How Stephan's Cleaning Business Survived Two Google Suspensions

Vic: I'm Victoria, and we have Stephan here today from South Africa. Stephan has a really interesting story, because he's not actually in the city his cleaning company is in, nor is he even in the country. So Stephan, in South Africa, runs a cleaning company in Tennessee. Stephan, tell us how you ended up discovering you could run a cleaning company from a totally different country.

Stephan: Hey, Vic. It started out like most people, discovering Rohan's post, but I discovered it like 12 years ago and ignored it. The technology and tech weren't as user-friendly back then. I saw Rohan and actually had some Reddit chats with him, then went on and started another business, also inspired by Rohan, ran that for a few years, got stuck in a corporate job, and then eventually went back, like, what happened to Rohan, I remember Maids in Black, is that still alive?

At some point last year, early in the year, he made another follow-up Reddit post on his subreddit, still running and still going. Tools and tech sort of enabled me to get this going. He also pointed to the 21-day YouTube course held in January, and I started binging that and catching up on what I needed to know.

Vic: For anybody watching who's like, who's Rohan? Rohan Gilkes wrote a post on Reddit over 10 years ago, 12-some-odd years ago, about how to start a cleaning company remotely and build it to a million dollars or beyond. That went viral, you can still find it today, loads of people still follow it, and then eventually Rohan and Kevin invited us to start this YouTube channel. So 12 years ago you're sitting down like, this is really cool, how's this guy doing this, and then flash forward, 2024, you decide to start your cleaning company.

Is that right?

Stephan: Yes, last year.

Vic: And what was your career? You said you started another business and then took a corporate job.

Stephan: I basically finished university and got to start my formal work, and I thought, this entrepreneurship stuff is actually not growing, so I just started working. I'm in data analytics, that's been my entire career, formally in business intelligence, a lot of data-driven stuff. One aspect is the side hustle could be run after hours, so time zone differences work quite well for me. In summertime, nine to four o'clock in the afternoon there works almost opposite hours for me, it's like four o'clock my time till nine or ten PM my time.

Vic: So you work your day job, and then four o'clock hits your time, and that's 9 AM in Tennessee, so you can answer the phone for your side hustle.

Stephan: No interruptions, no taking phone calls during the work day, so that works quite well.

Vic: That's a really good point, because that is one of the number one issues for people with job jobs. We have people in our community who are in healthcare, for example, and they can't drop the patient and be like, hang on, I'm getting a booking for a cleaning. It's really challenging, especially when it comes to growth. They can get it going and do maybe a couple grand, but they can't really grow until they get their systems in place or leverage AI.

In your case, leveraging the time zone difference is really smart. With your data analysis, is that why you chose Tennessee?

Stephan: Sort of. I'm specifically in the Tri-Cities, three small cities close to each other, collectively like 200,000 people, within 30 minutes of each other. The other advantage, I have a cousin who went to study in Tennessee close by, and I knew I might need someone to help me out on the ground at points in time. He's a student there and sometimes helps out with cleaning, or Google, or something else.

Vic: So you didn't just choose a random location, you knew somebody there. Walk us through it from the beginning, because we're all about local. Jen and I with our company, Oak Bay Clean, we live in Oak Bay, so it's a lot easier when it comes to Google going, hey, these guys are legit, they're there, they can tell from our phones, our computers, our iPad, everywhere we are, Google knows where we are. In your case, being in South Africa, I know that's your number one hurdle.

Even just registering the company, I know nothing about this, and we have an audience on YouTube that follows us from other countries. I imagine that's why you made the decision, so you can convert US dollars to Rand, but also how do you set up a company? I don't think anybody can do this as easily in Canada where I am. You could do it from South Africa in the States.

So help us understand how.

Stephan: As a non-US resident, it's quite easy to register an LLC in the States. You go through the same companies you'd follow to register. The only difference is when I tried to get my EIN number from the IRS, I had to wait a long time for that. As a non-resident, you have to pick up the phone and phone them and follow up every week, and by month two they find, right, your thing is registered, and now you have an identification number for your company.

That's the magic thing, once you have that you can do everything else. So that takes about two months to get.

Vic: But you already waited 12 years, so what's two months? Does that mean you pay taxes in the States?

Stephan: Don't quote me, I'm not a tax expert, but local, state taxes, yes, not federal taxes.

