Smart Cleaning School

I have discovered through losing dozens of clients over the years that they cancel service for 3 reasons. Would you like to know what they are? Here’s the summary.

1. Quality - Whether you fail to meet your expectations or theirs, they will perceive you are not a good cleaner and fire you.
2. Character - This prevents the customer from building trust with you, the solo cleaner, and the brand of your company. If they lose trust, they lose you.
3. Circumstances - People move. They start families. They lose jobs and have babies. Things change. The cleaner is downstream from all of these life changes and you will get the axe.

Do you enjoy this teaching? Would you like to join the Solo Elite Membership to get access to the full lessons every week plus have access to our community of like-minded optimizing solo cleaners? I hope to see you inside the membership. 

Are you more interested in coaching, taking action, and personal accountability? Check out our coaching options as well. 

Do you want prospects to find you and ask you for help or would you rather hunt for them and try to sell them? The first option is called a relational approach and the second is a transactional one. I created the original ISO Model Course in 2017 when I was in the hunt of optimizing my first solo cleaning company in Upstate New York.

At this time, I was wrapping up a strategic process of earning more and working less so I could be with my family more. I never realized it would become a course for other solo cleaners out there. Some of my foundational lessons revolved around this concept of relational marketing with course modules such as “Real Marketing”, “Profile to Win”, “Price to Win”, and so on.

Last month, I decided it was a good time to revamp the course to make it more relevant to 2025 by teaching weekly lessons in the Solo Elite Membership. In this episode, I am giving you a glimpse of my most recent lesson called “Profile to Win II”. 

The mindset in this clip is very important. Listen and then explore my business profiles and others in the industry. Study. Implement. Improve. 

This month's Freedom Report starts with a clip from a call with Coach Josh. I had accomplished a lot in December as you heard in the last report, adding 5 new buildings and 1 new team member. The 5 buildings added $3,800 per month of new revenue and brought us to 13 buildings and 5 houses to delegate. The new team member would take 3 of the buildings, leaving a lot more still to delegate. I felt confident at the end of December that I could shift focus from marketing & sales to hiring. The #1 priority had to be working my way out of a job!

In this clip, there are a few great quotes from Josh.

"We'll always be leaving money on the table. If we're so focused on getting all the money on the table, we'll never be the greatest at any one thing."

"I have to choose the sanity of my team over the expansion of my business."

"Just because you could pick up these clients doesn't mean you should."

"You're eliminating margin when I don't think you have to."

This conversation has been the hardest one for me in coaching. I'm amazed. The calls where we needed revenue and team members challenged me, but they were all answers that ended in 'yes'. This answer has to end in 'no'. I did focus on the team-building, training, and systems in January. That was how we'd get to Florida. Before I go there, let me share more about margin as that was such a vital lesson from this coaching call. I have made promises to my current 5 houses, 13 buildings, and 5 team members. My number one priority is to honor all those promises. I could do this with the time window, but we'd have little margin. Therefore, I made some key decisions in January. 

1. Decision 1 - I don't know what I'm going to do with house cleaning, but I decided to create some margin as I'm away in Florida by canceling my house cleaning while I'm gone. I will lose $800 in profit. I talked to each of my customers and 4 of the 5 are okay with it. The 5th house wanted a referral to another company that could fill in while I'm gone. I fully accept that I may lose this customer as a result. I am okay with it as I am going away from house cleaning and it's my least profitable house of 5. Removing 5 houses from my calendar for a month adds a lot of margin. In other words, it's less for me to think about while I'm gone.
2. Decision 2 - I have three buildings that are monthly. I will not delegate those yet. I completed them at month-end and will clean them again with my kids after I get back. I just had to shift them back one week. This adds more margin as my 13 buildings and 5 houses is down to just 10 buildings. I actually gain about $300 profit as I don't have to delegate this work.

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I ended the November Freedom Report with peace. We had brought our plan to go to Florida to God and asked Him to show us the way. We had over 20 job applications come in with no new hires. I personally connected and made initial connection to 240 local office cleaning prospects and followed up with close to 100 phone calls to find out if they had a cleaner in house or outsourced and if they were happy. This lead to 7 interested prospects and 4 proposals sent. But the net result of all of this effort was 0 new team members and $0 in new revenue with 65 days left before Florida. Josh gave me a challenge. "1 & 1 and we're having fun." Can I add 1 new office and 1 new team member by the end of November. I recorded the November Freedom Report just prior to month end. Let me just say this. God answered our prayers and broke the dam loose! A lot has changed in 30 days!

