#174: How Cold Calling Built This Commercial Cleaning Business

Anybody who ever wanted to know anything about commercial cleaning, this episode is for you.

I did not cuss; I don't think I can't remember, but I did say some things that may be offensive.

Like viewer discretion advised.

You let me know if some of the phrases I've used offend you and leave it down in the comments below.

Enjoy!

This is Filthy Rich Cleaners, presented by ZenMaid, the podcast where real cleaning business owners share what works so you can earn more, stress less, and make your business filthy rich.

Hello everyone, welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners Podcast.

I am your host Stephanie from Serene Clean, and today's guest has a very unique story.

I am thrilled for him to share it with you guys.

I have Ty Severa with us, and he comes from a long history of law enforcement and public service, and he brings that into his cleaning business in a really unique way.

Ty, thank you so much for joining me today.

Thank you for having me.

I'm very Excited to be here today.

Heck yeah!

And you, sir, do commercial?

Commercial exclusively, if I'm not mistaken, right?

I do.

We are about 98% commercial.

We have three or four houses that we do on a recurring basis.

Okay, I gotcha.

I gotcha.

And what kind of commercial?

What's the spreader type of accounts that you guys are currently doing?

So we're mainly in small to medium density office.

We have a small amount of small medical.

We're moving into manufacturing.

We have a church campus, retail salons.

We have kind of a little bit of everything, but we're strongest in office space.

Okay, so would you say that's your favorite, is office spaces?

It's probably the easiest to build a scope of work for, but you know, it's they all have their challenges and their quirks, but it's probably the easiest for us to replicate.

Do you have a cursed type for us as a dentist office specifically, where like screw dentist offices?

Ah, for us, it's mainly so.

Restaurants, we've never touched them, but we don't want to touch them.

We're moving into a manufacturing facility that has its actually food manufacturing, but we're not going to be in the manufacturing area, so we're getting a taste of the GMP requirements with that.

But mainly, you know, I haven't really experienced the type that's just like I want to stay away from that.

So, yeah, not yet at least for sure.

Not yet?

Yeah, something juicy will happen, I'm sure.

GNP, what do you mean by that?

What does that stand for?

Believe it's the Good Manufacturing Practice, it's just the abbreviation that they use, but essentially they have their own standards that are laid out and policies that we have to adhere to.

And so some of the things that you know I can share that we do on the policy side that lines up well with that, and I'm excited for that.

But it's not like we're you know in kitchens and deep cleaning commercial kitchens.

Yeah, exactly.

No, I've definitely also steered clear of anything that requires Kitchen work or anything like that, obviously outside of break rooms.

Like we're not calling that, you know, it's a normal kitchen, but any of the large equipment I'm like nope, I don't want to do, totally outside of normal scope.

So, you sir, are in Virginia?

You said Southern Virginia, right?

Yes, Southwest Virginia.

It's Roanoke.

Roanoke born and raised.

Yes, here all my life.

Very cool!

And you have a new baby girl.

Do tell, how has that been?

I do.

It has been the most amazing thing that I ever could have imagined.

She's actually been the happiest baby we've ever like experienced or been around.

She sleeps through the night, and I'm sure that when we have another one, it's going to be completely opposite.

That's what everybody tells.

Oh, that's that's awesome.

And you know, before we started recording, you talked about how you wouldn't even be doing this most likely if it wasn't for her so I would love to hear more about that here.

But as I alluded to in the intro, you have a very unusual coming to this industry line of work.

Like I haven't spoken that I'm aware of to anybody.

You know, somebody correct me in the comments if I'm wrong.

Any former law enforcement that has gone into this?

So I would love to hear about your former career and what led you to this.

Yeah, absolutely.

So going back before my previous career, so my mom cleans; she is a solo cleaner.

She cleans houses for like 40 years.

So my summers when I was a kid was spent helping her clean her houses.

So like I knew that cleaning was an honest and good way to make a living.

And she had some of her customers now that she had literally when I was born, like wow, thirty years ago, twenty-eight years ago.

So she's doing something right.

So, so she's done that, and my dad is an entrepreneur as well.

He's been in the racing industry and NASCAR for years, and he's he's out of that now.

But so I grew up with two entrepreneurial parents, and so I went straight out of high school into public safety.

I was a dispatcher for two years and a police officer for seven.

So I was the youngest police officer to ever be hired by the agency I got hired by.

I was 20 years old when I was hired, and I turned 21 six weeks before the academy we graduated the academy.

So did that for seven years, and really about two years before I left, I'd started getting an interest in self-development, listening to podcasts, and I actually went into real estate first.

So I was flipping raw parcels of land with my brother-in-law, and that was going well.

And I have a very successful father-in-law who Three years in a row, he would sit there when we were on vacation and he'd tell me.

You ought to start a cleaning business for, and do you have any co-workers, any first responders that would want to go out and earn extra money?

And so I thought about that, and every year I never did anything about it.

And you know, we were flipping land, and the year before I ended up leaving, I sat there on the beach and I was like, all right, he's done it like three years in a row.

I'm going to do something about this.

I'm going to do it.

So I told my wife when we were on the way home, I'm going to start this cleaning company, and we started in 2024.

I did one job that entire year.

It was, I wasn't focusing on it at all.

But fast forward to February of '25, we had our first baby, my wife and I did.

And I had a few bad calls leading up to the end right there.

And I had already made my mind up before we went and had the baby that I was not going back.

But I told my wife when we were, my daughter had to have a small procedure done out of town, and we were on the way home from that.

And I was like, "I've written my memo; I'm not going back."

And this is what I'm gonna do.

So, I left in '25 February of 2025 March 25.

And at the time, I was just doing real estate, and the cleaning company was just in the background.

And go through last year.

It just kind of shifted towards okay.

The cleaning company has a lot of growth potential and recurring revenue, and I can't feed my family on you know a flip that closes and we make money and then make two or three months without money, right?

So that's what led me to shift gears there, feast or famine kind of situation.

I'm sure talk me through that, the emotional that must have been incredibly difficult to manage, fear and unknown.

Like, can you walk me through that?

Yeah, I mean, so the agency that I was with was actually one of the highest paid agencies for law enforcement locally.

We were on a step plan, so you're guaranteed a raise every year, and that was not even including the cost of living adjustments.

The benefits were good, retirement was good.

And where I had been with the same county since I was 18 years old.

I could have technically retired at 42.

I would have had to wait to 50 to draw.

So that was really difficult to manage.

Put that aside and leave, and then also with a baby at home.

But I, I think I was mentally in such a bad place that I was probably going to put myself in like a bad, like a dangerous position honestly, or my coworkers or the citizens if I went back.

And so I just I had been listening to so many podcasts, and I had done a little bit of flipping and you know had a little experience there, and I was just like it's either now or never.

And if I fail, I'll just go do something else.

Like I'll figure it out.

But failure never really for me, like I didn't I haven't let it kind of enter my mind.

I mean, there's been times where I'm like, holy crap, what am I doing?

But yeah, it's been tough.

But I'm so glad that I made the decision.

Yeah, it's incredibly brave and obviously working out well.

I'm curious, did you have any questions?

Social pressure or doubt coming at you, because I know I certainly did.

And I was not in that kind of environment—like where friends or family were—they're like, "What the hell are you doing?"

