#176: How Dave Camenga Built a Thriving Janitorial Business with 30+ Cleaners

I literally cannot wait for you to hear this conversation.

Little content warning: I do say some minor cuss words.

I think I say the s-word.

And the B word.

So, if you got little ears and you care about those particular words, maybe throw some headphones in or save this one for later.

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 a fabulous guest is Mr. Dave Kamenga, and he is the owner of Dave's Cleaning Consultants in Baltimore, Maryland.

And guys, this young whippersnapper is impressive!

Okay, he has just been an entrepreneur since apparently the womb, and I cannot wait for you guys to hear his story.

Dave, thank you, thank you for joining me.

Stephanie, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for reaching out.

I'm so glad you reached out.

You know, I love to be able to share my story and, Tell people, you know, you know how it got started.

You know, it's my favorite part when somebody asks me; I'm like, "Well, it's kind of a long story," but I love to dive in and you know tell people about it because I love hearing other people's stories.

So thanks again, Stephanie!

Oh, absolutely, and me too.

I just love a good origin story, and I think especially in our industry there is such a diversity of backgrounds.

When I'm interviewing people, I'm like that—just such wild backgrounds.

So for you, cleaning was a hobby as a young lad?

Do tell.

So funny.

So I actually started out cleaning; it was more so for me.

It was like I had this...

Like any time I felt disgusted, I was always just like the first thing I wanted to do was just clean.

I wanted to just get everything clean.

I wanted fresh linens.

I wanted the trash taken out and I wanted a clean bathroom.

And you know, I grew up with my family.

We were all a big family.

Like, I mean, I guess you could say big family, but I had three older sisters, and you know, the house it was always dirty.

There was, you know, there's a lot of stuff going on.

So I would always clean the house.

Like when I got home from school, I would clean the house.

On the weekends, I would clean the house.

And my mom loved me for that because she, you know, never had to clean the house.

But she—I will tell you—my whole family is—they're all very hard workers.

But my mom was the one that really, you know, taught me how to clean.

And you know little did she know I would have a thriving cleaning business 11 years later right?

But yeah so I started cleaning houses, for you know, like I said, my family and then it was just like friends after that.

You know, my mom had some friends, my sister had some friends, and she started just telling them, like, oh, my brother, you know, has a hobby he likes to clean.

Keep in mind I started this hobby of mine in literally fifth grade, so in fifth grade I was cleaning people's houses.

I did not drive, I did not have insurance, I didn't have anything right?

I was cleaning people's houses and they were just like, "Oh, Dave, that's so nice, yeah, we would love someone to clean our house," you know, and I was really good at it.

So then, by sixth grade, one of the houses I was cleaning, which was a friend of a friend, they said we have a local gym.

And they're like, "Do you clean gyms?"

And of course Dave's not gonna say no to cleaning gym.

I said absolutely we clean gyms.

Keep in mind I had no idea how to clean a gym.

I had—I wasn't even—I didn't have insurance.

I didn't know anything.

I was just kind of going along with it.

But yeah, so just by word of mouth, it just kind of like one thing after another.

I just took every opportunity and then by seventh and eighth grade, right?

I told you guys earlier, I had—I have three older sisters—and they all did the thing—they went to college.

They—you know—that's what their thing was, right?

For me, I hated school.

I—I never really liked school.

I always had been doing something with business.

I was doing landscaping.

I was doing house clean.

I was—I was doing a little bit of everything, right?

So I always look forward to that when I came home from school.

I never did my homework; like I wouldn't do the homework or anything.

Like I would go right to doing my business.

I would be reaching out to people, calling it—and this is, like I said, I think some people just are meant to do business and right for me.

Me, I just—I did it.

I did the thing and then yeah, kind of went from there.

Oh!

I'm just literally stunned right now.

This is Shocking, like stupendous.

And tell me about that.

There must have been the attention right between the schoolwork and your responsibilities when it comes to being a teenager.

Things like that.

What was your parents' response to this?

And you know, okay, say your grades were struggling.

Like how did they do?

Did they give a shit really or were they like, no, we know you're going to do this, and were they supportive?

Yeah, it's really funny.

So, in the beginning, I had my dad's support.

He would drive me around, and he actually would come clean with me sometimes.

He would actually, yeah, so because a lot of the times I was cleaning, I would clean like after school.

Like, you know, he would either drop me off at the house, or my mom or my dad would drop me off at the house.

I had a really good friend in the neighborhood that would drop me off at the house, or like on the weekends, my dad actually would come along with me.

And then when I got that gym that I was cleaning, he would come at nighttime and clean that with me.

But yeah, I think what really made me like push so much is the fact that I did not want to go to college, right?

I really I knew my sisters you know all went to college.

That was you know that's the typical thing.

You know you go to school, you do you know and then everyone at school you know they're playing video games, they're outside playing, and then there's me.

I'm building this business and it's so lonely even at that young age, like I felt how lonely it was, right?

It was, you know, obviously it's not the scale that I have today, but it was definitely.

Dave.

There were some days I'm like Dave, why am I, why am I not just going outside and playing?

And why am I cleaning houses?

Why am I doing landscaping?

You know, so I definitely had you know thought a couple times, like why am I doing this?

But I think to answer your original question, My parents were very supportive of it.

You know, they, to be honest with you.

They didn't really care so much.

My dad cared, you know a lot, and he's like, "you should go to," you know, "you should go to college and you should do this and you should do that."

Whatever.

But my mom was always worried about me too.

They were all worried about me, but you know I got it done, and you know, I think my grades weren't the best, but you know I got it done.

You know?

Did you have examples of entrepreneurship in your life because it's just typically when I hear people who start like this, I mean, really so young or just have that urge, like they have had this example somehow.

So, did you like, when it comes to business, what drew you to it specifically?

To be honest with you, nothing in particular drew it to me.

It was just like it was a hobby of mine, like I said earlier.

It was just something that I didn't even realize there was really like a need or even like a one.

It was just kind of like started cleaning houses, and then I just, it was a hobby, and then it wasn't.

No one really drew it to me, but I was.

Surrounded by a lot of hard workers, my family are very hard workers.

My mom was always hardworking; she was working at the hospital.

She was a nurse, and she always put in the hours.

My whole family—we were all hard workers—so I guess I got my work ethic definitely from my family for sure.

Yeah, so but no, no business background.

So you turn eighteen?

Actually, you know what?

Go ahead.

I will say go ahead.

Sorry not to cut you off.

I will say my parents did use to flip houses.

They used to flip houses.

They used to renovate the houses and sell them.

But okay, no, there was no like I guess you could consider that.

But I personally didn't really know about that until I got a little bit older, you know, because they did that when I was younger.

Wow!

That really is it just clearly.

It's like yeah, you had to get this out of you and do this thing.

That's incredible.

Sorry to add to that.

I think for me it was kind of like I had this vision in my head, like I was like this is what I want."

I don't want to go to college, like after I did more research on the cleaning business, I'm like I could make this something right.

I could, I could really make this like my full-time thing, and I always dreamed of like one day just cleaning offices at night and making a living, right?

