with me, I can absolutely create a cleaning business so that I can free up my time so that the really big ideas can either come to me or be executed upon, because oftentimes people have things they want to do that they can't because of their day jobs.

Rohan: No, and this is such an important point, because just remember that my day job was accounting and finance, I'm a chartered financial analyst, I worked in mortgage backed securities and fair value accounting, mutual fund accounting, that type of thing, and there was nothing about that expertise and experience that translated to building the cleaning company, nothing. So when people are like, well, this is what I do for a living, I'm like, okay, that's cool, it shows that you have enough discipline, it shows that you have the ability to learn, and that's what you need. Everything else is going to be a learning project where you begin, and if you don't know internet marketing, fine, you learn as you go, you don't know customer acquisition, fine, you learn as you go, online sales, SEO, followup, lead generation, if you don't know any of those things you can learn them systematically, so that by 12 months from now you have a business doing multiple six figures a year, just by learning each one of these things incrementally, and it has nothing to do with your prior experience. We have people that are nurses, engineers, lawyers that have quit their law firms, Elena was a lawyer, we have doctors, pilots, people in any field you can imagine, that have built successful businesses and gone on to change their lives and their family's lives.

Vic: Yeah, and I remember you guys telling us about a woman who was only billing maybe 200k a year, it wasn't a massive amount, but she was a single mom with a toddler, and I can't remember her name, but I remember you telling the story about how she didn't need a lot of money, she just needed enough that she could spend time with her toddler, a single mom not having to work three jobs, because every single mom I know has had that be their reality, two, three jobs, struggle, and for this single mom she could run her cleaning company, have her cleaners go out and work, and pay her own bills, just enough that she could take care of her kid at home, I mean, I don't know much better than that.

Rohan: It's fantastic, and she's home during the day, she's not paying for daycare, she's building a closer relationship with her kid, stuff like that is priceless.

Vic: Exactly. And just to finish off this mindset piece, I think the thing you said on the very first day, and it's in the YouTube channel on day one, the way you think today is not the same way you're going to think in a year or two years or three years if you can commit to this today. Jen and I can definitely tell you that the way we live our lives now compared to three years ago, and we're not driving a Lamborghini, we have not bought multiple houses, but we are managing to get ourselves out of some pretty amazing financial debts, which a lot of people have faced because of the pandemic and everything else in life, and bigger projects are coming our way, bigger things are coming our way, and we can actively see it, because we can go, oh, I've done hard things before, I've done things that I don't know how to do and figured it out before, and if that person can do it, then I can do it, so let's go. Three years ago I did not think that way, I thought, how am I going to pay my bills, I need a job, I need a job.

And, well, you don't quit your day job, guys, I'm not saying quit it and leave your job, but eventually you will.

Rohan: Yeah, and I really love what you said, those few words, I've done hard before, that is so powerful, and to your point, the opportunities that come up after you've gone through the process of building something with your own hands, those opportunities become clearer, now that you know that the limitations you otherwise thought you had, they're no longer there.

Vic: Yeah, that is fantastic, and it impacts your health, it impacts your bank account, obviously your relationships, your friendships, everything has changed, and for my entire life I would say things like, I'm going to meditate, never did it, and now it's like I have to meditate, because this is now the most powerful tool I have, this human brain, and adjusting how it sees things and realizing the limiting beliefs, because they're constant.

Rohan: Yeah, that could be an entire call, that one subject, eliminating limiting beliefs and having the whole world open up.

Vic: Yeah, that could be its own one hour call for sure, it's true, that'll probably be our next theme in the millionaire Mastermind, we choose a theme every month, but that'll probably be one of them coming up, because it's a great one, and it's the thread through everything. So what's next for you?

Rohan: I want to start this project to help businesses, so that's a small idea I'm playing around with right now, I want to continue to grow my cleaning business, I may be looking at expanding, but I'm going to see how I can find companies that have expanded and done it well, do some research and see who has done it well and use them as a bit of a road map to expand a little bit geographically, and then help Kevin with Convertlabs, those are the three main balls I have in the air right now.