Honestly, I think where I had been—I had been talking about it for a while.

While—and so, like on the real estate side, I was a member of a mastermind here locally, and so I was going, and I'd actually had presented a couple of times at the mastermind about what we were doing in that space.

And actually, I had a lot of people supporting me.

And when I left, it was—I mean—it was like an outpouring of support that I didn't expect.

So that made me feel great about my decision.

I mean, it didn't—that didn't make me earn any more money or anything; it's not like it directly attributed to that—but it gave me a peace of mind that.

That I was thankful to have.

Oh, that's really wonderful to hear that you've had so much love and support from everybody in your life.

That's that's fantastic.

So I want to hear why, commercial?

Why did you have a strategy behind that decision?

Was it simply because you don't wanna do houses because of X Y Z?

Like can you walk me through that decision process?

The original business model—it's kind of shifted a little bit—but we originally.

Just wanted to hire first responders and then their families, and we've expanded out to a different class of people—not different class, but just a broader class of that—and really, it's about like local heroes, right?

So there is inherent value in going into residential spaces with that as saying these are the cleaners—that's cleaning your space.

But for me, it was easier to talk to clients about if I'm saying, "this is after hours," this is.

You know, when nobody's here—you need somebody that you can trust, and that is what it was all built on—it's still all built on.

And it's still an incredible.

It's one of like the easiest ways for me to sell, honestly, is that now it's proven to be increasingly difficult to continue to staff things.

But I mean, that can be solved in my opinion.

It just but that was the main reason I went commercial and then also I like the higher ticket sizes of commercial, to be honest with you, versus residential.

A juicy commercial account is different than a juicy residential account just by nature of, I don't know of a house that we're not in.

A house more than biweekly, and we have you know commercial accounts; we can be there five days a week.

So that inherently makes a little bit easier staffing.

I feel like so absolutely, and obviously if you're open to evening work.

So how did you get your first accounts?

I know, and I definitely want to get into the whole BNI.

You're the president of your local chapter, which I'm sure lots of listeners have lots of questions about BNI because I have recommended it before.

So I want to talk about that heavily.

But first, let's talk about those first accounts.

How did you get them?

What was the experience like?

My first account actually came from word of mouth by nature of having a family member who is successful with having a network.

They just so happened to be at an event, and they said, "Hey, I know this company that's starting up, and I know you guys need a cleaner."

And that company we're still with today; we've been with them almost a year and a half.

Well, let's see.

Yeah, almost a year and a half now.

And they were a nice juicy weekly account right from the start, and about 6,700 square foot office, and just word of mouth on that.

And then our second client came from Facebook, from a forum—just somebody, a business owner posting we need a cleaner—and then the third was BNI.

I went ahead and joined a BNI chapter, and funny enough, when I joined, I was still so heavily in the real estate side.

I was trying to find a way to enter the classification for what I was doing in real estate, which was buying and selling land.

But I was like, okay, that's not really a classification.

And looking back, I'm so thankful I went for the cleaning company because that's become my sole focus, and it's allowed me to really build credibility there with that.

And BNI has—you know—we're.

I think we're at four or five recurring accounts now from BNI, which isn't huge in the grand scheme of things, but when you talk about the investment you make for something like that, and the recurring revenue every month; it's more than paying for itself every month.

So that was the start, and you know we've switched into some outreach and stuff to get clients now.

But you know word of mouth has always been—great—just letting people know what you're doing—and that's—that helped me definitely get off the ground.

What is the population of your guys' area like?

Approximate—I'm just curious how large is this city?

Yeah, so the city itself is about 100 thousand, and then the MSA—if you include Blacksburg—which like Virginia Tech University—is Blacksburg; it's about 400 thousand.

So we've—we've stayed in the Roanoke County area, and we've just recently expanded out by nature of some opportunities that we've had.

But so call it—call it a hundred—and call it two hundred thousand right here in the valley.

Okay, so a nice little—a little city which is a really great—great size I think especially given the angle.

I think your—you're branding and marketing is amazing anywhere like—it's just so unique obviously.

You've already said and alluded to the problem of okay, do I?

How do I keep staffing and growing with this very small market of type of employee.

But I'm, I think just saying we have these like we welcome these people on our staff.

We want these people on our staff.

And like you said, I mean, I don't know how better you can sell.

Like this, per, you could if you can trust this person with your life, you can probably trust them with your facility.

That's amazing.

So, how soon did you start hiring after you got your first accounts?

Yeah, so I actually did this a little backwards.

I feel like, and the reason why is because I did have the real estate there, which was looking back, I'm thankful for the way it went.

But I hired my first employee in June of 2025.

So I we had three accounts.

I was doing two, and I hired somebody to do the third, which was that first building that we had gotten.

So our weekly accounts everything.

The other two were bi-weeklies; they were small.

And the first hire, I was paying too much.

I was paying her too much, which is another thing we'll get around to later.

I pay flat rate, but was paying too much?

But what it did was, we were actually on the way out for vacation that weekend, and I had done my buildings, and you know, her building was coming up.

And the first time I saw revenue hit the dashboard that I didn't have to clean for and be there for, it was like it was life-changing for me.

It was like, holy crap!

That just happened right...

Right, and so she was with me.

She ended up leaving.

I don't know; maybe she was here four months.

But I started hiring additional employees about September, and September of last year was really when I started trying to intentionally grow this and really focusing on it.

So it was really just me until we hired our first few after the first employee, and I ended up closing out 2025.

I wasn't cleaning at all, and it's really continued with the exception of our first whale account.

I would consider that came on, and I was woefully unprepared for it.

But since we staffed it and I got out of cleaning four nights a week, it's been again; I've been zero percent in the field since then.

So I've kind of taken the mindset from the beginning: how do I figure out how to make money and not be in the field?

And that's what I've kept.

And if I'm in the field, then I feel like I'm struggling.

That's how I feel, so that's the mindset I've always kind of taken.

Yeah, I agree with that.

It's just very hard to focus on the business and be strategic when you're physically doing the work.

Obviously, being back up, whatever we do, what we got to do.

But if the focus is to grow, I have two questions.

One: what type of account is it?

I have three questions.

Sorry, I let.

What type of account is it?

Like, what is the facility?

So it is a church campus, and we were originally brought in to do so.

There are two separate buildings, and it's a total of probably forty thousand square feet.

The one has a gym and a daycare with classrooms and bathrooms.

So we do that four nights a week, and then in the church itself, they have a custodian there, but the custodian refuses to clean the bathrooms, and there are eight bathrooms.

Jesus loves me!

I mean, he's nearing.

It's a funny story.

So, so he's nearing retirement, and like his deal is—he loves the floors.

They have VCT floors, and he loves stripping and waxing his floors.

So the floors are the most beautiful tile that you have ever seen in a church—eat off of them!

I'm sure.

Yes.

So when we started cleaning, so we clean all the bathrooms in the church two days a week as well, and that's—it's like 21 toilets; like it's a lengthy clean just for the bathrooms.

But he was mad originally when we were going into mopping the floors, and that was part of our scope of work that they had agreed on.

And so, like our cleaners were getting flack from him; like he was hanging around, like why are you?

What are you doing my floor?

Oh my god!

We're mopping the floor right.

So, so five—he's—he's worked his way around.

He likes our people now.