2 exciting things happened on November 30th. Around lunchtime, I got a call from the HR manager from one of the 4 proposals I sent to an insurance agency. They accepted my proposal, signed the contract, and wanted to start service on January 1st! And get this! It was one customer and two buildings for a total of $950 per month. I interviewed a promising candidate named Joanne the day before. I talked it over with my wife and Coach Josh. We decided to send Joanne a job offer on Tuesday afternoon. She accepted. For the first time in months, things were looking up. That's 1 new customer and 1 new employee. We met Josh's challenge of "1 & 1 and we're having fun" with hours to go in the month.

We were ready for December... we thought. Let's do the bad first. I did a poor job with selecting Joanne. She worked with us one weekend. Her work was good, but something about the job wasn't a culture fit with Joanne. I can only speculate that she wanted complete autonomy sooner and that she didn't like the family business aspect. I had two of my kids working and helping me teach Joanne our cleaning system. Ultimately, I made a bad hire and this will happen a lot. I just need to keep working my hiring process to attract and repel for culture. Josh helped me work through so much of my hiring system in December.  He helped me turn a bad into a good! The clip for this month's Freedom Report is an epic step-by-step on what Josh is looking for and how he attracts them. Here's a recap of the elements of my hiring system we added in December. Josh also issued a new challenge. "2 & 2... it's only a few."
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1. We added a 2nd job on Facebook and Indeed. The first was for "Weekend Side-Gig Office Cleaning". The second one we added was "Weeknight Side-Gig Office Cleaning". Josh predicted I'd get more applicants looking to do side work after their full-time job during the week. He was right. Our Indeed ads alone captured over 30 leads in December.
2. I set up multi-step process to get to an interview. I had 5 no-shows in a row in November, then 1 that showed up after setting up a few hoops. I offered her a job in late November but she ghosted me. I had 7 more interviews in December with only 1 no-show or 8 total booked. Each of these candidates completed a 15 minute questionnaire, 15 minute DISC assessment, and 30 minute podcast sharing my company's culture (mission, vision, and values). I wanted to hire each one of them.

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I recorded "A New Freedom Vision" in May, just 6 months ago. It was a bold proclamation. I could not go to Florida for a month, while scheduled to clean 2 days per week. I had to grow a team. I interviewed Josh Melton for my podcast in June ("The Cleaning Road to Nineveh with Josh Melton") and immediately asked him to coach me. I was ready for the challenge and I was ready to show you all that I could do it. Let me cut right to it. It's 6 months later and we have 0 new clients and 0 new employees. In fact, we have at least $1,000 per month less in cash flow because our expenses went up as we've been building to scale. There are 3 topics to discuss on this episode and unfortunately, I don't have a clip from Coach Josh. His best stuff was on the final coaching call before Thanksgiving and it wasn't recorded. His call-out was tough and I'll share that first.

Josh's Call Out!
I have set out from the beginning of this journey in 2021 to grow my commercial cleaning company in the niche and model I choose. I want weekly, small office clients that I can stack up and complete on weekends. I don't want office cleaning to think about during the week. This preference has held me back from going after bigger revenue accounts or recommending to offices a multi-day pricing option of two. This fully surfaced when Josh was helping me with a quote for a 10,000 square foot showroom with offices. They have a cleaner twice per week that they want to replace. It has 6 restrooms and I'm positioning the price options to sell the weekly option to fit into the perfect schedule I want. Josh hit me hard with this. "Ken, what do you want? Your dream of Florida or your preferred business model? Make it work. Get the revenue. Clean however it comes. Weekly, twice weekly, 5x per week. More people want to work weeknights over weekends. Get up the job ads. Get to work and be scrappy. Make it happen. Just because you choose this now, it doesn’t mean you need to keep it this way.  Don’t choose your preferred business model over your dream. You need revenue. Your preferred business model is weekly offices on weekends. You don’t want to work or operate your business on weeknights. I get that. I was like that too. I realized that more nights per week equals more revenue. I'd rather have less clients and more revenue. You're playing too small all in the name of keeping your preferred business model." This is so true that it stung big time. It's me trying to optimize my business when I'm still an initializer. Why do I keep doing this. I just need to get revenue and team members in the door. This conversation convinced me to offer one of my recent proposals 2 out of 3 options as twice weekly.  By the way, I never answered the question. I choose my dream! I told my wife and she agreed.

