Making Millions off Cleaning Business & Getting Out of Debt | Hartzog Family DSH #290

So we said we could take a outdated mom-and-pop industry and add some technology to it.

We could beat the competition from day one.

So instead of us going out and doing the cleanings, we were working with mom-and-pop shops who are independent contractors.

We would send them to do the cleaning.

And having our 9 to 5 allowed us to do certain things, right?

It allowed us to clean the business to be supplemental and not just relying on it.

So I can operate differently if it's a business that's helping me and not just the only thing I need.

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All right.

Welcome back, guys.

Digital Social Hour.

We're talking cleaning business today.

We got Janika and Anthony Hartzog here in the building.

How's it going, guys?

Good, good, good.

What's up, what's up?

All the way from Dallas, and you guys are from New York, right?

Yes.

Or is he from Brooklyn, New York?

That's my people right there.

Born and raised.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Damon John just came on.

He's from Brooklyn, too, I think.

Yeah.

small world so what what prompted the move to to dallas was that when the cleaning stuff started happening nah um we moved to dallas almost eight years ago now and from brooklyn new york i got a promotion at my job uh i was doing it for 15 years as an it director and it's like you should move to dallas because we had an office out there and i was traveling a lot for my job and it was like you should move out to dallas i'm like i don't feel like it i don't want to do that and then we had a few visits and we decided let's make that move family i promised her a dog and a concept kitchen and stuff like that.

So we decided to make that move.

What breed?

He's an Australian cattle dog mixed with chow.

Love that.

I have an Australian shepherd.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

So they probably look just like that.

I didn't know what size he was going to be, but he was about 50 pounds.

Okay.

Yeah, mine's a mini, so it's like 35.

Okay.

Damn.

This can go to 70, or maybe he'll stay where he's at.

Okay.

Yeah, I feel that.

We'll see.

So I want to talk about from IT, you guys went into cleaning, right?

And why did you decide to go into the cleaning industry?

Because that's such a random industry, right?

Yeah.

So we had $114,000 of debt, and I'll let you tell that story.

No, yeah, we had $114,000 of debt, and we were paying it off.

We were side hustling, raising our income.

And the cleaning business was something else to raise our income, essentially.

He had brought the business to me and I'm like...

That doesn't make sense.

Never heard of it.

Never spoke about having a business.

Why would we do that?

All those questions.

And so once he got more information, that's when we got started about six years ago now, or November will be seven years.

So we got started while paying off debt, while working on 905s with the cleaning business.

Wow.

So 114K in debt.

How did that happen?

How long did it take to compile that much debt?

Ooh, to compile, I don't know.

To pay off took 23 months.

Okay.

But to

what it consisted of was I went to graduate school.

So I had a private student loan.

So we had undergrad loans.

We had a new car.

We moved to Dallas and then some credit card.

Wow.

So that's what it consisted of.

So I guess how long it took if you you start counting from undergrad.

Yeah.

But when we got married, we combined our finances.

A lot of people talk about, you know, oh, I want to have separate finances, separate bank accounts.

When we got married, we believed that we should combine everything.

So her debt and my debt, we just combined it.

And we realized that we had $114,000 of debt as a family, as a newlywed couple.

And we were like, let's, let's try to figure this out.

How are we going to proceed from here?

Yeah.

And honestly, that's probably a common issue if you're going to college.

Yes, absolutely.

And the fact that you paid off in two years, that's the uncommon part.

I feel like most people have debt for 10, 20 years if they're going to college.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

I mean, that was, I mean, that's the standard.

It's kind of like, what's the reason why are we rushing to pay this off?

That's what it was.

But then after we started, it became like a game.

It's like, okay, we can do this.

We can pay it off.

And so the goal was to pay it off on my 30th birthday.

And we did that.

Nice.

Yeah, because the interest is probably high on those, right?

Student loans.

Yeah, absolutely.

At this point, we've paid it off in 2018, 2017.

So it's far gone out of our heads now.

What'd you guys do to celebrate that that day?

We pressed the button together.

Yeah, we literally pressed the button together on the computer, popped champagne,

went to Houston to celebrate my 30th birthday with family and friends.