They're like yeah, he brought me water and like asked how I was doing.

So is this man neurodivergent?

This sounds very neuro—like those are my plans.

No, I think there was prior maybe addiction issues is what I was told, but but they gave him a chance.

He's been there like 17 years.

Good for that!

Good for him.

Yeah, exactly.

And he was supposed Supposed to retire this summer, is what we were told.

So we have already quoted out the rest of the church, and it's another 16 hours of labor that's out there whenever he retires, a week.

It's just a matter if some days he comes in mad and he's like, "I f*** this place, I'm getting out," and then some days he's like, "I'm staying here until next year."

Like so, it's literally we don't know.

Like, luckily, we have the staff to handle it if when it happens right now at least.

But, but, anyways, that's the whale account, and, literally, and this is, I think, a good story for the listeners, I feel like.

So when I started that account, I had two.

Applicants that had applied.

That one of them was a sergeant of mine when I was at the police department.

He and his wife both applied, and so she fit the mold perfectly too because she was in healthcare.

And so they applied.

They started doing our onboarding and training process, and they made it through our training.

And then we were and we had; I had literally told them, you know, this was the scheduling commitment we were going to have.

And it got all the way to you know, right before scheduling them, they were getting ready to go to field training.

And they both said, "we can't do it."

And so I understand.

I would appreciate knowing it now versus having them in the account a week and then they can't.

So it was frustrating, but it's like okay.

All right, so now I'm out there cleaning.

And so I was out there for probably three weeks, four nights a week until I had people that I was interviewing, and they were just in the process.

So it's like it's a slow process, but I knew there was light at the end of the tunnel.

But there was a specific night on Thursday nights at the gym; they have open gyms, like a lot of churches do.

And I go one night, and I'm in you know our attire, and I've got the our janitor cart, and you know, I'm cleaning.

And there's dudes that I went to school with that you know graduated with me that are there playing basketball, and I'm just like yeah, I'm here, I'm scrubbing the toilets, man.

That's that's me.

But so that was like okay, like all right, I'm I promise I'm doing alright, but I know what I'm I know my path, and I know that yeah, is that hard?

I don't even worry about things.

Yeah, it's tough; it's tough.

It is tough.

I definitely have felt that same chip on my shoulder of like yeah, running into people, and like I feel like I have to like give all the no, no, like.

Like this is a good thing.

Like, I want to be doing that.

Like it taught me to be humble, but also, I don't even care because I know what I'm building.

I know where I'm trying to take this, and if I don't get it there, then it's going to be a hell of an experience.

And I'm gonna take it and do the next thing.

But I'm like I feel confident with what I'm doing and so like when I saw them, it's like okay, this sucks, but also like I could be at home doing nothing or watching Netflix or playing basketball.

But like here you are making money and building your dream.

Yeah, yes, exactly.

So that's been a that stayed in my mind a little bit throughout this whole journey.

Oh, absolutely.

Okay, second question: why describe woefully unprepared?

What about it was so challenging?

Was it the staffing specifically, or was there scope of work?

No, the staffing, the scope of work.

I felt really good with, and actually the scope that we do there is very we actually just added some scope today; they wanted to add certain things, but.

It was just the staffing, like you know.

I had it lined up and then it just disappeared.

And then, you know, one of the nights specifically is a heavy night; it's six hours.

And then once a month we do an additional scope on top of it, so that's an eight-hour night.

And so having that, I ended up—I've got some of my best people in the company.

I feel like they're right now.

They're the clients are so happy, and but there early on it was just like how in the world?

I'm going from like at that time our biggest account was weekly accounts, and then so we go from like okay we have.

Weekly accounts and now four nights a week.

Technically, six if you add the bathrooms in the church, or six different scopes a week.

So that was a big learning curve on the staffing and just setting that up.

But once it was set up, it's like okay well everything else is kind of feeling pretty simple now in a way.

But that was a—I was unprepared for that.

The nice thing is, though, is like.

I mean, commercial can be very different for sure.

But at the end of the day, a lot of these places—what's scary is the size and the volume, right?

What's not scary is that's just a toilet.

There's just 30 of them, you know exactly.

My third question coming back to what you said earlier was: you said that I believe in September—that's when you that's when the focus happened.

What did that focus look like?

What did you do?

What behaviors did you change?

Yeah, so I think we had maybe three accounts in September of '25, and I was still cleaning two of them, and we were maybe doing like $1600 a month of recurring.

And so I just looked at the math, and I!

Said if the flips stop, and I don't want to clean.

This is how big I need to be to get to provide for my family, and I just did the math.

And came up with how big I wanted to get there and what I was going to do to get it there.

And so I basically just knew that I had a limited amount of time to grow it to a point without cleaning before I was gonna have to get in the field.

And so I just started marketing for people and really just trying to do a bunch of outreach and just talk to people.

And we actually had a lot of word-of-mouth growth that started happening during that time, which was good to jumpstart us.

But I think we ended the year; we ended at 12 accounts, so went from three to twelve by the end of the year.

And I think that was maybe $4,500 a month of recurring by the end of the year.

So it was small growth, but it was there.

And so from January came, and I just—it was like a solid quarter of just cold calling, and that's what it was.

And it went very well.

I did door knocking too, and I did some other stuff.

We ran some ads, and the cold calling is what we come back to.

That's just—where the gold is for us.

But it—it was just focusing on marketing because at the time I didn't know how hard it would be to continue to staff and catch up.

That's with then, that's why the whole account and unpreparedness happened because we had all this growth that happened, and I wasn't.

The marketing to people to work for me wasn't keeping up with the client marketing, or for new clients, so that's where the focus was.

Was really just how do I market this thing, and it really is—I mean, that's something that never ends.

I feel like that pendulum.

Of oh, no, not enough staff, oh, no, not enough.

I mean, literally, my ops meeting today, we're like, okay, if we hire this person, like, do we, like, can we fulfill their schedule?

You know, it's just, it never ends.

I think you get better at figuring.

What that pace is, and moving quickly when you need to.

I know that everybody's ears perked up, or they put their head in the sand when you said cold calling, so we're gonna dive into that because it is not something that I have talked about.

Heavily on the podcast.

Despite the fact that, for me, getting commercial, during the year, the year of our Lord 2020, when I was like, I need business and nobody's letting us in their houses.

I was cold calling, cold emailing, doing everything I could to get commercials.

And it absolutely works, which I know people are terrified of.

Of this concept, let's do a quick and dirty run me through what that looks like.

How you manage your work?

What kind of goals and expectations you have for yourself around cold calling?

Yeah, so it's easier now because I have the data to show like how many calls I need to get certain things.

But like when I didn't have it, I was quite literally just putting a list together in a spreadsheet of the businesses I wanted to call.

And I mean, I quite literally went to Google Maps.

I called so in real estate is called driving for dollars, right?

And so we did that, and we would end up having a bunch of software that was really expensive as part of the reason why not doing anymore but to pull all the real estate leads.

But for this, it was much more targeted, but it took more time because I'm going on Google Maps and I'm driving for dollars.

But just putting a list together through that of businesses I want to call and quite literally just calling them and you fine tune a script.

I mean, you can put a you can build a script out, and then you got to change it.

And you figure out what works.

But like for my branding, it's very easy.