Vic: And that's what the EIN number is, it's for the IRS to say this is a company allowed to operate in the United States. You need it to register your Stripe account, your bank accounts, all of that. That's the magic number. Once you have that, then you can build a Yelp page.

Stephan: Exactly. Between OpenPhone as a local number, having a Yelp page, and the other bit that helped me, previously in South Africa I've had a good Google profile. So my Google profile's been able to excel, a lot of local reviews, international reviews, whenever I traveled I've reviewed stuff across the world. That helps get your local guide levels up, it builds up quite a lot of authority.

I have about two or three of these accounts of mine that are good authority. I think that's one of the traps for people starting out, they create a fresh Google account, a fresh email, and now they try to create a Google Business page, and then they get suspended immediately, because you've got no trust, no history, and Google knows where you are and what you're doing, and they're like, okay, whatever, you're trying something, you're probably going to shut it down tomorrow.

Vic: Which to be fair happens a lot. We've seen that where people start something and think, oh, this is going to be easy, and then they hit roadblocks and realize, like anything in life, there are ups and downs to this business. Google knows that, and a lot of people start these companies and then shut down. So it is very difficult to get a Google page listed these days.

This brings me to what you shared in our community. I'm going to share my screen, because I think it will really help people to see your journey. For anybody who doesn't know what I'm talking about, we use Convertlabs, which is the software that helps us with our businesses, our booking software, our website, our scheduling for the cleaners, everything, but it also includes a community, free to join once you sign up for Convertlabs, and this is where Stephan shared his wins. I love the transparency, and this is why I reached out to you, Stephan, to jump in a hot seat call, because you talked about the legal hurdles, building trust, and then on Google Business you mentioned you finally got it verified, then suspended twice.

One of the things I've seen you do over the last year is share a lot with people. People in the community will post, hey, I'm struggling with my Google Business, and you often jump in and help them. Walk us through what happens when you get shut down by Google, your business essentially becomes invisible in Tennessee. What did you do?

Stephan: Starting out, I knew the hurdles Google would bring, so how I listed my business was as an outsider, I added a missing business to the map, not immediately saying this is my business. You add the details, add the website, and it's important from that point on to make sure your website's already being picked up by Google, you've done your submissions to search console, a few directories, a Yelp, so there's actually some record. Then you add it as a missing business on Google and wait for it to mature a little. You get reviews on the unverified business, so it's there and you can start getting reviews on it, and you grow it from there.

Once you're ready to claim it, you go through the business verification, and if you're lucky, my first time went through and I got email verification, so easy, just had to do the code, send it back, done. Another critical bit is the Google Local Services Ads, because I feel 90% of all the cleaning companies, our community's cleaning companies, use service ads to get new business. For that, I did actually get someone local in Tennessee to help me out with it, because the Google verification process is not set up for a foreigner to apply.

Vic: Did they make that person do a video with their phone showing this is where the location is?

Stephan: No, we're just building, just submit the documents, do the normal things. I added them to the verified business profile, and that's relatively simple. So it is possible, but even if I would do it again, I'd still do it in an area where I might have someone to help out, or maybe go the paid route, get someone to help you.

Vic: Bring in a business partner that's actually a genuine partner or a manager of your business who lives locally.

Stephan: Exactly. And then somewhere around April this year, it got suspended again.

Vic: Did they say why?

Stephan: No reason. It's always just this generic following the community guidelines. You engage with a few Google product help experts on the Google Business support forum, share all your documents, and they go through it, okay, what might be the reason, maybe it's a naming convention, but Google doesn't really let you know what the problem is. They don't want to spend that effort to tell you exactly what the issue is.

Vic: And it's all bots now anyway, it's not a human being making that decision. It's not a business-generating thing for them, so they just manage and maintain it.

Stephan: Eventually I had to do the whole process again. Because two weeks after that, your Local Services Ads shut down as well. So your leads stop, because not only are you not on Google for a general search, you also aren't doing pay per lead, which is actually how Google makes a lot of money off local businesses. Then they also remove your phone number from the Google listing, so people can just go to your website and contact you from there.

Then I relaxed and calmed down around the process. I'm not financially independent from this business yet, so I can just let it grow slowly. Getting the SEO route is definitely the long-term sustainable route, getting yourself in the listings without needing to pay for ads. Those investments pay off a lot more, spend the money initially on SEO stuff and local backlinks, and those keep on paying back.

If you run ads, as soon as you switch them off, they stop earning you money.