And that's, you know, that was I, I did have a vision in my head, but at first I thought I wanted to house clean.

At first, I wanted this like massive house cleaning company, and, like, but then it completely shifted because as I, you know, was getting older, I was realizing, you know, I've got to figure out like, everyone around me was like picking what college they're going to, and I'm like, I don't know if I want to do this, and you know.

And I will say my favorite class during school was business class.

I was the best.

I loved my teacher.

That was the one class I had my eyes on the whole time.

All the other classes, nothing.

I did not care about any of the other classes.

But I was in the business class.

I remember we had a project and the project was to create your own business plan.

And what did I do it on?

The cleaning business.

I had the whole presentation done in a day.

Everybody else was working on it for two weeks.

I had it all.

What kind of competitors direct and indirect?

I mean, I had everything done.

And my teacher was like, "Wow, you had it all."

He's like, "You have," I was like, "Yeah, I have my own company."

He's like, "Oh my god!

Really?"

Anyways, it's crazy.

I so can relate to that pressure, that external pressure to go to college and almost look down upon if you don't.

I remember I was in high school and you'd sit down with the guidance counselor and talk through like you know your plans or whatever.

And I was like, I'm going to go to a tech college and get an associate's degree right?

Because I was adamant.

I was like, I am not having school.

Debt, like I'm not gonna have any debt.

And I just remember her name is Mrs. C.

Very good meeting, but she just kept saying Stephanie, you are too smart to just go to a tech school.

But it's like looking at my life now and where I am financially in the business and things like that.

I'm like thank God I didn't do what that pressure was, right?

The whole world telling you you should go to college.

And I really think, you know, I wish that would change because there's so many things, not even including the cleaning industry.

I mean, plumbers, HVAC—there's so much important things out there that do not require a college degree, and I think that our school systems really need to work on, you know, offering like, you know, telling the students more about that because no one in my age would have thought, "oh, you should go start in the trades of a cleaning company?"

Like you know what I mean?

Like people, I think, what's real.

What's really nice is when people that have successful businesses can go in and share their stories.

I still remember when I was in that business.

Class, we did have some local companies come in and talk, and I thought that was so inspiring.

Seeing them, you know, and I really like it.

I think we need more of that.

But if you're not business class, if you don't have that, you don't even hear about it.

So probably half the school didn't even hear about that.

So I think it's very important, you know, to explore different options.

You know, I think one of my favorite things now is seeing there are people my age or maybe a little bit younger than I am that message me all the time.

They're like, "How do I get started?"

It's like nope, they'll they text me, and I get to tell them about it.

And I'm like, you know, I give them my advice and what I think.

And it is amazing, and that's the beautiful thing about the internet is that it can expose people to new ideas and information.

And I know, like for me, that is something I would love to make like a scholarship for my old high school or something that really pushes people towards the you know technical side of things.

And like you said, that all of the skilled trades and you can make such a good living with that.

And I certainly like when I eventually have children, like we'll be like take a gap year.

I don't just do don't please don't like you.

Don't know what you're gonna do, and why would you spend $30K a year to change your mind?

Like no offense to anybody who took that path.

Like I'm not saying you guys didn't get value out of it.

Yeah, I'm just really grateful that I didn't do it.

We need more people like you, Stephanie.

We really do.

People don't think that there's anything else than college.

Like go to college, get the degree, and then find a nine-to-five.

Like they don't think outside the box, and they don't know what else is out there.

And you can't blame them.

Yeah, and I'm it's they want that security exactly, and like I'm really excited, especially when I'm getting so many young owners on who are probably listening right now many I've had on the podcast already, and it's just really inspiring to see people like yeah come out of high school and they're immediately going down this path.

And just thinking of what they're going to be able to accomplish?

It's so exciting because I started my cleaning business at 23, and now hearing you like you were 23, and look what you've done!

And it's just like it's so amazing.

Like it's just, it's really exciting.

If anybody asked me 11 years ago when I officially started DCC Commercial Janitorial of Baltimore, Maryland, if anybody told me that we would be where we are today— which I can't wait to dive into in a little while—, I wouldn't say I would be where I am.

You know, I always thought so small, and then you know, to be so young and so successful and have a thriving—, you know.

Know—janitorial service in our area is like—it's huge to me—and it means for me, it's not just the cleaning; it's so much more.

You know, it shows my hard work and dedication over all these years that I was dreaming of.

You know, when I first started, right?

So yeah, it's amazing.

It is, and I can so relate to like that—not dreamy.

Like in my mind, when I started, I was like maybe I'll have three to five part-timers—like that's it.

This is just always going to be a side hustle alongside my full-time job—and now it's like, like you know.

It's such a cliche to be like "dream big," guys, but.

But when it comes to this industry, the sky is the limit.

Truly, I mean, the limiting factor is us, and so that's what I want to dig into now: is understanding.

Okay, you graduate high school; obviously, you have staff now.

So, let's just give a little tasty taste here.

What size are you at now?

And then we'll work through your journey here.

But how many staff do you have right now?

How many clients on average do you guys have?

Yeah, absolutely.

So right now we have 30 cleaners, and we're servicing.

We do so most of all to give you like a little background: all of my work is typically like nightly janitorial, so doctors' offices, lawyers' offices, common corridors—you name it—we clean it.

We're servicing right now between 190 to 225 cleans a month.

So, yeah, so we're right now our focus is on, is mainly nighttime janitorial, so we go in Monday through Friday to a lot of our offices.

And how we actually work is: we have two sides to our business; our one side is our nightly janitorial, and our other side is our once-a-week, our quarterly and monthly contracts.

How I work is: I do teams of four to six, and basically all my nighttime janitorial—they typically clean eight offices a night.

They work in groups of five to six.

One lady does bathrooms; one does vacuuming, mopping, dusting.

They finish out with the floors every single time they're in and out of most of all of my offices within an hour.

And we do buildings as big as fifty to a hundred thousand square feet, but we divide the work up very evenly to get the job done.

I can have a hundred thousand square feet building, but we're only doing bathrooms, trash, vacuuming up, right?

Every one of my job sites is completely different, and on average, I will say most of all of my ladies are in and out of my offices.

Within an hour, obviously, some of our bigger locations we do.

Obviously, have set ladies that will go to our set locations and they're there for multiple hours.

But I'm talking about our smaller to medium-size offices.

We end up I think another thing I want to mention: so many of us are so confused when they're getting into the janitorial side of things.

They're like, "I have this office; it's only fifteen hundred square feet or even three thousand square feet."

How do I even staff something like that?

Do I only send one staff, or, like, how do I know how to do so?

What we do, like I said, is a group of ladies and they still get their eight hours because they're doing you know enough offices a night to get the eight hours.

But I can dive into that a little bit later on how we actually operate.

Yeah, I definitely want to dive into the nitty-gritty of how because that's my favorite thing to do on this podcast is like how do we do these things?

And, yeah, I'm very intrigued by doing it in teams like that.

We are very individual at Serene Clean; we are super duper rural and have a lot of drive time in between because our locations are so rural.