But for whoever's company that's out there that's trying to grow and what your value prop is, you have to tune it for you.

But if you...

What I learned is if I just approach this as I am trying to help them out because more than likely they have a problem; more than likely their cleaners are not doing a great job.

Which is unfortunate, but I mean you probably can speak to this.

Like, you have clients that come to you and their previous cleaners weren't doing a good job.

So if you approach it in a mindset of "I'm genuinely trying to figure out if they need help because they're dealing with the problem," then the calls got so much easier than it was.

I always had an ethical dilemma with just a problem in my head with real estate with cold calling, and that's where my experience came from.

But I was calling owners trying to get them to sell me their property at a heavily discounted rate, and there were some people who needed to do that to sell.

But the overwhelming majority of people, specifically in land and that asset class, if they own land, they probably don't need to sell it for a discount at a very quick rate.

So I had a problem with that, but it was a lot easier.

And that's what I would speak to anyone: if you're calling because you're trying to genuinely solve a problem, it shouldn't make the calling as hard as it is.

What it should be is intimidating as what it is.

Is I completely agree that when the ease, the more that you believe in what you are providing and that you are helping people.

Which hopefully everybody listening truly feels that is what they're doing and that's what they should be doing.

It does make it easier because you're just like you said, just genuinely trying to see like could we help you?

Because if you're struggling, this is stressing you out whether commercial or residential.

Like I could be the one to solve that problem for you, and why shouldn't it be?

And they're probably spending nearly.

As much with a frankly shitty service, or shitty results.

Because it's usually one of two things: either the quality sucks, or the reliability or communication is awful, and they do not trust that it's getting done correctly.

Any other like so: you really lean into obviously your branding and and the first responder aspect of it, and the trust when it comes to your script.

I'm sure for us what we would do is really lean into like we're local.

Like oh, like I'm calling from this, we're right down the street, in spot.

Like we, I literally say where our office is because then it's like, "Oh, this isn't some random person.

This is somebody in our community."

Because we're such a small town, it is very small-towny of like if I don't know you, I don't trust you kind of thing.

So, so, is there anything else when it comes to scripting?

Obviously, trial and error, but any like really big overarching themes that you would say worked well for you, or maybe cold emailing too?

I don't know.

If you do that, I've never really played with emailing.

I've done some, but I think the overwhelming theme with commercial is there's always a gatekeeper.

So, just figuring out a way to get to that gate or get through that gatekeeper and get to the person who actually makes a decision.

So, I mean, I usually start my conversations, and I'm still to this day when I cold call, is just, "you know, are you guys happy?"

Like, are you guys happy with your current cleaning provider?

And more times than not, the gatekeeper will give you the information.

That you want to know because they're the ones that aren't happy.

They're the ones dealing with it, right?

And then getting past that person is a lot easier when they sit there and say, "Okay, I'm not happy."

Then you're like, "Well, this is what I can offer," or figure out why they're not happy, and then tailor to what.

Figure out if you can bring a value that solves that problem that they're dealing with.

Like for the reliability for us, you know we have some specific things that we market that we're never going to miss a cleaning.

That's that's one of our promises to our clients.

And so when they say, yeah, our cleaners don't even know if they're showing up.

Well, that's like gold and gold to us, right?

So it I think it is going into it with an understanding of you're gonna have a gatekeeper, but the gatekeeper can still give you quality information.

And that's that's for commercial.

I don't have any experience cold calling for residential.

You know, so most or all of our residentials came from referral word of mouth.

But that would be what I would leave for that.

I totally agree.

And with the gatekeeper, you know, for us we do a lot of drop like not right now currently we're not like trying to super pursue anything is kind of just coming from Google.

But when we do drop offs, we always bring donuts.

We bring donuts.

We drop off, and because that gatekeeper if I can ploy you with sweets and you tell me like especially like woman to woman like what's not clean around here?"

And they just they're ready.

They've like I've been waiting to bitch about it.

Right?

Yes.

Yeah.

I had the same conversations when I've done some of the dropping.

I call them door knocks, but with that, and I'll take cookies or whatnot.

I haven't had any.

Luck with converting any of those, but I also once I.

I was going through a period where I was just trying everything and see what worked, and once one showed that it worked, I'm like, all right, well screw the other things.

Yeah, keep doing this.

Yes, yes, yeah.

So that's I've got all those old door knock leads in the CRM.

That's like okay, well, I probably should like call them back because there were a few that said you know they had issues you know for with things, but then the follow up trail just went cold.

I would say that's that's one of the hardest parts with commercial versus residential.

I would say it's much harder to stay disciplined on the follow up because it's a much longer sales process and staying on top of yourself.

And what I mean by that, guys listening, is with residential, it's a very typically like if they're calling you, like they're ready to make a decision.

Whereas, if you are like Basically, trying to woo them and they're like, yeah.

We're on contract till June.

Maybe call back then.

And it's like just you staying on top of yourself.

They're probably not going to call you.

You have to manage yourself in that way and just basically leave a really good paper trail for yourself, whether that be in a CRM or a simple spreadsheet, whatever.

But it is tough to stay on top of it or like just hit people consistently with, for example, a drop off.

Like okay, I'm gonna go back next month to the same person because and just get them familiar with my face so that when they're ready or they're pissed off enough, they think of me.

Quick little break here.

If you have ever been listening to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast and thought oh my gosh, Stephanie would die at this story, well, guess what guys?

I want to hear that story.

Okay, we are looking for guest applications for the show.

And I know many of you have never been on a podcast before.

But those are my favorite episodes, to be frank.

Is the owners who are just here to share their stories.

If you are an owner who wants to share your story, or perhaps you would like to have a free consulting call with me and ask me your questions live for everybody else to learn from—that is also an option.

And then finally, if you know somebody in our industry, you have a friend or somebody that you look up to and have learned from, who you think would be a great guest option for us—please go to the link down in the bio—and we would love to see you apply or nominate them, and we will take it from there.

And I would love to have a conversation with you and get to know you more closely.

Back to the show: one of our early accounts—it was maybe like our fourth or fifth account—was an insurance agency.

But the way I got that account was—I'm sorry, no—what had been?

It was probably our eighth or ninth.

I don't even know, but it was this year.

But the reason I know this is because so right when my daughter was born, I had been invited to a veteran first responder breakfast at a local.

It's a horse therapy stall; they do like therapy with horses.

So I was invited there and I met a veteran there who was an insurance agent at the time, and we of course we were getting along.

He was in or wanting to go into law enforcement, and so we just you know hit it off where he was like you know back at the office our cleaners suck.

I mean they we don't even know if they're showing up, and so we you know exchanged information.

I gave him a card, and we stayed in touch for probably a month.

Well, a month came around, and I was going up for my insurance redo on my car.

So I called him up, and I was like, "Let's see if you can help me out with this."

And he did; he ended up giving me a good rate.

I ended up buying insurance from them.

Well, two months later, nothing had happened.

I think maybe followed up, sent him an email one time—you know—just keeping it warm.

Like, if you want me to come in and quote the cleaning, I'm happy to just—you know—let me know or something along those lines.

But he then—he ended up calling me.

He said, "Look, can you come out?

Can you quote this?"

And you know, just tell us if you are going to be comparable to what we're dealing with or not.

So I did; I went out and I drew up an estimate and I sent it to him.