Vic: So you're focused on organic long-term growth, and you still have customers, you have cleaners, it's not dead, it's still going. Are they mostly recurring clients, so that's how you cover your costs while you're in this Google limbo?

Stephan: Yes, I've got a few recurring clients, a few biweekly and monthly clients, and then the moving cleans still come in. People still find the website, submit, and continue from there. That gave me confidence that you actually don't need it. It will supercharge your business to have it, but you can still survive and continue to grow. There are other people who grow from Facebook pages and Yellow Pages without any Google pages.

Vic: There's a new cleaning company in our neighborhood that just popped up, they've got their car wrapped and they're being nominated for local awards, and I can see they're hustling, they haven't found this channel, so they don't know they're wasting money on things they don't need to spend money on, but they're still out there doing it. The old-school methods still work, it's just time and patience. Can we talk a little about what it means to you being in South Africa and the exchange rate? Sorry, that's my OpenPhone going, I'm going to turn on voicemail.

You're seeing it live, people. I'll do a little segue. Jen and I are now billing 92K this month, Canadian, I don't know what that is in US, but whatever. This entire month I've stopped answering the phone, and it's been glorious, because I'm just tired of it, it's July, it's summer, we're having our best month ever, and I'm just like, if they can't book online, I probably don't want to talk to them.

That's just patience. We haven't done anything different than what we coach on this channel. The SEO stuff for Jen has really kicked in. She met Daniel on this channel less than a year ago, he taught her what to do, anybody watching can go back and find that video, and she applied everything he said.

We didn't hire an SEO expert, we're now number one in our city, we just did what Daniel told us to do. So let's talk exchange rate. A hundred dollars US, what does that mean for you in Rand, and what does that buy you? For those of us who aren't there, what does it mean for cost of living?

Stephan: To give you an idea, my target is to get to $10,000 a month in revenue and take home 4,000. That is the equivalent of earning, the calculations I did, about $150,000 in the US a year.

Vic: Oh my God, you're going to be so rich, that's great. And right now, how much are you billing monthly?

Stephan: Around 3,000, going just above and below every month. For this year, basically 12,000 or so.

Vic: So not much, but you can see the trajectory. Has it gone, I mean, you got suspended twice, so that's hard, because if you picture this as your bar chart, yours probably went flat and then up and then flat.

Stephan: On the community I share it, it started, I started up in January again, ads running, can easily do a few thousand in a month, and then once the Local Services Ads drop, especially in the beginning, that's such a big portion of your new business. I've got it right here if you're okay with me sharing it.

Vic: Yeah, because you're so transparent with your numbers, it's so great. So you started May 2024, created a website and applied for your LLC, and then it took the whole summer, so May, then September, you've got your first booking, 550 in revenue, that's probably a move-in, move-out.

Stephan: Yes. I didn't have Google Local Services Ads back then, so we ran Google search ads. I spent quite a lot on different ad platforms, testing what would work, Google search ads, Local Services Ads, Facebook, LSA ads, none of it really gained a lot of traction, but if there was a bonus I'd claim it and continue. Yelp got me three times with their we'll give you $300 if you spend $300, and I kept getting suckered by it.

Vic: We found the same thing, we didn't make any money off it. There's one member in our community who is crushing it on Yelp, so for anybody watching, whenever we say this didn't work for me, you really have to test it for yourself, because in your local area with your messaging, you just don't know until you test it. Collectively, I think we'll all agree that Google Local Services is the best of all of them, except if you're in a location where they're charging you $80 a lead, because there are some very competitive locations like New York City. So then you're closed for the holiday, you've got Local Services Ads activated, and then boom, 2000.

That's a big jump, especially for South Africa, that's real money now.

Stephan: Exactly. And then in March it went well, and in early April I got to spend it again, and then sort of stagnant, and like I said, I relaxed around it. You feel like the Local Services Ads is a crutch eventually, you feel like you can't breathe without it, so actually letting go of it and continuing by myself was quite a relief, and confidence that the system in the long term will work, just continue with it.

Vic: That's exactly it, these are all systems, and it's long term. You're going to be at 10K by next year for sure. I can't wait till you reach 20 and 30, because there's no reason you won't. Google is still relevant with AI right now, but things are changing really fast in terms of Google having the authority we've all relied on for so long, so we'll see where we're at in a year.