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In my last Freedom Report, I humbled myself with the reality of my situation. I'm striving for this New Freedom Vision, but two glaring blind spots were holding me back. Another month has gone by. How is it going? Short answer. Not good! I am going to share my update exactly as it happened and end with a clip from Coach Josh at the end of October with an encouraging word that helps me and will hopefully encourage you. We all need encouragement. I'm not above that because I happen to have a podcast and talk about cleaning. This scaling and building a team thing is new for me. I am bringing you my monthly results exactly as they've occurred to build you up and hopefully teach you something. Here's an outline of my month.

•  I finally completed my Project 100 by my October 11th coaching call. The final tally looked like this. 239 total offices on my prospect list. 49 dental (21%), 69 medical (29%), 111 professional (46%), 10 industrial (4%). 99 are members of the Indian Valley Chamber of Commerce where I'm the only cleaner. Josh wanted me to commit to a deadline for introducing myself and my business to every one of these businesses. I chose November 15th,  2021. The strategy was simple from Josh. "Ken, I'm going to guess that 4% of the businesses on this list and any list is currently not happy with their cleaner or actively looking for a new one. These are low-hanging fruit. If you'll just reach out and introduce yourself with a heart of generosity while at the same time promoting your cleaning company, those 4% will request quotes. That's 9 - 10 quotes. You can close 5 and hit your goal for Florida." I have seen this first-hand over the years. I have acquired a few offices because I was at the right place at the right time. I need to strategically put myself there again. This fired me up!
• I honestly assessed my goals with my coaches and my wife. I need 5 new offices and 5 more part-time team members to delegate my full cleaning business and equal the cash flow we currently earn. This is the minimum we need for a month in Florida. I'm simplifying this goal as the 5/5 plan. The 10/10 plan is double and makes Florida a lot more comfortable with about $2,000 in monthly cash flow over and above all of our bills. This makes Josh's challenge to contact all 239 to find the low-hanging fruit vital and a top priority for November 15th.
• As of my last coaching call with Josh in October, I had 100 initial introductions made to my chamber list. 2 requested quotes now. 2 requested quotes in January. 15 are satisfied with their cleaners and will keep me in mind. This is a great start. Josh challenged me to close the month of October, which only had a few days left to send out another 100 and add more to my list. The strategy would include a mixture of emails, direct phone calls, and personal visits to introduce myself in areas where I already have clients. I also collected 2 more customer testimonials to assist in this local marketing approach. The goal is simple. Keep introducing myself. Keep adding new offices as there are at least 50 offices that were missed through my Google and chamber search methods. I fully expect to do initial introductions to 300 businesses by November 15th. This should lead to 12 quote requests and 5-6 new clients in November and December. But there are no guarantees and I have Coach Josh to direct me through each step without me overthinking everything. I need one thing working and that's ACTION!

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September is in the books. It's time for another business update. Afterward, I'll share a clip from our final coaching call from September to close out the summer. Now that October is here, it's time to crank it down! I have 4 months left to build and delegate my cleaning company before my self-imposed deadline of February 1, 2022. 

I'm going to come right out and admit. I did NOT hit my goal for September and I know why. I got lazy. If you've followed this podcast since the beginning, I've been building my marketing machine using Google My Business, Facebook, and local networking. It's worked very well to the tune of $60,000 in increased revenues solo in 2020. I was working my marketing hard. My pipeline grew and I reaped the benefit in 2021. I hit my optimizer goal as a solo cleaner by January 2021 earning $70,000 profit on 2 days cleaning per week. I stopped marketing and simply helped anyone that found me through my marketing machine. This generated more house and office leads that I really didn't care if I got or not. Then June happened and I got A New Freedom Vision. I hired Coach Josh and it was time to scale my business with a team. I have shared with you that I built out a few systems over the summer including a hiring and payroll system, a financial system using Quickbooks Online, and a simple office cleaning training system. I also built my foundation with mission, vision, and values (see "Introducing the C3 Experience"). My cleaning business was now ready to grow with a solid foundation and the beginning of the systems that I'll need to support a $300,000 revenue business.

I had offices and house inquiries coming in, so I'd answer them and select which I wanted to bid on. I mentioned to friends personally and in network meetings that I was hiring and was referred a few people. I hired one of them. I was growing today off of yesterday's work. But I wasn't doing today's work by building my pipeline for tomorrow. We as entrepreneurs allow this to happen and don't realize it until your leads dry up.  This happened to me in September. I realized it on my own and shared it with Coach Josh. By the way, I was supposed to complete his coaching homework to create a Project 100 in a week back in July. It took me 6 weeks to make this list of 100 offices I'd like to clean. Why did it take so long? I was arrogant thinking that I had a pipeline that I didn't see was drying up. This was my first major blind spot in September.