Waited another few months, never heard anything.

And so this specific insurance agency—they have a board and they have to like put it through the meetings and everything—to change make any kind of changes.

So several months later, he finally called.

He said, "Yeah, we want to go ahead and start your service."

So we started the one building well as soon as we started that, we went and did two—we had two services—it was biweekly—and then I got a call from the regional manager: "Is like hey?"

Can you do the rest of them in the town or in the city?

So I was like, all right.

So we ended up—we have four buildings from them—and we're closing in on probably—I think we started them and no, I couldn't tell you again; I don't remember—but we should be closing in on a year with them.

But so we've got four of their buildings now, and that came from just months of like scratching and clawing—just kind of like—is this actually going to facilitate into something?

And it finally did, and then it like exploded into more buildings.

So, long process.

It is, and like when I think one of our—it's a bow manufacturing facility that we've had for four or five years now.

I guarantee, as a man in the country state, you know what company I'm gonna—I'm talking about—but they come from Wisconsin.

And so I actually used to, when I was a waitress, I would wait on the table of the CEO, and us waitresses would see his car pull up and then, like, fight tooth and nail like I get him!

I get him because I'm really good at tipping.

Oh yeah, sure.

Yeah, I can imagine.

And so did drop-offs—you know—gave them our sales sheet; like just kept hitting them six months later, they finally were like, "I've been staring at this sales sheet, and I'm so annoyed with our cleaners."

Like this is—it's not hat-like—they're not—they're not doing what we need them to do.

So it's like it literally took months and months of pursuit, and now that's five years of so much money and relationship—and, like, it is like for.

Everybody listening is like, I want commercial.

I want commercial guys; it is gonna most likely be harder to get commercial clients.

It's going to take longer.

So it's like if you need money right now, like it's residential that's the case and you can always transition if like commercial is true or true.

This is my what I wanna do strategically.

But you need money?

Do what you need to do to make money, you know.

And actually, I'm curious.

I think you put a post construction job in your intake form.

I want to hear about this how you you lost a little bit of money.

Well, okay, so we have done quite a bit of post construction and deep cleans where I have my real estate background.

I have connections over there, so you know.

We've done quite a bit, but we just we just bid on one.

I'm not sure if this is the one that was in the intake form or not, but we just bid on one and we ended up not getting the bid.

But it was our newest whale commercial account which we started at the end of September.

The contractor on it reached out and wanted us to bid it, and that was a 700-plus-hour labor-hour job that we bid, and that wasn't including windows.

We were subbing out the windows, and we had our sub go and give us a quote for that.

And so that was one that I was on the way out on vacation, and I got a call from a 540 number; it's our area code.

And I always answer those.

And I was driving literally, and he told me who he was.

I was like, oh, I know what this is about.

And I was like going out of vacation for a week, and I was like, oh God!

So he's like we need a bid by the following Tuesday.

I was like, yep, I'll make it happen.

And so I sent my lead out to do it, and then our window guy sent them out together, and they gave me all the information they needed.

We had measurements from the janitorial side; you know, we've been—it's another one of those.

This started like back in February or March, and it's taken until now to get a signed contract.

So, and so that would have been a massive job, and we were just going to figure it out and make it work.

And we actually got word back that we were very competitive on the bid; we were not the low bid, but it was one of those situations where they went with a low bid.

And the company that low-bid us was had been doing work for them for like ten years.

And so I was pleased with the outcome of that, but that's actually transformed into further opportunities.

We're now on their vendor list.

We're getting opportunities to bid on some additional projects, and so that's never really been something that there was a time this year where I had a few different opportunities to bring somebody.

On and build out like a specialty division, and I passed those opportunities up just because I felt like I needed to focus on this until I get it to a certain point.

But that will come back around and circle back around because there is money there.

Like for anybody out there listening on the post-construction side, those are we got in with a builder early on.

It was actually the second clean I ever did in February of 2025.

He was a builder that builds houses here locally and in North Carolina, and he was posting on Facebook saying he needed a post-construction cleaner.

Not his words; I quote were not somebody who can do post-construction, somebody who does like is a post-construction cleaner with experience.

And I was like, here, here I am!

I had no experience.

Like I didn't have any equipment, and I was like, all right.

So I went and did my first job, and he was like ecstatic.

He was like, "This is the best post-construction clean I've ever had."

And so we ended up doing probably forty or fifty jobs for him over the last holy crap!

Yeah, we've done quite a few, and those can be very profitable, but they can burn you too.

So, and we got burned.

I think maybe I put this was what I meant to put: we got burned on a deep clean on a triplex.

A deep—that's what it was that I remember.

Triplex.

That's what it was.

Yeah, okay.

So that one.

So I do written.

Scope of works for everything now, but there was a time when I was doing.

Written scope of work for recurring cleans, but I was just kind of free balling the deep cleans, which was a terrible mistake that I obviously learned from it.

But we went out and did a clean, and I had gone out to do the walkthrough, and I had missed a bunch of things.

I mean, there were maggots stuck to the inside of cabinets, and like just tons of mouse droppings and the worst part was there was a sign on the door where the house was approved.

They were like a ghost kitchen in this house, and that yeah.

So but it was like that was how nasty this house was.

It's like it's disgusting.

But so we went in and did it.

And we missed a few things on the first clean, and we I went out and I was like, "we definitely miss these things."

We'll go out and we'll fix them."

Well, we went out and fixed it, and we did everything that was on what we had agreed on.

I went back on the messaging, and even though it wasn't written scope of work, it was still written somewhere that we did what she said that she wanted us to do, and then she complained again.

So I went out, and we ended up being like double the hours on this job that we were even bid to be, and she still never was happy.

And then she ended up never paying us, and so yeah, I contemplated taking her to court, but then it was like you know what?

I'm just going to learn from this and move on because it's a waste of my time.

And so yeah, that one ate at me for a while because I'm like, "Do we suck?"

Like, what are we doing?

But now, so it was a smoking house, and I learned from you, like okay.

Don't do smoking houses, and we have certain clauses now.

With, like, if we find rodent droppings and, like, infestations and all that stuff and a written scope of work with a post-walkthrough all came from that one learning lesson.

I'm losing that money because, I mean, that was a close to a thousand-dollar job that we ended up going double the hours on, and then I still didn't get a dime of it.

So it's like I just ate at all.

So yeah, so I learned on that one, and yeah, you're never gonna forget all of those things.

And that's the thing is like I really appreciate silver linings, and I feel like if I can if I can impart any wisdom on everybody listening as one, get freaking guidelines and contracts and things like that right?

Like get that stuff: scopes of work.

But two is being able to look at every single mistake and thing as like okay, what are we going to learn from this, and let's never have that happen again.

I want to talk about pricing and how you pay.

You said you play, pay flat rate.

You said you started too high.

I think pricing is one of the scariest parts about commercial—how?

How do?

How do I do this right?

How do you figure out your pricing for commercial?

Yeah.

So early on it was just you know hope and a prayer, but you know now it's a lot.

I have a calculator now, and so I'm actually very meticulous.

I go in and I do measurements, and I count off how many toilets, how many sinks, how many.

How many toilet sinks?

How many like surfaces?

Like I do, I do everything now.

Fixtures yes, and so I have a sheet that we go by when we're in the field, and then we just plug it in our calculator, and then we just sit and look at it.