I want to show this map. Your business is over here, and I imagine the number ones, it's actually located in the center, but it ranks for all of those areas. This is your search engine optimization work, making sure you're getting mentioned locally by local businesses, and the surrounding areas you're not doing so hot, but that's probably fine, you don't necessarily want those areas, because your cleaners only want to travel here.

Stephan: The extra motivation I got over the holiday season is the number one cleaning company posted their year-end review in early January and basically said they made, for 2024, 1.2 million dollars in revenue, and they're killing it, they've got 400 reviews, so they're far ahead of everyone. But that was extra motivation, knowing it's fine, the market is there, people are paying for it, it's just that the competition is there as well. The fact that I'm actually getting places where I'm ranking shows that they've stopped doing what they're supposed to do to keep growing their business.

Vic: Isn't that wild? That happens to everyone. I'm doing it, I'm getting lazy, I don't answer the phone anymore. When we coach here on Cleaning Company Blueprint, if you want to be competitive with other cleaning companies, the number one thing you need to do is answer the phone, because this is what happens, we stop answering the phone.

So that one with 400 reviews, here's the other thing that happens, because you're showing up organically, people who have already been with that cleaning company are going to start calling the new guys. This happened to us our first year, we'd get people saying, I've been with the same cleaning company for six years, my cleaner just left, they sent me a new cleaner, I'm not as in love with them, so I thought this was an opportunity to try someone different. That's going to happen to you as well, and that's where you'll get your good recurring clients from.

Stephan: It happens. In the community, you go around pricing, and I think stick to your price, be consistent, and I'm fairly similar in price to the number one company. So just continue with it.

Vic: And then imagine your life in a year or two, you'll be able to quit your day job. Is that the goal?

Stephan: The ultimate goal is total time freedom, eventually. But I'm not in a rush to get there, and that takes a lot of pressure off the cleaning business and the immediate need to supply. I'd really tell aspiring owners, if you have that luxury, do it in the slow, steady way, build out the foundations. Early on I had a chat with Tommy from the community, and similar, I got that it's like, not too worried about growing a major business immediately, just pull it out naturally.

Vic: It's funny, when you said that comment I was like, oh, that sounds so much like Tommy. For anybody watching, we have a hot seat call with Tommy somewhere in the channel. He also has a good day job, he doesn't hate his job, he doesn't need to make a lot of money tomorrow, he built this as a side hustle, very similar to Stephan, and doesn't want it to take over his life. He's steady, and he's also not taking a lot of clients he doesn't want to take, he sees those little red flags.

For those of us when we first started, honey, you've got cleaners saying, hey, I need more work, and you feel like, oh my God, I have to help feed their kids, I better take this terrible job, and you can choose not to, you can say, actually, we're not the right company for you. For people with day jobs, that's a really great thing to do, because you don't have space in your life for that extra stress.

Stephan: Exactly. It just simplifies. The long-term rewards of pulling out a website and a lot of good backlinks and SEO, it rewards in the long term, I really can't stress that enough. That's my latest aha moment.

Vic: Do you think you're going to open up another cleaning company in the States, or try in another country?

Stephan: Definitely. I was thinking about asking on the community, seeing where I can get connections locally, maybe partnering with people somewhere, building out. I think you guys set the example on other services too. I'm still figuring out the right playbook with the website, because your original website builds such strong trust and brand around it that I'm not sure if I want to leverage it, or maybe I'll just do it for a test and see where it ranks in six months.

Vic: There are so many locations in the US that are these smaller locations like what you've chosen, where there's only 200,000 people. You do have some pretty strong competition with one company having 400 reviews. You could choose another location with around the same population, 200k, but nobody with 400 reviews, and I know for a fact there are loads of them out there. You don't have to have the same branding, because it's not a national brand and probably never will be.

You could use our formula of the local geography plus the keyword. Oak Bay Clean, Oak Bay is a small part of a bigger city, the posh part, so you could use the exact same formula in some small city that just doesn't have this yet, and it makes it easier, because nobody's got online booking in those areas.

Stephan: It's a year later since I started originally, and it's actually quite an easy test to do, it almost costs nothing to have a website up and running for 12 months, and you build that authority out.

Vic: Another good angle, we have a couple of nurses who live in two different cities and found each other through the YouTube channel and the community, and now they're running a business together, they try to have different shifts so when one's working the other can be on the phone. For you, having access to the community, you'd be able to say, hey, does anybody already have a business they're looking at franchising, and then you've got that local authority, copy, paste, repeat. I just think it's so cool that you're doing it from South Africa, and that 10 grand is 150.

