What happens to your cleaning business when your key employee goes on vacation for a week or two? For a lot of owners, things break. That's why in this episode, Stephanie shares how Serene Clean is preparing for office manager April's upcoming three-week absence, a situation that would create total chaos for a lot of businesses. Stephanie talks about the documentation gaps that April's prep work uncovered, how she's been breaking April's role down into daily, weekly, and sporadic tasks, how they're replacing SOP booklets with quick Loom recordings, and how they ran practice payroll rounds months in advance just in case.

📌 What You'll Learn

— Why to treat a planned absence like an audit, not an emergency

— How to break any role into daily, weekly, and sporadic tasks (and assign each one a due date)

— Why quick screen recordings beat a 30-page SOP nobody will read

— How practice runs expose the gaps in your documentation before they cost you

— The field-tested handoff method Serene Clean uses for both clients and office tasks

— What to pause during an absence to keep the workload steady

— Why thorough documentation makes your business more valuable to a future buyer

Resources Mentioned

— Buy Back Your Time (book): https://www.amazon.com/Buy-Back-Your-Time-Unstuck/dp/059342297X

— Loom (screen recording software): https://www.loom.com/

— ClickUp (task management): https://clickup.com/

— QuickBooks (auto-invoicing): https://quickbooks.intuit.com/

— ZenMaid (client details and invoicing notes): https://get.zenmaid.com/

👉 Try ZenMaid free for 14 days: https://get.zenmaid.com

📞 Stephanie's Consulting & Resources for Purchase: https://serene-clean.com/resources/

✉️ Subscribe to ZenMaid's Weekly Newsletter: https://www.zenmaid.com/newsletter/

📋 Apply to be a guest on Filthy Rich Cleaners: https://get.zenmaid.com/guest-application

Dave Camenga started cleaning houses in fifth grade (yes, really). 11 years later, he owns a thriving commercial janitorial company in Baltimore with 30 cleaners and hundreds of monthly cleans. In this episode, Stephanie sits down with Dave, owner of Dave's Cleaning Consultants in Baltimore, Maryland, who shares how he skipped college to go all-in on cleaning. His nightly janitorial teams of 4–6 people clean eight offices a night, and he shares why old-school direct mailers still land him massive commercial contracts. Dave also talks about the hardest parts of the business, including letting go of a five-year employee, firing disrespectful clients, and protecting a zero-drama company culture.

📌 What You'll Learn

— How Dave structures teams of four to six cleaners to service eight offices a night

— Why "hire slow, fire fast" and always-open interviews protect your best people from burnout

— The direct mail system that landed a $150,000-per-month commercial contract

— When to fire a client — even one worth $7,000 a month

— Why being coachable matters more than 30 years of cleaning experience

— How to command respect as a young owner by never asking staff to do what you wouldn't

Resources Mentioned

— The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes (book): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1591842158?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback

— Q&A with Dave and Carolyn Arellano: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dzZLaEjX1k

— Dave's Cleaning Consultants on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davescleaningconsultants/

— Dave's consulting services: https://www.davescleaningconsultants.com/

👉 Try ZenMaid free for 14 days: https://get.zenmaid.com

📞 Stephanie's Consulting & Resources for Purchase: https://serene-clean.com/consulting-services/

✉️ Subscribe to ZenMaid's Weekly Newsletter: https://www.zenmaid.com/newsletter/

📋 Apply to be a guest on Filthy Rich Cleaners: https://get.zenmaid.com/guest-application

What software does it actually take to run a $100K+/month cleaning business? In this episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners, Stephanie goes through every single tool she pays for, including what it costs, who uses it, and why she picked it over the alternatives. You'll hear about how her team relies on ClickUp for task and lead management, QuickBooks for bookkeeping, OpenPhone for client communication, Slack for team communication, Gusto for payroll, Loom for process documentation, and more! Stephanie also shares how AI has transformed her operations, and how you can use similar takeaways for your own business.

📌 What You'll Learn

— How Stephanie uses ClickUp as her CRM, task manager, and weekly time-blocking system (especially helpful for ADHD brains)

— Why every cleaning business needs bookkeeping software, even if you have a bookkeeper

— Why you should never use your personal phone number as your business line

— How to use Loom + AI to create SOPs and delegate without repeating yourself

— The case for regular software audits and being ruthless about canceling what you don't use

— Why the first-response speed of AI tools is becoming a competitive advantage for owners

Resources Mentioned

— ClickUp: https://clickup.com/

— ProcessDriven (Layla's YouTube channel and ClickUp course): https://www.youtube.com/@LaylaPomper

— The ZenMaid Mastermind Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/zenmaidmastermind