And I go with my lead now because she's out in the field far more than me, and I say, "look, how do you think this?

We can actually clean this building in this time, and so."

And then we adjust it from there.

But that we've gotten it more tuned as we've obviously had more experience.

But I will say that commercial is really tough, just because I mean, we have a like this, for example, we have a 2,000 square foot building that we're in for three.

Hours, and then we have the same ten thousand square foot.

Building, we're in for the same two hours.

Because the scope is so drastically different.

So it's really tough.

And you know, I've I've leaned on a mentor down in Tennessee a little bit.

That's helped me.

Like, is this ISSA measurement or whatever?

Like, is this close to what I should be?

And then I like get some information from him and I dial it into the calculator.

And then we go and bid enough, and really you just have to go and learn your production rate.

And that's what we've had to do is just learn our rate and then adjust our calculator to it, and not worry about what the competition really is.

We know our rates and our standards, and then kind of tune it to that.

And still, like I mean, we started this big account in September, and I'm still just like I hope it was right, you know?

But we'll see.

I don't know, but there's always that yeah.

That's how I felt when we started our business because they included expendable items, you know, all of them, right?

Everything.

And we don't do that.

Like that's not something we provide.

We don't bid it.

Because like telling me to provide enough toilet paper for a facility, you can't even tell me how many people are going to be there.

Cause it's like, well, sometimes people work from home, but sometimes they don't.

And I'm like, so how the f am I supposed to know how much toilet paper we're going to go through?

So it was a total yeah, that's possible.

Literally, or like tampons.

Like, how many women work there?

And I'm like doing calculations on like one period per like, yeah, just like, oh my lord!

I would just be lost.

I'd just plug a number and just hope it's good.

And that's exactly, luckily, like, that I guesstimated correctly, and we're like, it's super healthy margins, but that, like, that's an example of you can absolutely lose your ass on commercial.

Like, you have to read so carefully, like, what is included now with AI.

It's so much easier of like, plug in AI with the you know request for proposal or all of the details that you have and be like, what am I missing?

What could I be missing here because that happens so often where people are excited, probably.

The bids are due yesterday, and they're like, "Let me just get it," you know, like, "get it!"

It's this huge number, and they're so excited because they're like, this is gonna add five thousand dollars, but it's like, yeah, but if it costs you seven, it doesn't matter.

I literally did that today.

Plugged it in, and it's—it's funny like you use AI enough to where it like starts to know your company and exactly what you're doing.

And it's like this is not a good bid for you to submit.

Like don't—don't do this.

And so yeah, I do that, and it's—it's definitely helped me with a couple different—you know things that's come up like that.

And you just with commercial, like I do the flat rate, and we do—we pay flat rate and we bill flat rate.

So it's like our margins are fixed, but I have to closely monitor our cleaning time, our performance because then I got to make sure my people are getting paid adequately.

So that's where you know there—there's always variance at the beginning when somebody's new on an account or new or where it's a new account period.

There's always variance at the beginning, and so like accounting for that and then making sure it stabilizes where it needs to be.

And so I've been very upfront with people, and a lot of the listeners are probably gonna like think this.

Is crazy, but like we're—I already start my people at hourly rate that's significantly higher than the average wage here for—for work that we do, but on the flat rate side, I even bid it higher because I like if I bid it higher.

That's my buffer, right?

Because if I'm paying my people X an hour and then add two dollars an hour to it on the bid, for example.

The flat rate side, then, if it actually is we underbid it, then I can still be able to pay them the hourly rate that they're getting paid.

But our average hourly rate on our flat rate overall, the accounts, so all the small accounts and the big accounts, but it's like thirty-three dollars an hour.

That's incredible!

That is incredible.

And so, the margins are still healthy.

So it's like I'm thankful for that, and I have that as a fallback.

On the other hand, if we do have those accounts that we mess up on, you know, if we get through it to get through the period until we can do like a price review or whatnot.

So, but I've done flat rate from the start for the recurring stuff, and that's I don't have any plans to go away from it.

It's been very good for us, I would say.

I have a lot of questions about, so you know, we obviously we charge all commercial, well, except very rarely is anything hourly in the realm of commercial, right?

But let's just for all intents and purposes say all commercial is flat rate for us, and we pay hourly because so many of our cleaners are hybrid and they do both residential.

Like it was just be convoluted to do that.

Additionally, one thing I wonder about with paying a flat rate, not a percentage, right?

You're talking this job pays this much, right?

Like that is how you do it, right?

So, for people who are interested in this, like isn't it hard?

Like is it not difficult?

So you have two accounts that you bid, and this one you had to be a bit more competitive on.

And so you bid it less, and now that cleaner, even though they're cleaning the same amount of time, like they're getting paid less at you know facility a versus B because B you were able to be higher.

Like, has that ever come up?

I mean, it sounds like for you, that's not an issue, but if somebody is experiencing that, cause I've thought, like, oh, maybe I should do this, and I'm just like, yeah, but we make vastly different amounts at these accounts.

Like, right, yeah, it's crossed my mind, but typically the way, that it works, I mean, the bigger the account, the lower.

Margin the account, and typically I have to bid those at a lower rate, closer to our average hourly rate for our people.

And I, when I realized that was what I was going to have to do as an owner, I just went to my whole team and told them that this is what, this is how.

This is going to work if we're cleaning a once-a-month building, and our margins are going to be higher because we bid it that way.

Like it's we're gonna have to drive all the way across town for this building once a month or twice a month.

So we set the property or the flat rates higher intentionally for that.

And so there are some accounts that we have them set.

It may be an hour building and it's set at $45 because we're accounting for travel time.

We're accounting for everything.

So as a blended rate, we just make sure that everybody is making a blended rate that's above the adder above what their hourly rate is.

And so and then you know when we do our offers that they sign, you know, our employment offers, we have that language built in.

It's like this is the pay system for the recurring accounts.

Like this is your hourly rate for your training or any hourly assignments or anything.

So that's where the blend comes from.

But we have that language that says on property pay or flat-rate accounts, this is the structure and how it works.

And so they agree to that from the beginning.

You know I don't do it this way, but I'm sure lots of people do.

People want to, so I want to make sure I'm asking enough questions here.

Is there any confusion?

Because I know some people get this with percentage pay too.

Of explaining because what is attractive about hourly is they know how much they're going to make right, like it is guaranteed you are going to make this much per hour.

So, when it comes to your job listings and things like that, how do you?

Do you have any pushback of like, but I don't know how much I'm gonna make?

Do you just say on average this is what a team member makes, like, or how do you how do you sell the pay basically?

So we frame it differently because we say that this is how much you're going to make.

Like, no matter if you go out and you need to have a lunch break at the building or you go out and you clean in an hour, like, that's as long as.

So, we sell it as.

As long as the scope is complete and it's to our standards, and our clients are happy, this is what you're going to make, and you kind of have it's kind of in your wheelhouse how fast you clean.

Like, if you're going to talk to someone today who's interested in applying and he's like, I'm you know, a slow, I was like, well, but this is how everything is based on our company performance rates, right?

And so, like, remove the outliers—such as the fastest people and the slowest people.

Find the averages, and that's what we set the expected pay on the accounts at.

And then, that's what the pay, the flat rate pay, is built on.