However, I'm very intrigued to hear it because we're at about seventy-five commercial accounts for us that where we do residential, of course too.

So I'm.

I always love to hear, like, how this business is at that scale.

How do you guys do things?

So I'm very excited because then I can learn and you know be like oh let me apply that at Serene Clean.

I'm literally learning something.

And this is another thing I can't stand about people: some people think they know everything; they just know.

I don't operate that way.

I will never operate that way.

I still learn things every single day.

11 years into this business, I love you know I love learning new things.

And even from people that are just getting started, they might tell you something that you might think that's so interesting because for me we do a lot of things very old school in our office.

We do a lot of things by paper.

And I know that doesn't work for some people.

But it works for us.

So many people are like: you do paper time pine cards?

You do paper schedule?

Like we do old school things, but it works for us.

And I always said if it works for your company, don't change it.

But to answer your question, yes, that's how many clients we're currently servicing on a recurring basis.

And then I have our specialty side, so carpet cleaning, stripping wax, window cleaning.

I have a handful of contracts that we do our specialty side.

So technically, we have three sides to our business: our daily janitorial, our once-a-week, twice-week, three-time, and then we have our specialty side.

Okay, we will be digging into all of these.

So take me back to starting out hiring.

What did that look like?

What challenges did you face?

Whether that be because of your age or inexperience, I'd love to hear about that.

So let's fast forward from high school.

So I finish high school, and I have this cleaning business.

This is what I decided this is exactly what I want to do.

Like I want to take on clients already.

I have you know, I had a handful of clients to feel comfortable financially.

You know, I was still living at home.

You know, I didn't need too much, but I had enough clients where I was able to, you know, feel comfortable saying I don't want to go to college.

I have this much income coming in every month and I'm happy with that.

So basically.

After that, I just started going crazy with going door to door to offices.

I was cold calling like crazy, and I just went there is a time period I was just going seven days a week, just pushing our business, getting our name out there, and that's what I did, and then.

It got to the point where I couldn't handle it myself.

My dad was helping in the evenings, my mom ended up coming helping us, even my sisters.

I had the whole family in the company helping.

That's amazing!

Yeah.

So fast forward to today, my mom actually quit her nursing career and she's our full-time director of operations.

She does all of our schedules, our invoicing, all that stuff.

Yeah.

So, to answer your question, I started with family.

I started with the support of my family.

But there's probably many people listening here that don't have the support of their family with the business, which is completely understandable.

So my first and foremost thing I would recommend with hiring: just start off small, think small.

When I am looking for something, I always go to Facebook.

So I go into my local Facebook groups and just say, "Hey, I'm Dave.

I own a local cleaning company.

I'm looking to hire some people to come work for me.

I have a couple offices part-time; that's a couple hours a night."

And we're looking for some help.

So start with Facebook.

Of course, there's always like Indeed.

And this and that, but I have found using Facebook has been a really game changer.

But fast forward to today, most of our people are word of mouth from the current employees.

They, I will tell you something else: People talk.

Especially, I have a large Spanish following in my company, and I will say everybody talks in the community.

Doesn't matter what race or ethnicity; it doesn't matter.

Everyone talks, and I'm going to tell you: you've got to treat your people well at first.

When I first was getting into it, I had no experience with hiring, so luckily I did have my mom to kind of lean on for advice.

On because my mom has run companies in the past for people, so she was kind of helping me with this process as well.

But I would say you have to be confident in what you're hiring for.

Be clear, be exactly clear what you're hiring for.

Do not over, you know, give you know more than you can, you know.

If you don't have the hours of the people, don't tell them you have full-time when you don't actually have full-time because I actually ran.

Into that problem where we thought we had full time, which I guess my meaning of full time was a lot different than what they thought, right?

I think it's about 40 hours a week, yeah.

And I think ours was nowhere near that, and so we would hire people; they would expect a full schedule, and then oh, they don't have a full schedule.

So being very firm and being clear on what to expect working for you, and kind of just give them the rundown.

But.

Fast forward to today, you know our hiring process is pretty straightforward.

You know people apply online or we do use several platforms because we are always hiring.

My motto is always hire slow, fire fast.

We have once a week we do have in-person interviews at our office, and Carol, my office manager, has a designated day to do interviews.

We do open interviews and we also schedule them, but we go through—I mean, every month, hundreds of applications, and we are always looking for new people because, at the end of the day, we're always getting new contracts.

Number one, and number two, you never know when someone's going.

To quit and you don't want to rely on people.

So many.

People like to rely on one or two people in their company.

They're like, oh, if this person quits, they'll take the hours or whatever," but the whole point is you don't want your good people to really burn out.

You want to be able to constantly bring new people in and hire.

So to answer your question, I know I made that very long and I apologize.

Just hire slow, fire fast.

That's what I've always heard, and it does work.

But to answer your question, yes, try Facebook, try Indeed, try ZipRecruiter, try just try anything until it works for you.

Right?

Every...

And I'm going to tell you: I talk to a lot of different cleaning businesses all over the world, and I'm going to tell you every one of them does it differently.

So what works for me might not work for you.

And I'm gonna get into late in a little bit how we advertise, and a lot of you aren't going to agree on that either.

So, you know, like I always say, it works for us; that's great.

It might not work for you, but I like to share.

I'm not a gatekeeper.

I think that's really important too.

Oh, I really appreciate that mindset because it's exactly how I feel.

You know, I have lots of owners on this podcast.

I do.

You know, we've changed a lot of things in serene Clean, how we do it, and because one, I think it's always being a student of the game, never being so arrogant to think that you know it all, and just constantly being humble.

And saying, like, hey, let me learn from this.

But also knowing there are a lot of ways to skin the cat, or peel the apple if you don't want to skin any cats, because we both.

Love cats, so as we like to say, there are a lot of ways to peel the apple, and I really try not to be dogmatic about anything.

Of like you said, it's like this works for us, and I'm just going to share it.

Like for example, we do group interviewing as our first filter, right?

A lot of people do not like group interviews; they think lots of things about them.

But I'm like it's worked so well for us, and it has not hurt us; it has only helped us.

And we always have job listings going regardless, because like you just said, you have no idea what tomorrow is going to bring, good or bad, right?

Like something crazy could happen in a positive or something crazy could happen in a negative, like you got to fire somebody yesterday and now you're being held hostage by a crazy employee, right?

Which I'm sure you know, you've had your share.

I'd love to know.

Do you have a particular favorite or a couple favorites in mind that you are willing?

To divulge of juicy employee experiences.

Gosh, this one's a heavy one.

Yeah, so we have had, if you could imagine, over the last 11 years.

You know, it started off with just me, my dad, my mom, my sisters.

It started off as just us.

But then when you start dealing with the public and you start dealing with other people's lives, then it starts to get very sticky, right?

You know, you don't know what other people have going on in their lives, right?

So when you're hiring someone, you're kind of getting into their zone of things.

And when you don't have anything in place, like when I first started, I had nothing in place.