— QuickBooks: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/

— OpenPhone (Quo): https://www.quo.com/

— Slack: https://slack.com/

— Claude: https://claude.ai/

— ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com/

— Acquisition.com: https://www.acquisition.com/

— Indeed: https://www.indeed.com/

— SignRequest: https://signrequest.com/

— Gusto: https://gusto.com/

— Loom: http://loom.com/

— Trainual: http://trainual.com/

— Canva: https://www.canva.com/

— Guideline (401k): https://www.guideline.com/

— The Gift Card Cafe: https://www.thegiftcardcafe.com/

— MailChimp + Zapier: https://mailchimp.com/

— Best Damn Bookkeeping Service (Dan): https://bestdamnbookkeeping.com/

— CleanCon (Austin, TX — end of September): https://www.mycleancon.com/

👉 Try ZenMaid free for 14 days: https://get.zenmaid.com

📞 Stephanie's Consulting & Resources for Purchase: https://serene-clean.com/consulting-services/

✉️ Subscribe to ZenMaid's Weekly Newsletter: https://www.zenmaid.com/newsletter/

📋 Apply to be a guest on Filthy Rich Cleaners: https://get.zenmaid.com/guest-application

Ty Severa is a former dispatcher and police officer who walked away from a guaranteed pension to build a 98% commercial cleaning company staffed by first responders and their families. In this episode, Stephanie sits down with Ty, Owner of First Response Building Services in Roanoke, Virginia, who grew from three accounts and $1,600 a month in recurring revenue to 12 accounts by year-end. He shares how cold calling became his highest-leverage marketing channel, and how flat-rate pay lets him maintain a blended rate around $33 an hour while keeping margins healthy.

📌 What You'll Learn

— How to leave a stable career and replace the income with recurring commercial revenue

— Why cold calling gets easier the moment you reframe it as solving a problem instead of selling

— How to use the gatekeeper as an information source instead of an obstacle

— Why commercial sales cycles take months, and how to build a follow-up system that survives them

— How flat-rate pay works in practice, including the buffer Ty builds into every bid

— How to build a blind inspection system triggered by staffing changes and suspiciously fast clean times

— Why written scopes of work and infestation clauses protect you on deep cleans and post-construction

— The hardest truths about commercial: low-bid government contracts, after-hours phone calls, and big accounts with no juice to squeeze

Resources Mentioned

— BNI (Business Network International): https://www.bni.com/

— First Response Building Services (Facebook): https://www.facebook.com/p/First-Response-Building-Services-61564978374874/

— First Response Building Services (Instagram): https://www.instagram.com/firstresponsebuildingservices/

👉 Try ZenMaid free for 14 days: https://get.zenmaid.com

📞 Stephanie's Consulting & Resources for Purchase: https://serene-clean.com/consulting-services/

✉️ Subscribe to ZenMaid's Weekly Newsletter: https://www.zenmaid.com/newsletter/

📋 Apply to be a guest on Filthy Rich Cleaners: https://get.zenmaid.com/guest-application

A national big-box retailer offered Serene Clean a $50k-a-year account to clean three bathrooms. Easy work, centrally located, daytime hours, yet Stephanie declined to bid it. In this solo episode, Stephanie walks through exactly how that decision got made, including the pros and cons her manager brought to the ops meeting, the one non-negotiable that outweighed every positive, and the counter-offer they made before walking away. She also gets honest about why her answer today is different from the answer 23-year-old Stephanie would have given, and why comparing your year one to someone else's year one will lead you to the wrong decisions.

📌 What You'll Learn

— Why the fastest path to growth depends entirely on what you're actually willing to sacrifice

— How to evaluate a large commercial opportunity by its worst-case scenario, not its best

— Why weekend work carries a management cost most owners never price in

— How to counter-offer and reshape a job before you decline it

— Why "I don't want to" is a legitimate business reason once you've built the foundation for it

— How to tell the difference between discomfort that means grow and discomfort that means walk away

— The real test of whether something is actually a non-negotiable for your business

Resources Mentioned

— The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt (the ZenMaid Retreat book club read): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1565114248?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback

— CleanCon — Austin, Texas, end of September: https://www.mycleancon.com/

— The ZenMaid Mastermind on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/zenmaidmastermind

— Serene Clean: https://serene-clean.com

— Filthy Rich Cleaners Ep. 108 with Yari Isling on walking away from a large post-construction bid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEF0xJm1DQI

👉 Try ZenMaid free for 14 days: https://get.zenmaid.com

📞 Stephanie's Consulting & Resources for Purchase: https://serene-clean.com/consulting-services/

✉️ Subscribe to ZenMaid's Weekly Newsletter: https://www.zenmaid.com/newsletter/

📋 Apply to be a guest on Filthy Rich Cleaners: https://get.zenmaid.com/guest-application

Courtney Nunes' first cleaning job was a 6,000-square-foot house, and she cried after working it for 12 hours straight. Two years later, she has 18 cleaners and is pulling in over 10 leads per day. In this episode, Stephanie sits down with Courtney, Owner of Green Leaf Cleaning, who went from waitressing in California to running a 10-acre farm in upstate New York to building an 18-cleaner operation across two states in under two years. She talks about why she switched from independent contractors to W-2s within six months, how consistent social media posting took her to 10–15 leads a day, the incentive system she built to get her cleaners to produce content for her, and more!