Stephan: It's a different world in terms of value of money. Every year is a lot more expensive in the US, so it's sort of bringing it out. There are a lot of benefits, tax benefits as well.

Vic: Let's talk about things that are difficult. We've covered the Google thing, but what else has been difficult, like recruiting cleaners? Is there any cultural stuff where you're like, whoa, Americans are weird, or they think that of you?

Stephan: The cleaner bit. Getting into the job market of cleaners, I could not understand how many people apply for jobs and go through interview processes and don't even show up for test cleans. Coming from a country that's hardworking, where people show up and work hard for a lot less, that was a huge cultural difference. You're dealing with a mix, parents, people with kids, it's astounding.

People say they want a job, they apply, they pass the background check, and then they don't pick up, or they don't show up to their first job, and that's most frustrating. But once you get great cleaners and build out that network, I've been using my cleaner network to build it out further, as soon as they know someone they can trust, they refer them for jobs, which saved me on all the interviews and recruiting.

Vic: We started giving cleaners a $100 bonus if they send us one of their friends who's a great cleaner. They have to have done 10 cleans with us, and then we pay out the $100 bonus. We haven't actually gotten any great cleaners from it yet, but I like that concept, because otherwise I'd be giving that money to Indeed, so I'd rather give it to the cleaner.

Stephan: Other things, the marketing side, you tend to overcomplicate it. Like you said earlier, just go and test it, put $200 in every channel and see what it does for you, and eventually you'll see one that works. Early on, that gets you going, gets you out the door, builds your trust in the model. And yes, it was quite different to adjust to the cultural aspects.

Tennessee is quite different in its stances, so it's interesting to chat when you get old guys phoning you and complaining about things, and you just adjust with it, not very appropriate, but it's part of the culture in the area.

Vic: Excuse my ignorance, this is how Canadian I am, do they have a strong southern accent in Tennessee?

Stephan: They do have some, quite an accent, especially the elders, once you get to the 50, 60 year olds who still book. But as a South African, my accent, I get a lot of questions, like, okay, where are you from, Australia or the UK?

Vic: Do you tell them, are you transparent, do you say I'm in South Africa, or do you make it seem like you're there?

Stephan: I just say I'm South African. I didn't say I'm not there, I just alluded to it. But they appreciate it, and getting to understand the actual geographical area you're working with, so you can have these conversations, is quite important. It's up the road there, it's this, it's there, getting an idea of the local area is quite important.

Vic: So you have Google open beside you and you're literally all the time, Google, Zillow, okay, this is there. I love it so much. I just think it's so funny that you chose Tennessee, out of all locations in the US, anyone else would have been like, I'm going for New York City or Los Angeles, and you're like, okay, I'm going for 200,000 people where I have a cousin, and I'm going to learn it as I go.

Stephan: The model sort of stipulates, you go through the course, don't go for two big cities or too much competition, and it's like, okay, that works, it's as good as any. I'd say don't do it in the beginning, but once you know what you're doing, go for it.

Vic: My big thing with a place like New York City, newbies who haven't found this channel or haven't done enough research, they'll try to do all of New York City, and I'm always like, what are you doing, how many people live there, some ridiculous millions. For our model, you only need about a hundred recurring clients to bring in about a half a million a year. So if you're following our pricing, that's around a half a million dollars, whatever your currency is, so why would you go after millions when you only need a hundred? Go for one small part, then look at the competition and go, can I crush it in this area?

Stephan: And as we mentioned, actual advertising costs and getting off the ground, you're trying to outcompete a company that's already spending lots of money in those high-density areas, spending so much on SEO services, which frankly are free if you just do it yourself. You just have to be patient.

Vic: And it's boring. It's not sexy, and that's why nobody does it, but once you figure it out, it's like, oh, okay, this is just consistent effort every day over time. That's the magic formula, folks.

Stephan: It's actually really simple. The irony, I do some blog posts trying to attract customers in their interests, like for local dog groomers, and some people actually confuse me with a cleaning company for dogs, so I'm getting local traffic but not exactly how I intended. It's awareness anyway, so I'll keep testing out these things.

Vic: I'll tell you what I would do, two things. Number one, we did the exact same thing, we talked about laundry services and it was our mistake. On our website we offer laundry for 25 bucks a load, it's an add-on to regular house cleaning, and Google somehow got into its head that we're a dry cleaner. So we were showing up number one organically as the dry cleaner in our city, hey, can you wash my curtains, and it took us so long to undo that damage.