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There is so much to dig into for this month's update of my personal cleaning company. If you're new to this show, here's the quick version. I've been a solo house and office cleaner for most of my 16 years in business. I have a system that initializes, stabilizes, and optimizes solo cleaning companies to create over $50k profit per year on a few days per week. In fact, I've done it twice. My first solo cleaning business was in Upstate New York from 2005 - 2018. I optimized this company to create $55k profit per year on 2 cleaning days per week without employees. The company was 90% residential and 10% commercial. I sold this company in 2018 for $80k and moved back home to Montgomery County, PA. We have since built a second solo cleaning business to $70k profit per year on 2 cleaning days per week. This new company is 75% commercial and 25% residential. As amazing as this sounds and it has been, our family wanted more. Our coaches and mentors challenged us to follow our dream as a homeschooling family. We had a New Freedom Vision and booked a house on the Gulf Coast of Florida for a month next winter! We wanted to go from $70k profit on 2 days per week to 0 days! This requires a team and systems. As an engineer, I love systems. But I've resisted them as a solo as I viewed them as tedious. Thankfully, I've hired Coach Josh to walk me into our dream. Josh is a co-owner at Athens Cleaning in Athens, GA. He is a fast-growing commercial cleaning company serving small, professional offices with professional workers. This podcast feature is a monthly peak into my own company, Carfagno Commercial Cleaning, as we build our business with systems and team members in order to start living our dream.

 August Update:

• The first week of August was my trip to Nashville for Podcast Movement 2021. This was a great trip for me personally and professionally. I had lots of down time to think, plus numerous opportunities to meet new people and build better relationships with podcasters I already knew. The biggest takeaway had nothing to do with my podcast. On Thursday night, my buddy Vincent and I figured out a way to map out our businesses on a simple 3 x 3 grid. We started with the basic 2 x 2 grid of drama vs profit from Why I Fired My First Client. All we did was add a middle scaling option. The analysis revealed so much to me as it confirmed what I was already feeling. My goal is to simplify every area of my life, so that I can create more memories with my family and art for my community and disciple my family. I needed simple. Of the various income-producing efforts I am involved in, a few emerged as most profitable with least time and drama. All house cleaning is OUT and all small, professional office cleaning is IN! This was a vitally reflective process that will allow me to hyper niche with my coach and go crush it in small, professional, essential offices in my area. If you'd like to learn how to do this with your business, reach out to me on my website and request a free call.
• Now that I had my niche, I could go to work on completing my Project 100. This is a specific list of companies that I'd like to clean for. Coach Josh has already taught me that I can earn my freedom with only 20% of this list! Think about it. 20 new offices averaging $800/month equals $192,000 in additional revenue. This would increase my total revenue in office cleaning to $280,000. At 35-40% profitability, my family would earn between $100k - $115k per year and I wouldn't have to clean anymore! I had a lot going on in our family in August with summer kids activities and trai

​July was a crazy month. As a family, we had a ton going on. We had Kid's Camp and Youth Camp at retreat camp centers for 4 of our 5 kids for 5 days each. During one of those camps, Teresa and I slipped away for 4 days to the beach.  I had a 5-day father / son camping trip with my son to the Adirondacks that I do with each son. This was with my 8-year-old Kye.  It was glorious being off the grid for 5 days with no phone or social media! We just connected, camped, swam, boated, ate, heard campfire stories, songs, and devotions, and did shooting sports and hiking! Awesomeness! Coach Josh was also away in Florida for 2 weeks, so we had to move our coaching to Marco Polo and email. Even with all of this going on, I had BIG goals!

The first step in this process was putting our money where our mouth was. On July 7th, we booked it! Booked what? We booked a rental house on the Gulf Coast for a whole month next winter! The house is awesome with 7 beds, a porch, and a short 8 minute ride to the beach.  There's a pool table too. Our kids are so excited and so are we! We've never done anything like this before.  July had to be a big month to get this "Freedom Vision "cranking.