And then in May, we went to Maldives in Dubai.

Yeah.

We had like a debt payoff and celebrating our wedding anniversary in one.

Wow.

You would think that once you paid off, it's like going to be this.

We went, we obviously traveled, but once you hit that button, you hit submit, there's no confetti that comes down.

There's no like, oh my God, like the debt freedom people don't come and help you out.

They're like, no, you press the button.

It says submit.

Then it takes a few days of process.

And you're waiting.

You're trying to anticipate it.

And the next thing you know, it says, you got the email saying, you know, you have paid off your student loans.

And we press that button.

And that was pretty much it.

But we didn't really celebrate until we went to Houston and did our own thing.

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Nice.

And you guys haven't been in debt since.

So congrats.

Yeah.

And the business has grown tremendously.

I want to talk about the first year, what that was like, because you were still working your nine to fives the first year, right?

And I'm still working my nine to five.

Oh, you still are?

yeah wow yeah we gotta get

that yeah he's gone but i'm still there okay so yeah first year walk me through that you're learning a bunch you probably made a ton of mistakes what was that like

so revenue first year i think was about 75 000 our first year it was a learning curve i think at month eight we were like should we do this is it worth it you know we don't need it we have our jobs we are high income earners just two of us no kids So those were the things that we were discussing during that time, but it was just a learning about what marketing really is and what the business really entails.

And how, you know, they say the customer is always right.

And are they really?

And how do you handle that?

And then learning our strengths and weaknesses, right?

For the business.

So he was in IT, so he would handle the back end.

I'm a mental therapist, so I would handle the clients that aren't so happy and the people that we were working with.

So that was another thing that we had to learn during that time because this was our first business ever.

We didn't have any business schooling or anything.

So that was part of the learning process.

So was it profitable the first year, pretty much?

Yeah, yeah, it was profitable.

We weren't tracking it as well as we should have been.

It was profitable.

We didn't get an accountant to really look over the PLs, probably to like year two.

Yeah, that's what I did.

I mean, they don't teach you that, to be honest.

So, you're just doing it, and then you're like, oh, what are taxes?

That's for sure.

You know what I mean?

Oh, that was a big one that got a sales tax.

I didn't know we had to charge that.

Sales tag is high.

But what we did was we were following the profit-first model by like Mike McAllow, which is a book, and it just literally tells you how to manage your business finances as a first-time business owner, essentially.

So we were just taking out a small percentage for taxes, about 15% for taxes, about 10% for like owners drawing stuff like that.

So that by the time tax needs came around, we already had some of this stuff saved.

And that's how we were managing our finances at the very beginning of our business.

We didn't really know what to do, but this book kind of helped us out.

75K first year is pretty impressive.

Was that all word of mouth or were you running paid ads?

We were doing paid ads.

From the very beginning.

From the very beginning.

Got it.

Because the way we run our business is not like the typical mom and pop shop.

So we realized that if we could take an outdated industry, I know know everyone's talking about like the Cody Sanchez's and stuff like that, but 2017, this really wasn't a thing owning a residential cleaning business,

a remote cleaning business.

So we said we could take a outdated mom and pop industry and add some technology to it.

We could beat the competition from day one.

So instead of us going out and doing the cleanings, we were working with mom and pop shops who are independent contractors.

We would send them to do the cleanings.

And we would manage the back end, the marketing, the advertisement, the customer service, the emails, everything like that in the workflow.

And they would just go out and clean.

We would do the other percentage of the job.

Interesting.

So, you were like drop shipping, cleaning almost.

Yeah, that was somebody called that.

I was like, that's pretty interesting.

Yeah, now a lot of people are doing it where they're like, you have the Ubers, the Airbnb, the Lyfts.

They've run the same business model where they're just sending people out to do the work and you're managing the actual business side of it.

So, it is called dropship and cleaning.

Yeah, when I pictured this, I thought it was YouTube on the floor scrubbing, but you're literally out there.

So, when he brought it, I thought that too.

And that's why I said no.

I was like, No way.

That's how I bought it.

So, she was like, Hell no, where does that go?

Why would we do that?