We still offer the laundry service, but somehow Google has figured out we're residential house cleaning primarily, 5% commercial. The second thing, this is what I would do if I were starting today. Do you use AI? You must, you're a data guy.

Stephan: Yes.

Vic: So I would do deep research on ChatGPT, and I would ask it to find out what people are talking about in your geographic location on forums like Facebook and Reddit, specifically about cleaning services for their home, and give me direct quotes, don't modify the quotes. Once the deep research comes back in like 10 minutes, it'll tell you exactly what people are talking about. Then I would write, again using ChatGPT, but a customized one for my business that knows my language, and write the blog post speaking directly to those pain points. Then you have much better quality blog post writing, talking specifically to their pain points and the transformation you offer.

That would be an effective use of your limited time. I'm a big fan of AI right now.

Stephan: The time spent on this business, effectively per week, answering and texting and scheduling teams, is probably like two hours a week.

Vic: That's so great, that's nothing.

Stephan: You pick up the phone, off to work, pick up the kids, get a text reply. It's not really intensive.

Vic: Ash and Adam, who I did a hot seat call with here, talked about how, I asked them how many hours a week are you working, and they're like, well, all the time, but from the golf course. That's exactly it, you're always on, you've always got your phone on you. I'll go sailing and have my phone, I might not answer because of the wind, but I'll say, hey, I'm out of cell service right now, can I just text you? That's me working.

It's a very different life.

Stephan: It is very different, so I'm quite relaxed, just let it go and keep nurturing it, let it grow, now just feed it.

Vic: Well, congratulations, I'm so excited for you. I want to open it up to the community, if anybody here has any questions, throw it in the chat. Do you have any questions for me?

Stephan: I'm obviously limited around actually doing in-person things because I'm out of state. What would you do differently in terms of target, would you just keep targeting residential, seeing that commercial actually requires a lot of in-person relationships as well?

Vic: It's actually funny, commercial, and I'm going to assume this is the same in the States and Canada, it's almost all done on the phone. There are a lot of cleaning companies that will outsource the site visit, they're just cold calling, cold emailing, and then they'll book a site visit and call a local cleaning company and say, hey, we'll pay you 50 bucks to go do this site visit and report back. We did that our first year for one company, and then they didn't pay the bills, they were super shady, I could tell it was a virtual assistant overseas, and I was like, I'll do this better locally. If I want to tackle commercial, I'll do it on my own.

Sorry, now I have a cleaner emergency, one second. It's inevitable that it'll happen while I'm live. Some cleaner drama. So with the commercial thing, I've done our own site visits in person. I actually prefer residential in the long run over commercial, and the reason is simple, residential pays immediately, and we don't have to wait for 30-day terms, we pay our cleaners same day.

We're very proud of our cleaners and we retain them longer than most cleaning companies in town, so we don't have a high turnover, and the industry has a very high turnover. That's because we're residential and we pay really high, 60% of every job goes directly to the cleaners, which works out to about $45 an hour on average, and the going rate in our city is about 22 for other cleaning companies, so we're paying double. Now they're self-employed, they have to pay their own taxes, provide their own supplies, choose which clients they work with, genuinely self-employed independent contractor model. If I went commercial, I'd be hiring people who aren't independent contractors, because it's a full-time commercial gig, Monday to Friday at the airport for example, and then we have to provide the supplies, deal with health insurance, higher taxes for both them and us, and the fact that they won't pay for 30 days after I've invoiced, which is 60 days out.

I don't like that model. If commercial started paying with Visa, Mastercard, Amex, then I'd be fine with it. We have one client right now we're invoicing, about 20K a month, and it kills us every month, we know it's coming, but it's stressful, because that's a lot of money, and if they go bankrupt we're out 20k. They're not going to go bankrupt, it's a major tech company and it's one of their founders, we do the house cleaning for their second home.

So it doesn't matter that I'm local, not at all, I did this from Chile for a month and my clients and cleaners had no idea I was abroad, time zones were really similar. I would still stay with residential, it's just easier for hiring, easier to pay people, a lot less paperwork. I'm not into cold calling, I'm into solving simple problems that people have locally. Having to cold call and convince someone to be on a contract for two years, that sounds like work, and those two years are relatively easy compared to dealing with a homeowner complaining about the vacuum attachment the cleaner used.