Before I go into the details of our month and share tidbits from coaching, let me give you the end results. We started the month with no employees, no payroll, no systems, a new accounting firm client for $3,000 per month that we had to staff, and no clue! The month ended with no new clients, which is the sad news. But we fully outsourced and completed our Quickbooks migration from desktop to online and have an accountant walking us through whatever we need for a year. Our financial system is now automated! I can't believe it! We hired a payroll service and a background check company. I built out a basic onboarding  system, job description, and training system. Teresa and I were trained how to use the online payroll dashboard to submit employee hours. I found out that I wasn't submitting payroll correctly for the state and local taxes. Thankfully, my new payroll company fixed it for me and I'm paying a penalty for the remainder of the year. That's a relief. I hired my first employee. Leah works full time at a daycare and is a college grad. She wanted a part-time job to make $500 per month and found me through a referral. It works out perfectly. She started training on July 29th! It's crazy! I also was privy to systems used by my coach. I am so grateful for this. At the end of the month, Josh introduced me to his HR & Finance Manager. We talked for over an hour. I helped him by teaching him the ISO Model to increase revenues in their company. He taught me their onboarding process and is sending the documents, videos, and other forms & ads I need to start a strategic hiring process. I also completed a branding change from Carfagno Cleaning to Carfagno Commercial Cleaning and my C3 Experience. My friend Billy designed a new logo and I upgraded my proposal to new offices prospects with my new branding. As I even share this, I'm dumbfounded at how much I got done this month when at times it felt like nothing was happening! Last but not least, I added a key member to my team. For the first time in 16 years, my wife Teresa is stepping up to help the family company. She is a busy homeschooling mom of 5, so I NEVER asked her involvement. I am grateful that she is helping with admin and is taking over the QBO and payroll components from me! I am working hard to delegate as much as possible to focus on growth of new clients and new team members!

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I shared in my last Carfagno Cleaning update, "Stay, Scale or Sell " that the seasons are shifting from Spring to Summer. As promised, I'm departing from my weekly business updates to allow space for other impactful episodes like my interview, "The Cleaning Journey to Nineveh with Josh Melton". I will continue bringing you updates, but during this Summer season of me earning my freedom, I'll be starting this new monthly podcast segment.

Purposely, I mentioned the prior podcasts. In "Stay, Scale or Sell", I laid out my case for Why I need to scale my cleaning company. In the interview with Josh Melton, I saw a man with the same story as me and the same business if I were to scale. After the interview, I reached out to Josh and asked him if I could hire him to coach me to his level. Thankfully, Josh accepted. For the remainder of 2021, I am launching this new segment, which will be a monthly freedom report with my friend and coach Josh Melton. The format may change from month-to-month, but the objective is the same. How is Ken doing toward his goal to enjoy freedom in Florida with his family for a month in the winter? This segment will keep you updated. Plus, I will add actual clips of our coaching calls between Josh and myself. I'm so thankful to Josh. He has built a professional commercial cleaning company with over 60 employees, mostly part-time professionals needing extra money. He calls it his "Chick-Fil-A Model", but more importantly, Josh has an ongoing 6-figure income in the same types of offices I clean and he doesn't have to clean or manage. I wanted this and Josh was willing to help me! Here's the coolest part for Josh. He has wanted to help others do what he has done in a coaching program down the road called the "6-Figure Commercial Cleaner". Josh is also the co-host with his business partner Chad Brown that you should definitely check out! It's called the Entrepreneur Adventure Podcast. In the clip of my first coaching call with Josh, I share some recent wins and my need to start hiring. I also share his take on the pros and cons of the business model I'd like to scale.

There are some updates from June that I would like to share. I will do so in bullet form to make it easier to follow!

• My marketing machine is still working well. I still have house cleaning referrals coming in and unfortunately, I need to reply to all of them with this. "I am taking a waiting list on all new houses. Would you like to be on the waiting list or would you like me to refer you to a cleaning friend as I cannot take any more houses?"  I have done this at least 5 times in June. Honestly, it's inconceivable to think I would turn down work. But I need to because my goal is financial and time freedom through my commercial cleaning business. Where does that leave me with houses? I don't know. I will likely hire someone or train a solo cleaner to take them over.
• I did take one house though. One of the doctors at a vet that I clean wanted her house on a bi-weekly schedule. She trusted me because of my 3-year performance and trust from cleaning her hospital. I put her on my waiting list and at the same time one of my regular clients needed to stop service due to declining health of a family member. I totally understood and wished the family well. This was a good reminder to me how important the waiting list is. I just slid the new client in the place of the one that canceled. Here's the cool part. The new client is $20 more per visit.

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