Vic: Yeah, well the coolest thing about Convertlabs is the community aspect of it, we all know each other, all in this virtual way, all through the community on Convertlabs, and it's really powerful to see all these people all over the world doing this thing, and there's not that many, this is not a huge software company, it doesn't have $75 million in backing from some venture capitalists in San Francisco, it's Kevin and six people, and that's it, and then there's the rest of us who are actual users of the software that then share how we do stuff.

Rohan: No, absolutely, I love it, and I love the carrying on, the continuing on, to pass it on to someone else, it's a fantastic product, it works, and the community, with any product the community is where the vast amount of value is going to be.

Vic: Exactly, so yeah, I agree 100%. That's awesome, Rohan. I know you mentioned that you've passed the $2 million marker, what did you do that day when you logged into your Stripe and probably did the all-time view, right?

Rohan: Yes, so you know what I did, I made a post on Reddit, back to the homeland, that's where it all started, so I made a post on Reddit, just crossed the $20 million mark, and gave them a general update and a little bit of inspiration, I tagged some of the people that were around in the beginning, some of those people have bigger businesses than I do now, like Delano in Australia is doing fantastic, his company is bigger than mine now, which makes me feel amazing, people are like, oh well, do you care that he's bigger, and I'm like, do you know how happy I am, this man followed along something that I built and shared, and he's got a company doing millions and millions of dollars per year, I won't say how many, a lot. So I tagged some of those and we chatted on Reddit for a little bit, that was kind of how I spent the day, and then I did some stuff in Las Vegas.

Vic: You went and partied, come on, Las Vegas, you gotta embrace it a little bit, you gotta enjoy.

Rohan: Yeah, it was a pretty chill day, it was an awesome day, it was a really cool day for sure.

Vic: That's amazing. I know people are always thanking you online, but have you met many people in real life, in person?

Rohan: Yeah, so I had a couple meetups in Las Vegas, Elena and Mike flew in from New York City to hang out with me in Vegas, there's a bunch of people, I'll say in the entire community I've met about 25 people in the 10 year period.

Vic: Amazing, I would love to meet you guys in person, that would be awesome, so funny we haven't, you've changed our lives, we're now changing other people's lives, which is more important than anything, seeing each other in person is icing on the cake really.

Rohan: Yeah, we should do it, we have one massive reunion or something somewhere.

Vic: I think that, there's hundreds of people, that's just it, and I know Kevin's mentioned this before, the top cleaning companies in the United States, you can safely say that they've learned from you if they're not Molly Maid or Merry Maids, and straight up, name your city and we can look, and this is part of the reason I believed you guys, because I had my little spidey sense, what's the catch, what's the catch, and then you just start googling, and you'll see if they have an online booking form they probably learned from these guys.

Rohan: No, absolutely, it's been a pretty fantastic experience, and the people in the community have been really sharing, I think that's just been our ethos from the beginning, share and be open, if you share and be open, people will share and be open with you.

Vic: People, like Rohan is the main person, but I have to say this, how much I learned from the community, when we were on Skype, if somebody tried something and it worked they would post it in Skype and I'd be like, okay, I'm going to try that, then when we moved to Facebook it was the same thing that continued, so a lot of my success and the stuff I have done is not because of my brilliance, it's because the community came together and we made that the ethos, people help me and I help them.

Rohan: Yeah, that's it, and that's everything, right.

Vic: And we have the same business philosophy within our cleaning company, hey, you probably know better than I do, how do you do XYZ, and then they tell you, and then you listen, and then you apply the thing they said, and that's it, it's a pretty simple philosophy but it definitely works.

Rohan: Yeah, it feels good at the end of the day, which is nice.

