Filthy Rich Cleaners: The Cleaning Business Podcast

By ZenMaidBusiness Entrepreneurship

Filthy Rich Cleaners: The Cleaning Business Podcast episodes

August 06 #163: How to Know When You're Ready to Hire Your First Cleaner
Brooke Kerstetter built The Neat Nest from nothing. She didn't have a background in cleaning or business role models, but now, almost a year in, she's running eight-hour cleaning days and considering making her first hire. In this episode, Stephanie sits down with Brooke, owner and founder of The Neat Nest in State College, Pennsylvania, for a consulting-style deep dive into the operational gaps that hold back a solo cleaner. They cover pricing mistakes, the difference between flat-rate and hourly work, why organizing services need their own model, and all the math behind bringing on a first employee.

📌 What You'll Learn
— How to calculate your production rate and stop underquoting jobs
— Why organizing services should be billed hourly and treated as an add-on
— What actually needs to be in place before you hire your first cleaner
— The right way to think about a family business partnership (and how to protect the relationship)
— Why raising prices and dropping a client can free up the time you desperately need
— How to escape the "notebook" trap with scheduling software before chaos multiplies

Resources Mentioned
— The Second Shift (book on household labor equity): https://www.amazon.com/Second-Shift-Arlie-Russell-Hochschild/dp/0380711575
— The Four Tendencies (book by Gretchen Rubin on internal vs. external expectations): https://www.amazon.com/Four-Tendencies-Indispensable-Personality-Profiles/dp/1524760919
— Profit First (book on managing business cash flow): https://www.amazon.com/Profit-First-Transform-Cash-Eating-Money-Making/dp/073521414X
— The Neat Nest on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/The-Neat-Nest/100064185693597/

👉 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
1 hr 11 min
August 04 #162: The Mother-Daughter Duo Running Two Cleaning Companies
Two cleaning companies in one family! In this episode, Stephanie sits down with Kyleigh Lipsitz of The Blissful Clean (Grand Rapids, MI) and her mother, Lisa Temple, founder of Maid in Michigan. Lisa built her business from a stack of handwritten calendars, and Kyleigh took that framework and scaled her own business with software. They run separate residential cleaning companies two hours apart, but come to Filthy Rich Cleaners to share the systems, hiring philosophy, and sales approach that took Lisa's business to $1M in recurring revenue, and to discuss how Kyleigh is following the same playbook.

📌 What You'll Learn
— Why switching from teams to solo cleaning increased pay AND efficiency
— How to move from in-person walkthroughs to phone estimates without losing sales
— Why phone estimates can actually protect you from underquoting bad jobs
— The right way to position your business to attract better technicians
— Why "the customer wants to say yes" should change how you sell
— How delegating the phones and admin work unlocks real growth
— The hard truth about AI phone assistants for cleaning businesses (and why they canceled theirs)
— The compounding profit effect once you scale past break-even

Resources Mentioned
— ZenMaid (scheduling software both businesses use): https://get.zenmaid.com/
— Debbie Sardone (Lisa's business mentor / paid coaching program): https://debbiesardone.com/
— The Blissful Clean — https://theblissfulclean.com
— Maid in Michigan — https://madeinmichiganllc.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
1 hr 18 min
July 30 #161: How Vanessa Muir Doubled Her Cleaning Business's Revenue in One Year
Vanessa Muir turned her knitting-group side gig into a cleaning company that doubled its revenue in a single year. In this episode, Stephanie sits down with Vanessa, owner and founder of The Cleaning Guild in Fredericton, New Brunswick, to unpack how she built her business from two knitting-group clients into a six-person team. Vanessa shares the real numbers behind her pricing evolution, how she landed (and priced) her first big commercial contract, why she's walking away from a $4K/month account, and the hard-won lessons from firing her first three employees.

📌 What You'll Learn
— How to price your services as you scale from solo cleaner to a team (and why hourly-then-flat-rate beats flat rate for first-time cleans)
— Why some commercial contracts should be dropped even when they look "big and juicy"
— The warning signs of a bad hire
— How to transition long-time clients off of "only me" and onto your team
— The exact metrics to start tracking first: leads, close rate, recurring conversions, and net MRR
— Why tracking monthly recurring revenue changed everything for Serene Clean

Resources Mentioned
— The Cleaning Guild: https://thecleaningguild.ca/
— ZenMaid (scheduling & booking): 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
1 hr 10 min
July 28 #160: Rose's Playbook to Attract the Right Client at the Right Price
Rose Cavanaugh started cleaning houses in 2019 as a newly single mom who needed to make money. Seven years later, she runs a 175-client cleaning business with 15 techs and an office manager, and, best of all, she is 100% out of the field. In this episode, Rose sits down with host Stephanie to walk through how she built Patriot Endeavors / Rose's Cleaning Services in rural Central Texas. She talks about the terror of the first hire, learning her worth on pricing, closing nearly every walkthrough with confidence, and building a "family first" culture in a high-turnover industry. She also shares the systems shift — ZenMaid, QuickBooks, ACH invoicing — that lets the business run without her.