Right, we were just hiring, we did run a background check, but you know, when you're just getting started, you don't know anything.

But you wouldn't know now, what you know, 10 years ago?

You know what I'm saying.

So to fast-forward, so today, yes.

Over the years, we have had—I mean, I can't even tell you how many people we've had over the years, this cleaning.

I will say the cleaning industry in general at the end of the day: no matter how good you treat a person, no matter how much you pay somebody, they will find something better, right?

And you know, as much as you want to keep people long-term, that's our whole goal, right?

You know, keeping someone long-term.

At the end of the day, people come, people go, people get new jobs, people get new relationships, they move.

Everything happens, right?

At the end of the day, you can't control that.

The only thing you can control is always having that interview going.

But to get into your question: yes, we have had many, many interesting things happen.

I'm gonna tell you the most recent one.

And this is one of the hardest things we have to do: when we have to get rid of someone.

I hate doing it.

It's never personal.

It's always has to do, at the end of the day: if the client's not getting what they need, and you know, it's looking bad on the company, and at the end of the day, when you get multiple warnings and it still...

Happening then, then you know.

You have to go.

I will say when I first started, when we were just getting into it, we were so strict on so many little things like can't do this, you can't do it.

I'll just give an example: like I was, I remember I cared about like people's hair color at first.

I'm like, oh, they're gonna look so weird if they go in with like pink hairs.

And if you ask me today, I don't care what as long as you come in with our DCC top, long pants, and closed toe shoes, which is our uniform policy.

We don't care.

You come in with a positive attitude every day.

We don't care if you come in with purple green hair; we could care less as long as you can come in and do the job right and get it done.

But I know I keep switching topics.

Yeah, good to get into one quick little story.

By the way, do you?

Yes.

Okay, because as I can tell, because I do, and I'm like, we're the same person, man.

Yes, I am.

I'll be doing one thing and I'll go over here.

I'll get a phone call.

Forget what?

Yeah, uh-huh.

Every time.

Yes.

So to get into the most recent, this is actually a couple weeks ago.

Well, I had this one lady; she's worked for me for five years.

It was coming up six years, and it's just been one of those relationships between us.

It was very good for our company because as we started getting Spanish-speaking people, she became our bilingual manager, and she took on more responsibility over the years.

You know, which was great.

But you know, when that happened, I think she felt that I was never going to get rid of her, due to the fact.

That you know, now we have all these Spanish speakers, and we don't have another Spanish speaker in the office, so we're kind of you know, we need her you know, we need her to be able to communicate.

So anyways, fast forward to like last year.

Well, we hired some of her family, which probably I'm gonna say to all everyone out there: stay away from hiring family.

We have a policy.

We won't do immediate family.

We got burned just like you.

It's just—it unfortunately fired us multiple, multiple times, and it just we—we are so tired that we don't do it anymore.

So, anyways, she had brought in her mom, her sister, and her brother.

Like across, it wasn't; it wasn't all at once.

It was like over time.

Like we had gotten new contracts, and they were—I needed someone on this team.

I need someone on that because we do groups.

So, when one person—that's one section that's getting missed.

So it's kind of urgent.

Like okay, that's why we're always hiring.

We're always looking for both.

So, anyways, we had brought them in.

And the two family members kind of just phased out over time, like you know.

And this was this is like a year ago, right?

She's been with us for five years.

They came like a year ago.

They all within like a month they were all working for me and they did really good work.

They always came in with great attitudes.

Like I don't personally speak fluent Spanish, but I do know enough Spanish to know what you're talking about.

I will say, I know when people are negative and I know when people are positive, right?

So when I have constant complaints from other technicians that you know, this person's being negative or this, I don't do negativity in our company.

We are zero drama, zero negativity.

We are if you don't come in with a positive attitude, you don't expect, don't expect to be working here because we don't do it.

We are too busy of a company; we've got too much going on.

We have got too many team members to be worrying about this person.

You come in with the positive attitude, don't come in at all because I don't care what kind of day you're having.

I have some bad days and I still go into the office and I have a very good attitude, and I have some ladies that have some terrible lives, right?

They tell me about it, and guess!

Guess what?

They still show up.

They show up every single day.

They do their job, and they go home.

And they...

And you know it's just it's just your mindset.

You got to have a good mindset.

But anyways, to finish the story with this lady, she worked for me for five years.

She ended up becoming my bilingual manager, and she was great.

I really liked her I even invited her to like I even had some parties at my house, and she was like, "I would invite her over," you know, to have you know, she would come over, and we would have.

She was a really nice person, and I think we became friends, right?

And I think sometimes that's not the best thing to do.

You need to remember: yes, you need to be friendly with everyone, but maybe you can't, you know, take it that far to be friends with these people, right?

And obviously, everyone learns over the years, but when you have an employee that's been with you five years.

You know it's very hard to get rid of them.

But anyways, fast forward to what happened most recently: we were getting complaints at some of the buildings that she was in charge of managing.

And the ultimate job of one of our managers is to do quality control.

Turn alarms on.

Lock the doors.

Do you know final inspections.

And if anything needs to be redone, you know that's getting checked during quality control and getting discussed with you know our office manager.

So we can all have that discussion with the member team member that's not doing their job correctly.

And you know, it was just over time where it was a constant thing every week; it was something: it.

Was the cobwebs messed up in the corner?

Door handles have sludge on them, or the light switches, or just trash bags?

Aren't being tied neatly, or just consumables aren't being refilled like there were just little things that were adding up over time.

And it just I had it, it just the plug had to be pulled.

Unfortunately, it's just not working out anymore.

We appreciate all the work.

You've done for us over the years, like you know.

I don't have anything against you; it's just a business decision.

Unfortunately, it's just not going to work out anymore, and you know we unfortunately had to let them go.

But of course, Dave always has a plan, and Dave actually had hired another bilingual manager a little while back.

So I actually had two because we were growing and we had a lot going on, so we needed another.

So I already have another bilingual manager.

So I already knew that wasn't really the problem at the end of the day if our quality was not there, our clients were going to lose the contract.

So it was more so a very big business decision.

Especially some of the clients that she was in charge of were some larger accounts.

Where we needed a manager there, you know, at all times, you know, checking in on things and making sure things were actually getting done.

So yeah, I think one of the hardest things is you know getting rid of someone, and I don't do it very often.

And then I think the best thing to do is if it's I think the best thing to do is if it's not working out from the beginning, or even like the first week or two weeks, or even the first month, you notice something wrong.

Don't think it's going to change.

Especially if you spoke with them, it's gonna constantly keep happening because that's in my mind.

You know, this woman that I had, she had the best attitude.

She just, you know, she came into work.

She never missed a shift, and if she ever did need a miss shift, it would be, you know, really good notice.

But at the end of the day, you can't change how somebody cleans and how people manage.

You can coach them, you can show them, and if they still choose not to do it, that's up to them.

And unfortunately, you can't change that.

So at the end of the day, you just have to part ways.

But it's one of the hardest things that we do.

It doesn't matter what business you do, cleaning business, H a plumbing, doesn't matter what business you're in.