📌 What You'll Learn

— How Courtney went from her first solo clean to 18 cleaners in under two years

— Why she switched from independent contractors to W-2s at the six-month mark, and how she handled the pushback

— The direct link between posting consistently and lead volume

— Why you should treat Google like a social media platform

— How to build a ticket and rewards system that gets your cleaners filming content for you

— The 30-second content hack for owners who are still cleaning full time

— Why holding onto a cleaner you love can cost you recurring clients

— How to know when a job isn't worth taking, no matter what it pays

— Why production rate auditing is impossible without accurate clock in / clock out data

— How to spot the clients who need a price increase, and why resentment is the signal to listen for

— What changes when you run the same brand in two very different markets

Resources Mentioned

— ZenMaid — scheduling and operations software: https://get.zenmaid.com/

— Green Leaf Cleaning on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/green_leaf_cleaning_md_fl/

— Green Leaf Cleaning: https://greenleaforganics.org/

— Courtney's email: [email protected]

— Serene Clean: https://serene-clean.com

👉 Try ZenMaid free for 14 days: https://get.zenmaid.com

📞 Stephanie's Consulting & Resources for Purchase: https://serene-clean.com/consulting-services/

✉️ Subscribe to ZenMaid's Weekly Newsletter: https://www.zenmaid.com/newsletter/

📋 Apply to be a guest on Filthy Rich Cleaners: https://get.zenmaid.com/guest-application

No one likes confrontation, but sometimes it's necessary. In this solo episode, Stephanie shares the pattern she sees in nearly every consulting call and also recognizes in herself — clocking unacceptable behavior but only saying something when it hits a breaking point. She walks through real examples from Serene Clean, including the employee who stole a wallet from a church, and the manager she nearly lost because she waited months to say what needed to be said.

📌 What You'll Learn

— Why avoiding a hard conversation now guarantees a bigger blowup later

— The difference between a genuine mistake and a blatant disregard for standards (and why they require different responses)

— How your best employees lose respect for you when you let bad behavior slide

— Why delegating every difficult conversation away costs you the skill of having them

— The 48-hour rule Stephanie set for herself when she's sitting on unsavory information

— Why stating a consequence and not following through teaches your team not to believe you

— How avoiding the conversation steals your employee's opportunity to improve

— Why "you don't need anybody" is the harsh truth that saved her culture

— What core values mean and how allowing one exception makes them worthless

— How self-respect is built by action, and why you can't command respect you don't have for yourself

Resources Mentioned

— ZenMaid Mastermind (free Facebook group): https://www.facebook.com/groups/zenmaidmastermind

— ZenMaid Weekly Newsletter (free, no ZenMaid account required): https://zenmaid.com/newsletter

👉 Try ZenMaid free for 14 days: https://get.zenmaid.com

📞 Stephanie's Consulting & Resources for Purchase: https://serene-clean.com/consulting-services/

✉️ Subscribe to ZenMaid's Weekly Newsletter: https://www.zenmaid.com/newsletter/

📋 Apply to be a guest on Filthy Rich Cleaners: https://get.zenmaid.com/guest-application

A client claimed a 15-carat ring vanished from under a shampoo bottle, but little did they know that Shaquille spent 15 years as a fraud investigator. In this episode, Shaquille Richards, owner of Miracle Cleaners of Georgia in Atlanta, sits down with Stephanie to talk about building a five-star luxury cleaning business from scratch after losing her job three years ago. She breaks down how she landed the luxury high-rise work through a resident-app partnership, the parking and concierge logistics she manages by hand every day, and the after-photo system that protects her cleaners and her business.