So, we really haven't had any pushback on that because we just sell it as you know, you're gonna make this amount.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean that's whether as long as you show up to pay or as long as you show up to clean, you're going to make you know that amount for that building kind of thing.

What kind of quality protective mechanisms do you put in place?

Are they do they get a hit?

Do they get a penalty?

What is that, or is there the opposite?

Is there quality bonuses?

So, say you have a quality issue, what does that look like?

Yes, so we just rolled out part-time benefits.

We have full-time core benefits are coming too.

But the first benefits were part-time, and so we do have a quality incentive.

And so we track it based on like a labor hours per complaint ratio.

And so if our people are at a certain ratio and up when they have their quarterly reviews, they're eligible for the quality bonus.

And if they haven't met a certain amount of hours, like let's say, they are not eligible.

Say they're a really low-frequency cleaner.

It's just based on not having X amount of complaints, but there is a bonus that's there for them.

And then, in terms of the quality control system, so ZenMaid is a cleaning robot.

That's ever evolving for us and something that we've changed.

But we used to be just solely relationship based, and we'd say we're going to talk to our clients X amount of time in a quarterly you know period.

And we had a situation recently this year where, if we would have had a system that we did blind inspections, that would have helped us.

We were triggered by certain events, and we would have caught the issues before it went as far south as it did.

I mean, we've we've we built the system specifically for what happened with the cleaner that we had, and it was like okay, would this system had stopped this?

And if the answer was yes, we were going to do the system and roll it out.

And so now we have based on like a staffing change or certain relationships touch with a client if it goes a certain way.

Or if the cleaner on the time side, if they clean it X amount faster than what they're supposed to, it triggers an inspection.

And that's you know we actually go out and we'll do a blind inspection and they don't know about it.

Until we give them the results, obviously.

So just to keep everybody honest on that.

So that system has been released with us; it's new.

It's about three weeks old since we've built it and rolled it out.

But yeah, it was based on a bad experience with that.

What do they miss?

What do they do?

Well, I wasn't actually going to bring this one up.

There was another employee story that I had, but so this was a cleaner who was doing very well.

He ended up going out on surgery leave for six weeks, and when he came back, he was assigned a different account.

And it is our—it's a—it's a retail space and a salon together with an apartment over top.

Then we do the common areas too; so we do the whole building.

And so it's complicated, but we have a video checklist and walkthrough, so they can go and literally look at what doors need to be locked, what doors what are they doing?

And what they're not trying shouldn't be any excuse why.

And then the cleaner who was previously on that account trained him on it when he came back, so should not have been any excuse.

Well, the first week, he missed a door that was critical to locking because the people in the apartment can access the retail space through this door if it's left unlocked.

Yeah, so that was a complaint obviously sustained.

So the next visit he goes—I actually get my haircut at this place—so like I go and I do an inspection all the time when I'm there.

I was there yesterday, but so I go in and it had been two or about a week and a half since he had been there, and he had done it again after the first.

Oh my god!

But they didn't call and complain about it on that one, but it happened again.

So we were like okay, so we went further in our discipline, and then the third time he goes, he didn't clean an entire bathroom.

And so that was like, and this is where a learning moment for me.

I should have caught him then.

But if we had done a blind inspection after the first complaint, after his second one, it would have stopped that.

And then if we had done a blind inspection after the third cleaning, it would have caught the bathroom that wasn't cleaned.

And then, and also on that third cleaning, he had locked himself out.

So we had to go.

It's one of the accounts we don't have a spare key for.

Oh, so embarrassing!

I'm sure you heard my big one where a car got stolen with a key in it.

Yes, yes, awful.

Yeah, this was a Sunday evening at like eight o'clock at night, and my lead is responsible for the keys, but it was one of those where I'm just like the call went to me, and I'm like all right, she.

She had actually gotten home from being out of town, so she had had a busy week taking over my responsibilities, and I was like, "All right, I am just going to do it."

So I had to drive all the way across town to the client, get a key, go downtown, let them in the building, go back to the client, take him back the key, and then go home.

So I was not happy.

So then we—the fourth week—he was this was like the short leash moment—and we put him back on an account he had previously that is literally a two-hour in-and-out one of the easiest buildings we do.

And so my lead went and did a blind inspection after he did; he went cleaned, and he didn't do anything—like it was complete, nothing was done.

She had to do a complete re-clean, and so we let him go the next day.

But yeah, so.

That system came from that because that would have caught the second and third quality issue, and that would have made the fourth quality issue not even become a problem.

And he would have been gone at that point.

Thank you for being transparent and actually spelling that out because this is really solidifying the point of the danger zone of when issues arise when you are going to lose a client is when things change, right?

Transitions, new cleaners, a new scope of work, even new people in their office.

You know, sometimes a new general manager comes in and frankly they're trying to be the boss and say, "this and that," and I'm just like, "we haven't had a problem here," and then it happens.

So, it's like do not ignore that or, like, if you get a complaint, guys, then do a quality check the next cleaning because nothing is worse than one complaint actually.

Is two complaints of the same issue or the same account?

You want to toss yourself off a bridge when that happens.

So please just use it as a trigger for a complaint quality check.

Quality check the next clean, easy, right, and then it shows the cleaner that you mean business.

So that whole system was built from that.

And then the I was excited to tell this one: so yeah, we just had a cleaner, and he was in training.

And I had taken my lead, is great.

I have a phenomenal operations lead that I promoted.

She still cleans some, and she's about to be full-time for me.

And but she's been leading about half of our counts and then doing like all the training, all the supplies, all the key runs, everything.

So she was field training a new cleaner the week that I was on vacation.

This was probably three weeks ago now, and they were at a building.

And he made a comment while he was there.

Well, his several comments; several things were made, but he made a comment that was an Alexa and he said, "Wouldn't you think it's funny if we said 'Hey Alexa, play seventies music at eight o'clock on Monday morning'?"

And my lead said she didn't think anything of it because she didn't know that Alexa would have, so I come back into work Monday.

I was training a different cleaner in place of my lead because she needed part of the day off, and she had to come in.

We did our lead meeting while I was there with that cleaner, and so she comes in.

Or let me back up.

So about 30 minutes before she comes in, I get a phone call from the said client with a complaint, and she is pissed.

And she's like, "We got here at 8:30, and there is music blaring so loud in the parking lot that, like, you can hear it in the parking lot from the Alexa."

And I was like, okay.

.

So my lead comes in for our meeting, and she's like, like being in law enforcement, you can tell when people are off.

And she's like, she's a little bit distraught; she's off.

She's like, first thing out of her mouth before I said anything, "I don't think this ex is going to work out."

And I said, Okay?

Why?

And she literally describes exactly what was said to the Alexa plus some other stuff.

And so, yeah, so there was some other stuff that was said that was unprofessional and ended up, Cutting him, or you know, from that.

But I just have a complaint that was professionalism based from somebody who was a retired first responder.

So just because I'm doing what I'm doing with the people doesn't mean like the humans are still humans, and so that's the challenge is because the other person got fired in this.

The first story was a first responder.

Yeah, doesn't mean that they're yeah, like yeah, just without fault.

They're human.

Yes, exactly.

They're human.

So that's that's the challenge for this year.

That the second one I just told Alexa.

Just I was so mad.