It's that's one of the hardest things to do is getting rid of someone.

But I just recently had an issue with a new employee.

Literally last month, and basically what happened with them is you know they came in with excellent attitude, you know, and just ready to work.

And one of the hours.

And then I was getting reports from not just one but multiple crew members about how nasty this individual was, and how just they were—they were telling them that they have 30 years of cleaning experience.

And I don't need you to train.

But one of the things when you get hired at our company is you need to be a coachable person.

Just because you know how to do it does not mean you're doing it to our company standard.

We have a process that we follow with every new technician.

I don't care if you know how to do something; I need you to be able to be willing to hear the trainer, hear the other team members' feedback.

Right?

You know, you need to be able to be coachable.

And unfortunately, I heard so many bad things.

And my new bilingual manager had came and spoke with me.

Was like, hey Dave, you know, can I speak with you?

I spoke to Carol.

And you know, Carol really likes her, but she wants you to make this decision.

And I, you know, I spoke with her, and after you know speaking with everybody, I think it was best you know to let this team member go.

And it was just sometimes it's better just to let go.

And I'm going to tell you— it's been what a couple weeks now, and we haven't had any drama on that team.

So it's like sometimes it just best to let go.

It just let go and find something new, and that's just—it's business, right?

You let go, and hopefully something better comes along, and that's just what you do.

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, it is the owners who are just here to share their stories?

So, if you are an owner who wants to share your story, or perhaps you would like to, please do so.

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 on 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, and I think really protecting being very protective of your current team and really trusting—obviously, everybody has bias; everybody sometimes just doesn't like somebody for no good reason.

But it's the same way as if my current team who I trust them and trust their judgment, and they're coming to me.

And saying, "Hey, this person has a bad attitude, or this and this and this, and it seems like problems just follow this person."

It's like, well, that's the variable that changes this new person into our culture, and I'm very protective over that because I'm like, "I want my team members' respect for me is the biggest thing I hold the highest right?"

Like, I need them to respect me because if they don't, absolutely, you know, then what are we doing here?

And so, but.

You need to earn that respect.

You don't say "respect me."

You behave in a way that's respectable, and if you hear things coming to you and you don't do anything about it, I think it's the number one worst thing.

We can do something for our culture is seeing or hearing problems and then, frankly, being a little bitch and not dealing with it because we're afraid to deal with it, right?

And Stephanie, I want to add to that.

You know, you're so right because you know, this particular employee was very nice to my face, of course, and very, very nice to you know, our management team.

But then when they were with our, they didn't even know it was our manager that they were speaking to.

You know, they were very, very nasty, and it wasn't even that.

And also, it was complaints coming in even with the first couple weeks.

And obviously, when you have a new hire, you've got to constantly train them.

You know, we do a three-week training program with all of our new cleaners.

So she was still in that training period, right?

But you got to just if it's not working out and you're hearing all those things, best just to let go.

Yeah, especially in the big it's like this is your best behavior.

You're trying to impress us, and this is what your best behavior is, right?

I know some people.

I will say they put on acts over the years.

I mean, over the years we've had so many different characters.

But you know, at the end of the day, I don't care.

I always say I don't care who you are, what you look like.

Come in, give us what you got.

Coming with a positive attitude, and we'll see if it works.

You know, and I really like what you said earlier about respecting, like the boss and the owner.

You know, I and you actually asked me this early.

I don't even think I answered it because I was going on and on about being respected at a young age.

It was definitely harder when I was younger, like in just coming out of high school, right?

You know, over the years, you just kind of I don't know.

I guess you just mature more, right?

And I guess you know people just, I people people respect me because the one thing I do is I will never ask someone to do something that I personally wouldn't do, right?

If somebody calls our office and asks something crazy, I would say, oh God, we don't do that, yeah, no, we don't do.

I would never ask one of my employees to do something crazy, and I think my employees do respect that and they respect my hard work, right?

My employees know where we came from; they know where we started; they know our clients; they know our clients talk to each other you know most of my clients they know each other they might not directly know each other but they will call and ask, "do you use Dave's cleaning or who do you use?"

And they'll tell, "oh yeah, we really like that."

Like that's the difference though: you want your staff, you want your employees to talk good about you.

Don't want to be that boss that's condescending and short with your employees.

I'm luckily not like that.

And at the end of the day, you know, you need.

You know, yeah.

Anyways, I think that it's so true that you know, a lot of times we want to command.

Respect, we want to command influence.

All of these things, but those are the things that you can't like or even reputation.

You can't control that in any other way other than with your actions.

That's the only thing we can control, right?

So I'd love to hear.

You know, you just talked about firing staff members, which is so challenging.

Do you have an example of firing a client that was perhaps a long time coming?

You're like, this was the best thing ever.

Make sure, like, like lesson learned here.

I'd love hearing those lessons.

Absolutely.

I do have a lot of these, but I can tell you a couple most recent ones.

So, one of the most recent ones would be, and I kind of want to also mention before I get into this.

I am the same way with the way I treat my employees as I treat my staff.

Excuse me.

Basically, if you treat me nasty or you treat anyone else, you will be gone.

I don't, I don't tolerate disrespect from it.

So, anyways, most recently we had this local school that we were cleaning.

And if anybody knows anything about schools, daycares, childcare centers, they are one of the hardest customers to please.

And I have probably right now; I have probably like ten different daycares that we clean, and they're one of the hardest customers that we have to serve.

You are doing, like, it's so no?

They don't like.

I will say I'm lucky with most of the comp daycares I have.

They pay us decently because they've gone through so many terrible companies.

They're willing to pay more.

But to get to my story with this one, I had a childcare center right up the road from here.

And she, keep in mind; I've never spoken to this woman before.

We've always dealt with the office manager or like her personal assistant, whatever it was.

She's the one that hired us.

She's the one that gave us the keys, like all that good stuff.

She's the one that would call us and tell us any issues or complaints, whatever.

So keep in mind: we started working for this customer; you know, we were working for a couple months, and then all of a sudden, I guess that woman went on maternity leave, or she got fired, or something.

I haven't heard—I've never heard from her again—so I don't know what ended up happening.

But the owner calls in this like rage to our office manager, and she starts going on.

I still have the recording, so I replayed it when I listened.

She starts going on saying, "You're cleaner; you had six cleaners in here last night, and the place doesn't even look like it was touched."

Like she just starts going off on the phone, saying that this isn't done and that's not done, and I was like well, first of all, Carol, my office manager called me.

She's like, "Hey Dave, I just got done speaking with this really nasty woman."

I think it's the school up the road.

If she didn't tell me who she was, she just said she wants the owner to call her immediately.

And you know, with me, I take a minute, I step back, and I say, you know, I'm going to give her some time to cool off.

So I called her the next day.

Cause I don't like when people are like that.

You need to give them time, and unfortunately, I know they want you to call them right away right now.

But I don't clean; cleaning's important; it's very important.

But there's no emergency for someone to act like that, and I'm not calling someone back when they're in that kind of mood.

So I call her back the next day, and somehow she's still in that mood.