📌 What You'll Learn
— Why "I'll take any job" is a survival mindset you have to outgrow once you hire staff
— How to build pricing confidence: do the walkthrough, vet the minimum first, and never budge on your number
— Why selling the value (not the price) is what closes 9 out of 10 walkthroughs
— How to relay client expectations to your team so quality doesn't get lost in translation
— The "family first" flexibility that turns parents and single moms into your most loyal staff
— Why letting go and delegating is the hardest skill for a growing owner
— How switching to ZenMaid, QuickBooks, and ACH transformed operations (and why losing a few clients was worth it)

Resources Mentioned
— ZenMaid (scheduling software, digital checklists, notes, client management): https://get.zenmaid.com/
— Rose's Cleaning Services: https://www.facebook.com/p/Roses-Cleaning-100066975405899/

👉 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
1 hr 4 min
July 23 #159: Client Red Flags Every Cleaning Business Owner Should Know
0 years ago, there was barely any competition for cleaning businesses. Today, it feels like everyone and their mother has a cleaning business, so how do you actually stand out? In this episode, Stephanie sits down with Maria Dorian — owner of Task Away VA and a cleaning company that she now runs remotely from Spain. They dig into how the industry has transformed, why creativity beats budget when you're starting out, how to handle bad reviews and difficult clients, and red flags that owners should look for in current or prospective clients.

📌 What You'll Learn
— How to stand out with creativity and hustle when you don't have a marketing budget
— Why consistency and communication are now non-negotiable (not optional extras)
— How to reframe a refund as a marketing cost instead of a fairness battle
— Why responding to a bad review is really about your future customers, not the angry one
— The client red flags to watch for, including same-day requests, serial service-hoppers, price obsession, and chaotic phone calls
— Why trusting your gut on safety concerns is never worth ignoring
— How to build policies and paper trails so the same problem never happens twice

Resources Mentioned
— Task Away VA (Maria's virtual assistant company): https://taskawayva.com/
— Maria's previous Filthy Rich Cleaners episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgNrUVhaJDc

👉 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
1 hr 5 min
July 21 #158: The Mindset Shift That Tripled Sophia Tyler's Cleaning Business
Most people wait until they "feel ready" to do things like raise prices or hire staff. Sophia Tyler did the opposite and jumped straight in. In this episode, Stephanie sits down with Sophia, the 24-year-old owner and founder of LadyDo in Longmont, Colorado, who launched her cleaning business at age 20. They dig into the messy early days of undercharging and overdelivering, the emotional work of raising rates on longtime clients, and how mindset, networking, and BNI became the engine behind her growth. Plus, a genuinely wild on-the-job story that you don't want to miss 👀

📌 What You'll Learn
— Why speed and confidence beat low pricing every time
— How to raise your rates on existing clients without losing your nerve
— Why "double your price and lose half your clients" can still leave you ahead
— How BNI and word-of-mouth networking tripled Sophia's business
— Why emotional regulation is a real business skill, not a soft one
— The boundary-setting mistakes new owners make in their first year
— A critical safety check every cleaner should add to their checklist

Resources Mentioned
— You Are the Placebo by Dr. Joe Dispenza: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1401944590?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback
— Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins (the "cookie jar" concept): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1544512287?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback
— Thou Shall Prosper by Rabbi Daniel Lapin: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0470485884?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback
— Katherine Zenkina (Manifestation Babe): https://manifestationbabe.com/
— BNI (Business Network International): https://www.bni.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
1 hr 4 min
July 16 #157: The Exact Quality Control System We Use at Serene Clean
If you've ever wondered how to pull off a surprise quality check without terrifying your cleaner, you've come to the right place. In this solo episode, Stephanie answers a listener question from Kate in Australia about quality control checks and the practical side of making them happen. She walks through Serene Clean's exact QC form, the culture of "everybody checks everybody," the ideal timing for showing up, how often to check different staff members, and how feedback gets documented and shared with the team.