So embarrassing!

So mad when I called the client back, I told the client it's out of transparency.

Like look, this is what happened.

This cleaner is not going to be a cleaner for you anymore.

I didn't know at the time; I wasn't going to be for us because I had more investigating to do on it.

But I told her I was like, "This cleaner is not gonna be your cleaner anymore."

I'm so sorry, and we give you credit for this cleaning and let's move forward from this?

She was like, absolutely, like it's okay.

The cleaning was great, but like and so.

I was like to have a complaint that wasn't even clean related on a Monday morning when the like I have all this other stuff to do and this is what I got to deal with.

I feel like that exemplifies business ownership so well.

It's like the essence of life.

Just absolute.

The my I always thought I was a creative person, but not until I was an owner and could see the level of like behavior, excuses, lying.

I mean, I'm sure as a cop you saw it so much.

Like my uncle was a lifelong cop and he is like a human lie detector; like he knows when somebody's lying and so, like especially with some of the things that cleaners tell you or clients too, it's just insane!

Like what is coming out of your mouth?

Is insane.

I couldn't believe it.

Like, even with the law enforcement background, I'm like just the fact that somebody could do that, and then some of the like, like.

Just oh my god!

Like they set a panic alarm off at another building and this was an accident.

But they set a panic alarm off while they were dusting, and law enforcement comes out, and my lead goes out and has everything cleared up.

The officer's leaving; he's like walking away, and then he comes out and he's like, "Don't worry, officer."

I hid all the paraphernalia before you got here.

I was like, okay, we're done.

Like we're done here.

And that's not even it.

That was more.

Okay, was this man in his fifties?

Like because I feel like...

Okay, yep, I can clock it.

I am stereotyping.

They make bad jokes.

Okay, they make bad.

That's not funny.

It wasn't funny for me.

I don't think he was expecting to be let go over it, but he wasn't coachable either.

Two different trainers had him, and he wasn't.

And like we have policy or procedures and how we clean, and I'm not perfect, and we're going to continue to learn and change things.

But like you're not even out of training yet; like you're coming in and saying oh I'm not gonna do that" or "oh I'm gonna do that."

Like that's not gonna fly with me for like my lead tells me that she tells everybody this.

Like you go to Ty, like if you got something, tell him because he's very receptive to it.

And I try to be very receptive to everything.

And if we figure out something that we need to do, like I'll add a policy or I'll change a part or whatever, to try to make it as efficient as possible, and listen to my people.

But when it's like that, it's like okay, come on, at least get yourself established here, get off the field training, and then say what you want to say.

I know it's kind of crazy sometimes when they act a fool within the first couple weeks.

I'm like this is your best behavior, exactly.

This is all right.

So glad you did it now.

I know, right?

Before I got you on a bunch of accounts, exactly.

Wow, so how has this changed you?

Like if you were to say, how is owning this business changed you?

The management piece, like managing people and just realizing that.

I guess there's a way to make money doing a lot of different things.

Like, I mean, my mentor has told me along the ways like if you just are there for your clients, like they'll pay you to do just about anything.

We have a client that will call us and hey can you do the carpets up here or hey can you like deep clean our bleachers?

Like, steam clean them.

Or, look, we have one client that's like, "hey, we need some stuff painted."

And I'm like, "ah, we don't do that."

But, like, it's the opportunities that present themselves, and that's one thing that this has taught me.

And it's just, I guess, clients always first, right?

And if you do that, then I guess things good things will come.

That's what I've learned.

I take the mindset of I want to make this a sellable business.

That's why I haven't cleaned from the beginning.

If I could, I don't know if I ever would want to sell it.

But that's that's the mindset I've always taken.

And if I can achieve that.

Then, you know.

I feel like I have learned so much from owning a cleaning business and managing that.

I feel like I could do about whatever you know business-wise.

It just—it's probably overly confident, but it's taught me a lot.

I feel like once you can do that—the management, the finances—all of that culmination—I do feel the same way: I could figure out especially another like home service—no problem.

You know?

It's like okay, so that can't be that difficult.

I mean, that could just be my overconfidence showing and ignorance, but—but I was like, "Okay, we can do this; we can do other stuff too."

And it's so true: people want their problems solved, and they are happy to pay for it, and whatever that problem may look like.

So I'm so happy that we had this conversation.

This was really enjoyable.

It's.

I love when I as I said before we start recording, when I can talk to folks who do commercial exclusively because I know so many of our listeners are interested in it.

They see the juicy money, and they're like, "Oh my god."

Like I need to do this, but it's not for everybody.

That's for sure.

I mean, if you could give like, the top like worst parts about commercial.

What are them to scare people off at the end?

Here, what would you say are the hardest parts about commercial for us with we're premium.

We position ourselves as premium and so large bids are tough for us.

And that's if you're in commercial.

You're going to have a lot of government bids.

Like one came to me today.

That they literally will have the verbiage in the bid that we'll go with the lowest reasonable bid.

Right.

We were recently asked to bid on the YMCA here and that was an opportunity that was gonna present more I M C.

As.

But that was a seven-day-a-week job with a day porter and nighttime.

Seven days a week, and it was like when I calculated what they're currently paying.

And the billable rate of that.

I was like, I mean, their billable rate is like what I pay my people.

Like there's no way.

So the hardest part about commercial is learning that the big juicy accounts sometimes there's no juice to squeeze whatsoever.

Depending on your model and your business, and how you pay your people.

The long sales process is definitely tough.

I mean, it's tough.

But then the after-hours stuff: if you're not an after-hours person, you got to understand you're going to be staffing stuff late, and the phone might ring at ten o'clock; it might ring at midnight.

If your people are out there, if you don't have a management layer in place, and it's you, then you know that phone call has got to be answered.

If it's your people, I mean, you got to be there for your people.

So residential is easier in that regard because your people are there during the day.

If you're not a night owl, it's it has the potential to be really tough if you don't have those things in place to kind of mitigate that.

And I don't have you say all those things to discourage people, but I want to be realistic: is, you know, they hear me talk about commercial and they like, oh, you know, think we're at like seventy-seven accounts now, and it's like, I want that, I want that, and it's like trust me, like it's not.

It's not all rainbows and butterflies; it can be really shitty.

And so I just want everybody listening to have a realistic understanding and perspective of what this can look like.

That yes, you can absolutely do commercial successfully, but it's not all perfect, and not every account is—you know—could have a bunch of turnips that are.

You're not squeezing anything out of.

Well, Ty.

This has been amazing.

If folks want to follow along on your business journey, where can they follow you?

Yeah, so I'm on Facebook just Ty Severa and then we have Company First Response Building Services Facebook and Instagram, and then I post a lot more business content on LinkedIn.

So you can find me Tyler Severa on LinkedIn.

I have gone through those phases of just sharing all the business content, and then kind of just not had the time to do that.

But I do share a lot more of the nuts and bolts on there when I can.

Sweet awesome!

Well, thank you so much, everybody.

Please leave Ty some love in the comments.

This has been a great one.

We've gone over an hour because I'm just like I have so many questions.

So thank you for such a stimulating conversation.

I really appreciate it.

Yeah, absolutely.

I've enjoyed it as well.

Perfect.

Well, everybody, please hit that like, hit that subscribe, and we'll see on the next episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners.

Bye guys.

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