📌 What You'll Learn

— How Shaquille broke into luxury high-rise cleaning through one relationship

— The parking and concierge workflow she uses so cleaners never get booted or locked out

— Why she gives customers a three-hour arrival window her cleaners never see

— How her before-and-after photo process protects cleaners from false complaints

— How she's handled awkward conversations with compassion

— Why she says high-end clients are simpler than you think

— How a 15-year fraud career made her better at running a cleaning business

— The difference between cleaning and repairing, and how to set that expectation before the job

— How she sets availability expectations in interviews so cleaners stop being shocked by their paychecks

— Why fear of Google reviews is costing owners more business than a bad review ever would

Resources Mentioned

— Miracle Cleaners of Georgia website: https://miraclecleanga.com

— Miracle Cleaners of Georgia on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/miraclecleanersofgeorgia/

— ZenMaid (Shaquille's scheduling software): https://get.zenmaid.com/

👉 Try ZenMaid free for 14 days: https://get.zenmaid.com

📞 Stephanie's Consulting & Resources for Purchase: https://serene-clean.com/consulting-services/

✉️ Subscribe to ZenMaid's Weekly Newsletter: https://www.zenmaid.com/newsletter/

📋 Apply to be a guest on Filthy Rich Cleaners: https://get.zenmaid.com/guest-application

Serene Clean just had its highest-revenue month ever (over $130,000 in July), and Stephanie is opening the books to show exactly how it happened. In this episode, she breaks down the July numbers at Serene Clean: record revenue, 350+ recurring clients, 29 first-time cleans, and the highest net MRR the company has ever added. She walks through the metrics driving the growth, plus the areas that still need work, including undercharged travel fees and why none of her 2026 hires have made it past 90 days. It's a number-heavy look at what's working inside of Serene Clean!

📌 What You'll Learn

— How Serene Clean went from a $97K January to a record $130K+ July

— Why tracking net MRR (monthly recurring revenue) is the most important habit for growth

— What a "whale" client is, and why no client should be more than 10% of your revenue

— How switching to flat rate pricing made clients say yes to recurring service faster

— Why recurring close rate matters more than close rate alone

— How to normalize your profit and loss for 5-payroll-run months so you're not comparing apples to oranges

— Why most travel fees are undercharged

— What Stephanie learned from digging into why 14 employees left in 2026

Resources Mentioned

— Serene Clean's MRR tracking spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rO8m4mlE9-jHKavGDAo7kLyzvjTJuQYZdb3tOVY0Tro/edit?gid=890978938#gid=890978938

— Stephanie's flat rate estimate email template (~$20 on her website, linked below): https://serene-clean.com/downloads/flat-rate-cleaning-estimate-email-template/

— Serene Clean's active Indeed job listings: https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Serene-Clean-6/jobs

— ZenMaid Mastermind Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/zenmaidmastermind

— CleanCon in Austin, Texas: https://www.mycleancon.com/

👉 Try ZenMaid free for 14 days: https://get.zenmaid.com

📞 Stephanie's Consulting & Resources for Purchase: https://serene-clean.com/consulting-services/

✉️ Subscribe to ZenMaid's Weekly Newsletter: https://www.zenmaid.com/newsletter/

📋 Apply to be a guest on Filthy Rich Cleaners: https://get.zenmaid.com/guest-application

Michelle Walker moved to the United States four years ago speaking almost no English. Today she runs Walker Cleaning Solutions in Portland, Oregon, with 15 recurring clients and her first W-2 employee — and she started the whole thing with $200. In this hybrid interview-and-consulting episode, Stephanie sits down with Michelle to walk through her path to owning a cleaning business. Michelle shares how she landed her first two recurring clients through families she babysat for and why she turns down clients other cleaners would take. Stephanie then shares what she thinks Michelle should focus on next, including how to think about revenue, how to think about revenue when you hand jobs to an employee, how picky is too picky, and the three growth levers that matter most at her size.

📌 What You'll Learn

— How to land your first recurring clients without spending a dollar on advertising

— Why the families who hire babysitters and nannies are an overlooked pipeline for cleaning clients

— The red flags in a first text message that tell you a client will be a nightmare

— Why "must-have" hiring requirements are non-negotiable, and what happens when you ignore your gut

— How to think about your revenue as a pie when you start handing jobs to employees

— How to figure out how many clients you actually need before you can stop cleaning

— Why being picky about clients only makes sense in the context of your lead volume and close rate

— The three growth levers Stephanie recommends for a solo-to-small cleaning business: in-person networking, community giving, and Google Business Profile

— Why video reviews are worth almost any amount of effort to get

— How hiring part-timers protects you when someone calls out or quits

Resources Mentioned

— ZenMaid (scheduling, reminders, payroll, clock in/out, digital checklists, client notes, booking form): https://get.zenmaid.com/

— Book: Profit First by Mike Michalowicz: https://www.amazon.com/dp/073521414X?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback

— Walker Cleaning Solutions (website): https://www.walkercleansolutions.com/

— Walker Cleaning Solutions (Facebook): https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61586779175940

👉 Try ZenMaid free for 14 days: https://get.zenmaid.com

📞 Stephanie's Consulting & Resources for Purchase: https://serene-clean.com/consulting-services/

✉️ Subscribe to ZenMaid's Weekly Newsletter: https://www.zenmaid.com/newsletter/

📋 Apply to be a guest on Filthy Rich Cleaners: https://get.zenmaid.com/guest-application