Especially with me, she goes on and on.

She goes, "I've been trying to get in contact with you for days," and the cleaners you have in here are terrible—like just going blasting my staff, blasting my office manager.

My office manager; she's incompetent.

She took a message and she didn't get she didn't transfer the call like I asked to speak with you.

And I was like, "You know, ma'am."

I will say you're being very disrespectful right now.

First of all, you've disrespected my office manager.

Number two, you've disrespected me and you've disrespected my team members.

I don't tolerate this type of behavior.

And here she goes again, going on and on, just going on.

And if it's a legitimate concern, I would like to go ahead and hear about it.

Obviously, it's the only way you can improve.

No matter—I'm gonna say this: I used to think we could be 100% perfect, but as you start to grow, there's always gonna be complaints, and you've got to learn how to deal with it.

People complain about the stupidest things.

Like I actually just got a message this morning about a customer saying they don't like the type of trash bags being used in one of their cans.

And so you'll hear—you'll get any type of complaint when you start to grow and you start to have enough clients.

You're dealing with the public; you're dealing with a lot of different people—a lot of different people in these offices or even the houses you're cleaning.

You're dealing with—that's probably even worse, you know—it is worse.

But yeah, so she ends up just going off, and I said, "You know?

Listen; I think it's best for "I'm gonna," Let you out of this contract today, and I didn't argue with her I didn't talk to her I talked to her—you know—I didn't argue with her I don't argue with customers anymore.

I told her: "Listen, I appreciate you trying us out for all these months.

I wish you best of luck."

Most people would say Dave, you're crazy.

Why would you get rid of her?

That's lost money.

That's lost sales.

And for me, a problem customer is just not something I want to deal with if they're not happy.

You're not going to make them happy.

Maybe you could make them happy for a little bit longer, but they're probably very unhappy if they're calling your the office manager was screaming at them, especially when you work from for months and you haven't heard any complaints from anyone, and then all of a sudden everything's terrible.

So my advice to anyone is just get rid of those clients that are not good.

Another one of these examples: I'll tell you—I had an endoscopy center we were doing Monday through Friday.

Come in, disinfect all the chairs, the gurneys, their lobby areas, the surgical areas, the walls—everything.

I mean they came out with probably ten cars.

It's a trash night because if you know, in medical settings they have so much trash.

Anyway, it was a great contract; really liked the contract.

They've been using a national company for ten years until they switched to us.

They really liked us.

I had a great relationship with them.

They loved our office staff.

They loved our cleaners we had over there.

And unfortunately, one night one of our cleaners walked into a huge flood and basically, you know, we call the customer per our protocol—you know—letting them know you have a flood in your facility.

You know, just wanted to let you know the cleaners will stay there until somebody else can come, you know, help out with this whatever.

And my first thought is I have a good friend that owns a disaster restoration company, Kate Bostwick, with Service Master Baltimore here in Baltimore.

So my first thought would be you know calling them and getting the customer help.

But the customer didn't want that, which is completely understandable—they have their own people.

Okay, cool.

So they ended up—you know.

Getting their own people, and we went on about our day.

So the next day, it was three.

I think it was like a day or honestly, no, it was two days later where she called our office.

The manager we were dealing with.

And she says to us.

She's like, and keep in mind, our office closes at six o'clock, so we're open nine am to six o'clock.

That's our office hours.

She calls at five fifty-nine, and Carol does answer.

I don't know if it was Carol or might have been Trish.

But one of them answered, and this woman is like, we need.

She just starts.

This woman just starts going off on the phone.

She's like, we need the cleaners.

Just pulled up here, and the people are here working on the place.

As you know, it was flooded.

And they were like, Understandably, yeah, your place was flooded, we called you.

And they wanted them to come later in the evening, but our routes are already set.

Our routes are set in stone.

Unfortunately, we think understand things happen.

But we have other clients to service, not just you.

You know we let her know.

Unfortunately, we could just skip the cleaning tonight, or we could, you know, it was every day getting done every Monday through Friday.

We understand you have ten carts of trash every single night, but your place flooded; half the places tore up with dehumidifier, you know, whatever.

So really won't make it.

So, anyways, she said no, they need to come.

It was 5:39.

They were arriving at this job site at like they were probably there at like six o'clock, or they were she was calling because they were there, and.

Basically, she wanted to reschedule until she said they need to be coming after 10 o'clock.

After the come pick the dehumidifiers up.

Oh my gosh!

One minute before our office goes, yeah, so, you know, our office manager just let her know unfortunately we can't do that and then she then again she goes I need to speak with someone higher up.

I don't want to speak with you.

So she speaks with Trish and Trish is like, listen, unfortunately our routes are already set for the night.

The best thing I can do for you is we'll just not, we'll tell the ladies to leave and we won't even charge you a cancellation fee, and we'll just let you know.

This woman went crazy.

She's like we have 10 things of trash waiting to go out, but and then she said, "do you want them to do that?

Should I want the whole place clean?"

So sometimes any type of solution at all.

Like, yeah.

She wouldn't take any solution right.

So, then Trish said, "Let me call the owner and I'll call because," This woman was just very unreasonable.

Sometimes when they're very, very unreasonable.

Reasonable, I tell.

I want to deal with this situation because I'm a very good problem solver.

I like to come up with a solution for customers as best as I can.

But after me hearing that my office manager and our director of operations have spoken to her and it's still not getting resolved, then what do we do?

So basically, I just let her know that would she like them to stay and pull the track?

She's going off on me, and I, like I said, I don't deal with disrespect well.

So I said her name was Kim.

I said, Kim.

I said I really you know value our relationship, but I won't be tolerating the disrespect.

And, and she's like if you don't come after ten, she just starts blowing over.

Don't come after 10 o'clock tonight.

You guys will not have this contract.

I said, Kim, I'm gonna respectfully ask you to come grab your keys tomorrow from our main office, and we will no longer be servicing you.

She went crazy, and I decided it was best for but you can't okay?

I decided it was best for our company to go ahead and end the contract, and that's why we did it.

What we did, and as a business owner—not talking money aside—you gotta make the best decision for your business.

But something that I have learned over the years: you cannot get rid of every terrible customer you have.

Right?

You won't have a business; there's going to be when as you grow, you're not gonna be able to please everyone.

I used to think I could please every single customer, and that's just not true; it's just not realistic.

So if that's your mindset, then I would recommend staying small, right?

If you want to please every little customer and keep them happy, you know.

But if you're looking to scale and you're looking to grow, you're not—just in reality—it's a cleaning business—you're not going to make everyone happy because.

We deal with human beings that work for you, and we're all human at the end of the day—we all mess up one day or another.

So yeah, so that's my two stores, but I have million others that I could get into another day; I can make a whole video on them.

Yeah, it's a great—I love sharing those things because I think it it really bolsters the confidence of especially newer owners who are people pleasers, as many of us are when we start out or for a long term.

And it's very hard for us to stand up to people, even if we are being horrifically disrespected and, like you said, making those decisions.

Like any time we've broken up with a client, like the adult hissy fit that is thrown is sometimes insane.

