I'll never forget a coaching call I did with a cleaning company owner doing $400k in revenue. I was an optimized solo cleaner and new in coaching. My view of the cleaning business landscapte was very narrow and I had a bit of pride to contend with. Here's the scenario. The co-owners, a husband and wife team, were both working 6 days per week in this $400k revenue company. They weren't cleaning, but lived in their office managing the business. That was foreign to me. Then I heard this part. "Ken, we are profiting $35,000 per year for the family." I clarified by asking how much owner's compensation they pulled. I was assuming they had a salary of $35k and then kept the bottom line profit as well. "$35,000 is our everything." I was floored. How could this possibly be? I responded with snark. "I'm a solo cleaner with 1/6 of your revenue. I work 1/3 as much as you and keep almost double what you do. Something is badly off with the math at your company." I was sharing truth and they knew it. Nevertheless, they didn't like my answer and we never talked again. In "A Buffalo Charges the Storm with Debbie Sardone", Debbie gives this a name. It's called the "Valley of Despair". I did not realize such a valley existed in my narrow view of cleaning business growth curves. I had read the "E-Myth Revisted" and "Clockwork", which are 2 amazing books on developing business systems to scale your company. Yet, I didn't know these valleys existed until an expert series I facilitated on my Smart Cleaning Tribe called "The 7-Figure Series". I interviewed 4 recent 7-figure cleaning business owners in 2021 with questions from the Tribe with the goal of deconstructing the million dollar cleaning company. Each of these experts have allowed me to share snippets of their calls on my podcast. Here are the episodes:  

Part 1 with Kevin Smith - "It's Grace for a Reason with Kevin Smith"

Part 2 with Juan Chaparro - "Million Dollar Milestones with Juan Chaparro"

Part 3 with Josh Melton - "The Cleaning Road to Nineveh with Josh Melton"

Part 4 with Molly Moran - "4 Scaling Struggles to 2 Million with Molly Moran"

This was totally unplanned, but it turns out that 3 of my 4 experts with new 7-figure businesses are all Cleaning Business Fundamentals students with Debbie Sardone. The 4th is my personal commercial cleaning coach, Josh Melton.  

I studied these 4 calls along with the wisdom I've collected from Josh Melton, Debbie Sardone, Ricky Regalado, Crystal Hamm, and others I've been fortunate to study along the way. I don't have these numbers down, nor is this an exact road map. However, I have noticed that the path to 7-figures and beyond is filled with many dead zones aka "Valleys of Despair" and sweet spots. Why do we start a cleaning company? Most of say that we want more time and money.  We want more freedom in our lives to make the choices we want to make when we want to make them. I have noticed many $2 million plus company owners living large in income and time to pursue their passions outside of cleaning. Their business becomes so large and systemitized that they are no longer needed. Many in our industry call this an absentee business. These cleaning company owners ha