📌 What You'll Learn
— Why your cleaning checklist is the foundation of every quality check
— How to build a QC form anyone on your team can follow
— Whether to arrive during the clean or after (and why in-person, real-time feedback is ideal)
— How to handle logistics: getting into the house, telling the tech, and telling the client
— How often to quality-check new hires vs. staff in good standing
— The color-coding and tracking-sheet system that keeps QCs proactive, not reactive
— How to document and share feedback so it counts for raises, bonuses, and warnings
— The "Pavlov" pro tip for turning quality-check anxiety into something your team looks forward to

Resources Mentioned
— Stephanie's YouTube video on Serene Clean's quality control system (from ~2 years ago): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UByNeDk--BM
— ZenMaid (daily calendar view + QC task scheduling): https://get.zenmaid.com/
— ZenMaid Mastermind Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/zenmaidmastermind
— CleanCon (Austin, 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
36 min
July 14 #156: How Jose Razo Built a Premium Cleaning Brand From Scratch
Laid off from a 10-year cybersecurity career, Jose Razo used his severance to launch the cleaning business he'd been sitting on for years. He built it around one person: his own home's cleaner of six years. In this episode, Stephanie sits down with Jose, owner of Allens Landing Cleaning just outside Houston, Texas. Jose shares how he went from tech professional to cleaning business owner in a matter of months, why he refuses to compete on price, and how he's building a premium brand from a two-person team.

📌 What You'll Learn
— Why execution beats knowledge and how to stop sitting on your business idea
— How to build a premium cleaning brand from day one, even as the smallest company on the block
— Why "we're not the cheapest" belongs on your website
— How to structure pay and expectations so great cleaners want to work for you
— The reason consistency is your biggest differentiator
— How to win the first phone call and set realistic expectations on first-time cleans
— Why free and discounted cleans are an investment, not a cheapened brand
— How to leverage one apartment complex into a 13-property vendor relationship

Resources Mentioned
— ZenMaid (scheduling & automation)
— Notion (systems & documentation)
— Claude / Claude Design (SOPs, branding, research)
— Serene Clean (Stephanie's cleaning business)
— Friendswood Chamber of Commerce
— Allens Landing Cleaning (allenslandingcleaning.com) + Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allenslandingcleaning/

👉 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
52 min
July 09 #155: Why Accountability Makes or Breaks Your Cleaning Business
Two cleaners, the same feedback, but two completely different reactions. This told Stephanie everything she needed to know about who stays and who goes at Serene Clean. In this episode, Stephanie talks about why she views accountability as the single biggest predictor of whether someone will succeed on your team (or in your business). She walks through two active situations in her company right now: a beloved, long-tenured cleaner going through a rough patch who takes full responsibility for her mistakes, and a two-month hire who blames everyone but herself 👀

📌 What You'll Learn
— Why accountability is the telltale sign of who will succeed on your team
— How to deliver negative client feedback without ruining a cleaner's whole day
— Why you should praise in public and coach in private
— How the "line of credit" model of trust helps you decide who gets the benefit of the doubt
— Why you need to look at actions and see that how people react to stress reveals their real character
— When to stop retraining and simply let someone go
— How to proactively pull honest feedback from clients who love their cleaner and don't want to complain

Resources Mentioned
— Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink
— ZenMaid service rating features (for collecting internal client feedback)
— ZenMaid Mastermind Facebook group
— The prior episode on paying for things you didn't break

👉 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

35 min
July 07 #154: Simone Angell on How to Go From Solo Cleaner to Running a Team
If you're burnt out doing every clean yourself but terrified to hire, you're not alone! In this episode, Stephanie welcomes back Simone Angell of The House Mum to talk about a question posted in the ZenMaid Mastermind: how do you transition from doing all the cleaning yourself to building and leading a team? Simone, who just hit 30 employees running a luxury household-management company in Australia, and Stephanie unpack pricing, hiring, financial transitions, client notes, and the hard conversations.

📌 What You'll Learn
— Why a growing waiting list should trigger a price increase (and how that funds your first hires)
— How to handle the financial "pie" when you bring on your first cleaner without going broke
— Why hiring out of desperation backfires and how to trust your gut instead
— How to document client notes so any team member can step in seamlessly
— Why you must pay yourself from day one, even if it's only 1% of revenue
— How to frame a termination so it lands as kindly as possible
— Why employment contracts and kit bonds protect the business you've worked to build
— How part-time staff can be just as loyal and dedicated as full-timers

Resources Mentioned
— The House Mum (https://housemum.com / @housemumhomeservices on Instagram)
— ZenMaid (booking form, scheduling, GPS clock-in/out, digital checklists): https://get.zenmaid.com/
— ZenMaid Mastermind Facebook group (original post by Courtney Burleson, May 14): https://www.facebook.com/groups/zenmaidmastermind

👉 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
1 hr 3 min

About Filthy Rich Cleaners: The Cleaning Business Podcast

From the publisher's feed

Filthy Rich Cleaners is the free cleaning business coach you never knew you needed. Hosted by Stephanie Pipkin, founder of Serene Clean, every episode delivers real, tactical advice you'd normally…