Like when we're the one ending the relationship, and because they want to be in control, they want to be able to wield that power.

But when you do it, oh my gosh!

That's yeah, the biggest hissy fits I've seen from adult men.

Well, that's not true; I've seen a lot of hissy fits from adult men because they're a bunch of little boys.

But typically, when you break up with them as a customer, and they're like, "Wait a minute, you don't want my money?"

Like, and yeah, it's always something else.

It's awful.

It really is, you know.

And people think that they need every one of the customers, and sometimes just best just to move on, you know?

Absolutely.

There's always another customer.

It's very hard.

Yeah, but I will say one other thing to mention before we move on from the subject.

I think it's very difficult for some of us to understand because, like, for example, that one contract for me a month—contract was like $7K a month, right?

So when and so the endoscopy center—I'm talking about.

So for me to be like oh just overnight being like oh okay we just lost this contract—but at the end right.

But at the end of the day, it's sometimes best to move on, right?

There's and guess what?

I can't even tell you in a week after that.

I think we got a contract that was paying like $8,500.

We have this bell in the office, and we were all ringing, and we're like, "we got one even higher!"

Yeah, like so.

Just know that there is so many opportunities out there.

Just because you end an opportunity today does not mean you might not get a call.

Today, tomorrow, the next day, but it will come.

Just be patient, do consistent service, be that positive company that people can reach out to, and you'll get the contract.

Absolutely.

I'm just doing that consistent outreach like you are.

It sounds like it's cold calling, like just quickly, what is your go-to now for getting clients?

Is it still outreach?

Is it drop-offs?

Is it mostly coming to you from Google now?

What does that look like?

Yeah.

So that's a really good question, and I actually made a completely separate video on this because it's—I went into such detail—but I will tell you so currently how we do it.

So many people are like, "do you do SEO?"

Do you do Google paid ads?

Do you do Google LSA all that stuff?

So to be completely honest with you, we do old school.

So we currently do a mailer—not your regular postcard mailer—that not—not one of them.

What we do—which I don't even have it in front of me right now—but we just go ahead and we send—we have a letter—it's typed up—and it says, "Hi, my name is Dave.

I own a local janitorial service here in the greater Baltimore area."

You know, no pressure at all.

We would just want to send you this our information for future considerations because most every single business is using a janitorial service, right?

So our hope is that they think of us when the company retires, when the company is no longer performing.

And I will tell you these letters work like a gem.

We have a set amount of letters that we send out every month.

We keep track in an Excel spreadsheet.

It's old school.

I know, I know it's old school.

We use Excel, right?

Yeah, I know there are all these other crazy companies out there that might be great.

We don't use them.

We track every mailer we send.

We do three sets of mailers: the first, second, and third.

We do that across three months, and we will also follow up with cold emails as well as cold calling.

We it's what we do, and we get all of our business from that.

Aside from that, we do get organically on Google.

You know, we have when you have good reviews.

Well, we have some bad ones like that woman I talked to you guys about earlier.

She went on blasted us on Facebook, Instagram, everywhere you could think of, the mom groups, everywhere you can imagine she was on there.

But we you like I said, it's these mailers.

And basically people ask Dave how do you do these mailers?

How do you find the people to send them to?

Basically, it's pretty simple, but it does take a lot of initial work to get it going right.

You're gonna type the letter, you're gonna print it, you're gonna stamp it, you're gonna put your company logo on it.

Right, that's the hard part.

Then you're gonna go find what you want.

So I literally drive around my area, and I say, I want, you know what?

Today I just want to target dentist offices.

So I drive around and I see which dentist office I want to clean.

I take pictures.

I go back to the office.

I'll look the address up and I will just go ahead and enter it in our spreadsheet.

And then our office manager actually this is another thing she does once a week: she goes ahead and she writes out.

It's not even just her; we do it.

That's like one of the once-a-week things she has on her to-do list.

But between me, Trish, Morgan, Lucy, and Carol, our office manager, we write these out and we have a certain amount we hit every month.

So some months it might be two thousand five hundred mailers.

Sometimes it's three thousand.

Sometimes it's only five hundred.

It really just depends on what we, you know, set for the month, right?

If we're doing really good on our sales goal for the month, then we don't need to go as hard, right.

But I will say another thing is getting good Google reviews; it's huge.

You know, obviously, we always don't most.

We obviously don't most.

Of all of our customers, are recurring janitorial everyday service, and we're not going to ask for a review after the first service, right?

We want you to see how we perform months after.

I would rather have a review from a customer that's been with us for five years and write like I just recently got a review on a customer.

One of my second customers, my second customer ten years ago, is this dance studio we clean.

I was just cleaning gyms; my first ever contract was Orange Theory Fitness up here in Hunt Valley, but my second ever client, this dance studio, that we clean for the last seven days a week, Monday through Sunday.

I have two dedicated ladies that are there every single night, and they have been with us for ten years and they finally just wrote us a review literally like last year and it was so good.

They're like, "We've been working with Dave's Clean for over nine years because you know, it was nine, nine years or whatever, ten years now."

And you know I love to see reviews like that; I've been waiting, you know?

So, and I even like even the one-year, two-year, three-year reviews; I wait; I don't do right away.

But obviously, for my specialty work or my one-time off, like office deep cleans.

We will ask for them, but you know that also helps us huge.

So to answer your question, yes, we're old school; we do direct mailers.

I know a lot of people say, Dave, that takes too.

Much time, too much tracking.

But when you think the amount of money that you get out of these accounts, like the lifetime value of each of these customers, is worth the extra work.

I got three vents like these wedding venues.

This was a couple years ago.

I got one mailer I sent to one of their locations down in Baltimore.

The manager had held on to our mailer for a year.

Their cleaning contract with Coverall Cleaning Systems—it was called something like that—you know, Coverall Jan Pro, Danica, all the big names.

Yeah, one of them they had—I don't know if it was with them; it was one of them—they were stuck in like a five-year contract with them.

So their contract was finally up, and she was getting bids.

And we randomly get a call one day, and she's like, "Yeah, we got your mailer a year ago.

We've been holding on to it.

You know, we're very interested in working with you because we actually have three locations that get done."

And these contracts—excuse me—these contracts ended up being $50K a month; three of them, so at $150K off of one contract.

Okay?

One contract under one umbrella.

So when I tell people this story, like—and that's just one contract, right?

We get called up all the time.

We're constantly pushing out, but we do have some slower months, right?

We have some slower months that the mailers don't work as good, right?

So, and I'm transparent with everyone.

With that, they're like, "I've sent 20; I haven't gotten anything."

Okay, it's about volume—you got to send more.

But I will—I won't recommend this for the people that are in urgent rush for customers, right?

I don't recommend this for people that are like, "I want a hundred customers tomorrow," you know, like go maybe use Google Ads SEO and stuff like that.

I can't personally speak on behalf of that because I've only used it very little, and we have used it very little.

And I will say, personally, I think the money is better being spent on having; I rather give the extra hours to my ladies in the office to help us write the mailers out, and do—I rather put my money into that—and stamps aren't cheap nowadays, so I rather put my money into that, you know?