Like, we have a

high-paying jobs.

Why would we go out and clean homes?

And

once I explained the business model, which is the same reaction you had, it's like, oh, okay, we don't have to clean.

We'll work with mom and pop shops who have none of that.

And they just, they, and some of the people that we work with,

they've already been cleaning for 15 years.

They don't have a website.

They don't have any digital marketing, advertising, customer service.

And all they really do is just cleaning.

And that's what they enjoy.

Wow.

So we said if we could find people like that who don't want to do anything else but clean, we can run our business that way.

And that's what we've been doing for seven years now.

That's sick.

So are you doing this just in Dallas or everywhere?

We are just in Dallas.

We have students in 42 states, but our business, because we still own our cleaning business, is just in Dallas.

Wow.

Yeah.

42 states.

You guys are with the teaching side, too.

Yeah.

We didn't recognize that.

We didn't start teaching until a couple of years ago.

We were already three, three, four years in the business until we realized that.

people wanted this information and then we saw other people talking about it like wait no we've been doing this already for four years how about we talk about this too yeah so the more we talked about it the more people got interested in it and we said okay there is a component of this where people do want to know about it.

We just weren't explaining it the way, you know, I thought we were.

Because we were only, we were talking about the debt freedom story online.

On social media, that's what we were known for initially.

Until he was like, I think people want to know about the clean.

I'm like, why would they want to know about the clean?

Once again, I'm like questioning him.

Like, why would they want to know about it?

But he was completely right.

And so now most people know us for that.

They don't even know we have a debt-free story or anything like that, but just the cleaning, the cleaning part of it.

Wow, my man's a visionary out here.

Yeah, he really is.

He really is.

I'll give you a little bit of a message.

when we were a good one in America, it was like the whole story was three minutes, but the last 15 seconds, they said, oh, yeah, they own this cleaning business.

Yeah.

And it was the whole story is about the debt freedom journey.

And it was like, wait, wait, wait.

What's that 15 seconds?

People want to know more about that.

And that's the part of the story that kind of took off.

People started asking questions about.

Yeah.

Nice.

And from there, you got into the teaching side, right?

Because at that point, the business has done hundreds of thousands.

Yeah.

So you were able to go out there and teach.

And it's such a specific thing that there's not many people that could teach it.

Right.

Because you guys did it for four years.

I feel like anyone else teaching it doesn't have the experience you guys did yeah you sound like him he says that and i'm like people in this day and age people don't feel they need experience they just jump oh i hate when i see courses about like people that don't actually do it yeah like that pisses me off actually yeah that was the first thing that i was worried about too is like once we start telling this stuff everyone is teaching something but it was like we we felt like we had the experience because we were doing it for four years before we even started teaching it and we had our own experience teaching people know what they've been able to accomplish and now our students have gone on and do and done what 13 million dollars open up businesses in 42 plus states and they've done like 50 000 cleanings wow and we recognized that we said okay there is something here let's focus on this part of the story let's help create a greater impact yeah and not many people look like us or just even have our story as well so i think that helps that puts a twist to it we're a couple we're from brooklyn new york yeah all those things so plus you came from that much debt i mean yeah that's a crazy story it's like almost inspiring a lot of people i feel like yeah

um when it comes to finding the actual cleaners Are you just calling them emailing them?

Do you have a system for that?

So multiple ways the same place that you kind of look for a job is where we would look so like indie zip recruiter even Craigslist is the place that we would look We also like to do a lot of referrals when it comes to that So if we hire someone asking them do they have family and friends that would want to be part of the process?

Right.

And we do an extensive process of background check.

We, you know,

they have to have their own cleaning supplies.

They have to have their own car, that type of stuff, because they are a contractor.

So they operate as themselves.

They also have their own assurance.

So those type of things we have in place with the people that we work with.

Yeah.

It's a good business because I feel like people always need clean names.

It's kind of recession proof.

As long as there's a house or a building.

Before we realize that during the pandemic, a lot of business.

That's when we started really focusing on the teaching side of it because a lot of businesses went down during the pandemic.

But we saw a huge spike during the pandemic.

Everyone wanted their homes clean.