Vic: Absolutely, nice to not hate your job. But I do want to add on that, for a lot of people, when you started your cleaning company you didn't have kids, right, correct, you didn't have toddlers running around, and there are a lot of people that do try to start these businesses while they're working full-time, they're probably on their computers full-time, it's so different now, I don't know how you feel but I definitely feel like I am on a screen from the moment I wake up until the moment I go to sleep, and I have to consciously turn everything off, put on Do Not Disturb, go to yoga so that I am in person for two hours with people, my eyes hurt just from being on screen. So I know there's a lot of people taking these things and learning these things, and when we say it was easy, it wasn't easy, none of us will say it's easy, and it's particularly hard when you're taking care of small beings, when you have other things in your life, when you're on screen all day, but doing something every day is better than trying to run a marathon with this business, and do you find that, Rohan, that people try to do everything in a weekend and they're like, it's not working?

Rohan: Yeah, yes, you're just going to burn out, really small incremental steps is how these businesses are built, just show up for yourself in a small way, take one step today, another step tomorrow, but by the end of the year you would be surprised at what you've built, and especially if you have a family, those things are going to provide additional challenges, but if you tell yourself that you'll just do this little bit, this little bit, a little bit over time, you're going to be helping your family, because you're going to be able to quit that job and free up a whole nine or 10 hours per day, just by doing this a little bit, a little bit, a little bit, so it ends up working out, but I know there's some additional challenges for sure, especially if you have young ones.

Vic: Yeah, that's what we found with everybody we talk to, where it's like, okay, you don't have to do everything today, you don't have to do everything this week, just do a little bit, and really find people that are looking for cleaners, find cleaners that are looking for clients, and don't be a dick, be nice, in the middle, that's it, that is now your new job, to find people looking for cleaners, however you need to find them, there's a million ways to find them, find people that are looking for clients, be nice, that is it.

Rohan: That could be the name of the YouTube channel if you wanted it to be, that could be the name of everything.

Vic: Well, we named it Cleaning Company Blueprint because we understand SEO.

Rohan: There you go, there you go.

Vic: And it is the blueprint, it's exactly accurate, so there we go. Well, thank you so much, Rohan, I say this to you all the time but I'll say it again, you've changed our lives.

Rohan: I appreciate that, thank you so much, and it's true, and we love being able to have an impact on other people too, and just keep paying it forward, that's all we're doing here, we're just going to keep paying it forward, and it works. I am amazed at what you've done in such a short period of time, how much you're able to distill this information in a way that people can learn it quickly, it's just really well laid out how you present information, I'm a little bit more scattered, but I see some of your stuff and I'm like, okay, makes perfect sense, you do a really fantastic job not only at the core business but at distilling information in a really cool way, so I want to give you that.

Vic: I feel like I have severe ADHD and it's always a big jumbled mess.

Rohan: That means a lot.

Vic: Always, really, I do, it's a huge mess, but that's great. Yeah, we're going to do a video probably in the next month or two where I'll dive in deep on recruiting again, because we find the pain points are always SEO, because everybody wants to understand it and do it quickly, and it's not a quick game, it's a long game and it changes constantly, and I know Daniel did a workshop on Friday on that, and then I'm doing a workshop on hiring and the pain points around hiring, because that also changes constantly, but the fundamentals are still the same.

Rohan: Is it in the Mastermind?

Vic: Well, we also have the Mastermind, but then we've just been offering workshops in the community. I don't know how you typically end these.

Rohan: That's it, oh, we're done, we said our thanks and then Jen will wrap it up.

Vic: Okay, awesome, she figures it out. And you're welcome, Rohan, I just want to thank you, learning so much more than expected.

Rohan: Awesome, appreciate it, man, we definitely got to connect again soon, I'll check the schedule and see when I could be on one of those, either one of the mindset groups or one of the workshops, something coming up soon.

Vic: Yeah, if you have, I mean we can obviously do a workshop with you, that's easy, it's just a deeper dive, so if you have anything you want to do, the numbers stuff, we're always sharing our spreadsheet, and we are not accountants, so I'd be interested in an actual accounting spreadsheet.

Rohan: Sort of, might be a little boring though.

Vic: Boring, no, off to the accountant, I'll think of something, I'll let you know for sure.

Rohan: Perfect.

Vic: Thank you, Rohan, and thank you everybody for being here, we will see you, like that, all right.