So it works for us—might not work for you.

I always like to tell people that.

So yeah, and thanks for asking about commercial.

Oh no!

Absolutely, thank you for going into detail, and you know that's not something we have never done direct mail for commercial like that before.

We've done you know cold calling, cold emailing drop-offs.

I actually paid my grandma for a long time to drop off donuts because who's gonna turn down a sweet little old lady with donuts?

And then that got us accounts, so like it is the thing about getting commercial; it's old school.

That is how you get commercial.

It's totally different than residential and like you said, one of my favorite books is called the Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes, and the way he phrases it is pigheaded discipline.

I think I've heard of that.

Yeah, and that's what you're describing: is having pigheaded discipline every single month you are doing this, and whether the results show up right away or not because most likely they're not.

And just being able to like delay that gratification of it may not be this month; it may not be next month.

But when they hold on to your mailer for it will come, it will come, and it's just it's a longer sales period, so that is really incredible, and I really hope that others are inspired to do the same.

Yeah, and I really like what you said.

It definitely is a long sentence.

Longer sales period.

You're 100% right because, like I said, so many people are messaging.

I sent this many.

Well, you know it is going to be delayed.

These most I'm going after people and I know this because I'm doing it.

I'm going after people that already have vendors.

I am not trying to take their contract, right?

I'm just trying to offer our services and I'm trying to, you know, be a future reference.

A lot of companies, I will say, even the last two years, the amount of people have called me from their cleaning companies retiring, and I'm like, really.

The last thing I saw was an uptick in people telling me that because we always track how they are and why they are getting rid of them.

Because my first question always is to these customers: what is your problem with the current company?

Why are you out calling another cleaning con?

Because we're going to solve that for you.

That's my first thing.

But when I can tell when people I could talk to someone for two minutes and understand that this person is either crazy or they're actually looking their company's terrible.

I've heard enough.

I've talked to hundreds of people over the years, and I know Either they're crazy or truly isn't getting done.

Because when the second they tell me they're using a national company, I tell you don't gotta tell me anything more.

Yep, that's what I tell them.

Especially franchises because it's like when I look at—you know—I've talked to lots of franchises before and—and no, no hate—but that franchise fee comes at a cost, and the cost is typically the staff member's salary, right?

And so that money's got to come from somewhere.

That means they're paying really low; they're gonna have worse turnover, and that means the results are, of course, going to be worse for the client.

So any time that we can win clients from franchises, like we're probably gonna be better, frankly.

So it's—it was really funny in our office.

We have a collection of these commercial offices.

They a lot of the national companies do logbooks, which we do them too.

Basically, we sign in each visit.

It's just like it's just a book.

Yep.

And we just date it, and then we put any like notes that aren't very urgent, like oh, hey, we noticed, yeah, this is broken, or we notice.

Yeah, yeah.

And so we do logbooks.

Anyways, we have a collection of just all the national companies' logbooks and to see the way they operate and the way they respond in the logbooks is just it tells a lot about these companies.

And I always tell my customers because when the second I say that we're going to put a logbook in their location, they're like.

Because they're like every national company has done that, so I'd be sure to tell them this is nothing for urgent matters.

So if something's urgent, it's not to go in this book; we would call the office.

But this is for little notes that our staff, you know, can communicate to you.

In the evenings, and then so many people say to me, well, Dave, if you have all, you know, Spanish-speaking individuals, how are they writing in the book in English?

Well, we always do have one bilingual person in the crew to make sure they're able to communicate.

If there is an emergency that occasionally happens that needs to be communicated to our crew manager, so just wanted to add.

That because I'm sure people will be like, "what, wait, but they all speak Spanish, how do they know?"

So, yeah, gotcha!

I gotcha.

Oh my gosh!

Well, first off, Dave, I have about 30 million other questions, so I know we're running out of time.

I've got another podcast I gotta get to in 15 minutes, so I would love to propose another episode with you if you would be interested.

Because I, I just have so many questions that I, I mean, that hour just flew by.

Not believe it.

So, if you're open to another conversation, I would love to have you absolutely.

Yeah, there's just there's so much that we could dive into.

You know, this company is truly you know it was life changing for me.

You know, it really has been able to open up so many things for me, financially, and just I was able to buy my first house.

You know, last year at only 23.

Thank you so much!

Thank you.

Yeah, you know, so I would love to you know get into I can share so much more.

You know, I love this industry.

I love helping people out.

And yeah, thank you so much, Stephanie.

I really do appreciate it.

I appreciate you too, Dave.

Do you mind if after the episode, Can you send us that link to the video where you talk in more depth?

I'd love to link that down below for the listeners.

Is it a YouTube video that you made or is it.

It's on.

I don't know if anybody knows.

But do you know Carolyn Aralano?

Of course!

I've had her on the pod.

Yeah, she Fantastic.

Oh, okay.

Yes, she, she and I had made that video, and people love that video.

So yeah, so definitely check that out.

Okay, we'll find that.

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, and if people want to follow you, Dave, where can we send them to follow you?

I know that you also do consulting, so please share your wares, sir.

They can just go.

So I have an Instagram which is Dave's Cleaning Consultants.

And if they want, if I do one-on-one coaching, I do set aside like one day a week to you know, I try to set one day a week just kind of get to know our community.

I used to do, I made the mistake of doing free calls a while back and people were wasting my time and just people, it wasn't people that really wanted to know information and be gone.

For the people that are serious about growing their business and taking it to their next level and really growing it.

I love to talk to those types of people, and they can just go to our website and we have a business consult.

Consulting page on there, but if you just have a couple questions, I always say if you guys just have a couple questions, I can just answer on email.

I do it all the time.

People message me all the time.

I'm on Instagram.

I'm on Facebook.

I'm on email.

Free feel to send me a message.

I'm you know, I feel like the cleaning community has done so much for me that I love to give back.

Because I will end the podcast by saying when I was first starting, I did look at YouTube and I feel like there wasn't as many YouTube videos available like they are today.

You know, ten years ago, there was probably a little bit less information out there.

And I was actually calling some of the other local cleaning companies around my area.

And I will tell you, a lot of them would not really help out or answer small questions.

So when I, you know, finally got to where I wanted to be in the company and you know, grew it to where I call it content.

I'm content with my business.

You know, I think the last couple, years I've been really, you know, helping out with, you know, mentoring, so.

Thanks again, Stephanie.

I really do appreciate it.

Oh, this has been amazing, Dave!

Everyone, please leave him some love in the comments.

And what questions do you have for a follow-up episode?

Because I know I have a lot.

I want to get into more operational things, but this was just—I mean—the stories are too good; I had to hear them all.

So, I apologize—you guys know—I just can't leave things alone.

I have to dig into it.

So, please leave me the comments and questions that you have below for a part two with Mr. Dave.

Go follow him, give him some love, hit that subscribe, hit that like, and we'll see in the next episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners.

Thanks, guys!

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Until next time, keep your work clean and your business filthy rich.