That's what I had yesterday, I'm like, really, you have time to care about what vacuum attachment they're using? It's annoying, but it's nothing, my ChatGPT helps me write the response so I emotionally don't care in the same way.

Stephan: Get the voice agent up and running for that bit.

Vic: I can't wait. Have you tried using that yet?

Stephan: Not for voice yet. A response for OpenPhone, my own version, getting that up and running. My latest complaint was literally a lady phoning in, a first-time cleaning, so slightly a deep clean, and we spent, small apartment, 700 square feet, quickly ran through it on a Saturday, two hours, and she's like, why did you guys only spend two hours? I'm like, but the job is done, right, and are you satisfied?

Yes, everything is perfect. But she couldn't grapple the fact that this is a package, like, no, you can't pay a cleaner $70 an hour, that's impossible, I don't want to pay that. But you did pay it and you are happy with the job.

Vic: Can I ask you, approximately how old was that person?

Stephan: Probably 40, 50.

Vic: Interesting, Gen X, usually that's a boomer complaint we find. We get that a lot. In the beginning we don't anymore, because I mostly have a way of filtering those people out and explaining package or hourly. So the minute they complain about time, I say, oh, so if time is more important to you, I'm happy to change it, it's a minimum three hours and it's $75 an hour, and then they do the math and realize they're going to pay more, because we've intentionally made it more.

And the second thing I do, I don't tell them this, but I send them the slowest cleaners we have, they don't care because they're getting 60%, so they're getting 45 an hour, so that cleaner is actually doing really well on hourly, and I'm like, you can chat with them, have tea with them, I don't care, use that time however you need to, because this person cares more about time. It's typically a generational thing, because they're used to thinking, and to be fair, all the cleaning companies in their city have trained them to think time is more important than quality. We do quality, we hire more experienced cleaners who work at the pace they like, and the more experience they have, the faster they are. They're also just typically not your ideal clientele, and once you reach your SEO point where you're getting your ideal clientele, they genuinely don't care about time, they only care about quality.

If anything, they want them faster because they're working from home running their companies, like, get out of my house.

Stephan: It's definitely part of it, you get to learn a lot about people. Initially I almost forgot about it, I had that anxiety answering the phone, I almost didn't want to chat in person, so I forced everything to text, but you quickly get over that as well.

Vic: We had somebody post recently in the community about being an introvert and asking for advice, how do you overcome this anxiety about answering the phone, and then you realize it is just time. You just have to spend more time talking to people, and some people are crazy, but the majority of people are great, and you're solving a genuine problem they have, which is they need a cleaner who's going to show up and get the job done. It's a really simple problem, so it doesn't have to be rocket science.

Stephan: Exactly, there's not really some magic formula that's going to unlock everything, it's just such a simple formula that you need to reapply, especially when you're used to actually hard jobs. With data analysis you're dealing with this whole other world.

Vic: For me as a former school teacher, I can remind myself, nobody's going to die, I'm not causing long-term childhood trauma to these people, so I don't lose sleep over it. I used to my first year, but now I sleep like a baby, it's so easy, because frankly we compare our bills, which helps.

Stephan: You get those responses to reviews and you're shocked for a moment, like, I can't believe this person said this, and it's like, yeah, whatever.

Vic: I love my one star reviews just as much as I love our five star reviews, it all works for getting eyeballs to our business, that's all that matters. All right, well thank you so much for your time. I appreciate you and all of your support in the community. You have actually helped so many people who have struggled with this Google thing, so I really want to thank you for that, because I've been able to keep saying to people, go talk to Stephan, if he can do it in South Africa, you can do it in the US, and so many of them have been so grateful.

Stephan: I'm happy to help. Send them my way and find me on the community, I'll help out where I can.

Vic: What we should do is ask them all to write you reviews to help you rank higher on your own Google. I'll put a plug into the community saying, hey guys, this guy helps a lot, how about we all review.

Stephan: I've got a second location where I'm tracking that now, harvesting my reviews on another unverified one.

Vic: Send that my way and I'll do what I can from Canada. I don't know how helpful it is when we're in different geographic locations, I find Google usually doesn't publish them, but you never know.

Stephan: Might as well try.

Vic: All right, well thank you so much, and thank you to the live audience for being here. Anyone else watching this not live, please do leave us a comment, I'm sure Stephan will check it.

Stephan: I'll definitely check it.

Vic: And we do write the responses ourselves, so we'll see you in the community. Bye bye.