They became germaphobes.

It was a brand new thing.

And it was like, okay, this industry is pandemic proof, right?

There's a pandemic that's happening.

Cleaning was identified in Dallas as

essential workers.

We said, oh, we can still operate our cleaning business.

They can still go out and clean.

We can run our business from our home and we can still make money.

And that's when we said, okay, this is really something that we need to be sharing that we can share a lot more.

Nice.

A lot of people lost money during.

You guys were actually.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's cool.

We went, our revenue, the pandemic happened in Dallas in March.

The first month, no one knew what the the hell was happening.

April, we said, okay, we see the business going down.

By May, our revenue jumped back right back to normal.

While other businesses were closed, we said, okay, we're essential.

And then the thing about in Dallas was they were like flagging people on the road.

The cops are looking for people who were driving to find out why they were on the road.

So we were essentially like, we're essential workers.

We have a cleaning business.

Here's our branding.

Here's our licensing and stuff like that.

And we were able to continue operating our business.

Wow.

And then the good thing with the model is that we can always turn it on and off, right?

Because we don't have employees.

We have contractors.

So with the marketing during that time we're like let's turn it down you know because no one's booking our services so we can always just turn it down so you're not like just losing money yeah as opposed to if it was a different model then you would be in that stuck place like okay what do i do now that makes sense because you got employees that they got to get paid regardless if you make money or whatever you decide to do them that's why businesses were shutting down because employees still had to be paid and they're not even working

lockdown as well like six they don't work they don't get paid yeah that's cool so you're a mental health therapist you said yeah and you decided to keep that job yes

So you must really like it.

So with my full-time job, I kind of work on the insurance side of mental health.

I don't do one-on-one therapy as much as I used to in the past.

Once we had our baby, I let that part go for a bit because it's taxing to hear everybody.

Everyone's traumas.

Yeah, yeah, it's taxing.

Not to say I won't ever get back into that, but yeah, I still have my job.

You're going to ask me why.

I don't have a straight answer.

At first, it was like identity.

Like, okay, I went, I got my master's for this.

I had tons of debt for this.

This is part of my life.

Now it's probably just being scared, which was the same thing for when he left as well.

So I'm not to say that I'm obsessed with it, that I must stay, or I'm not one that like I need this as well.

Because at some point, I do want to let it go and just work if I want to.

I feel that, you know.

Yeah, it is a safety net, right?

Having that insurance.

Yeah.

You know, money's coming in every two weeks or whatever.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And a lot of first-time entrepreneurs, we've, if you go on our page, we never tell people to just quit their jobs.

Right.

It took us, we had our business now almost, what, eight years now.

I just left my job in 2021.

Oh, so six years in?

Yeah.

And we still, we were making $50,000 in our cleaning business a month.

So we were like, I was still afraid.

We were on Goodman America and it was on in the office.

My team was like, why are you still here?

They were seeing our stories on podcasts.

They knew our numbers.

My boss even came to me and was like, do you still want to be here?

And it's like, we don't ever tell anyone just to jump ship.

We want to make sure we have our ducks in a row like before i left we had made sure we had an emergency fund we made sure we were ready to go we made sure we did this we did that so i think it's just one of those things we don't ever tell people just jump ship and we always want to we want to follow our own advice as well right and and having our nine to five allowed us to do certain things right it allowed us to the cleanup business to be supplemental and not just relying on it so i can operate differently if it's a business that's helping me and not just the only thing I need.

Yeah.

Right.

And so eventually that helps me to put marketing dollars in.

That helps me to do other things until it's.

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sustainable on its own and now i feel comfortable for it to run on its own and it's funny people ask that i'm like well your comfortability and mine is different right you have different things going on so i i can't tell you what exactly you need yeah but for us this is this is what it looks like so wow it's so crazy that 50k a month is possible in just one city too with cleaning.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, we know competitors that are doing way more.

Really?

Yeah, six figures and something.

Damn.

That's insane just off cleaning.

Because I feel like the margins are pretty high with cleaning.

Yeah.

Because it's just your time.

Exactly.

So when you're doing,

so let's say we were just out doing the jobs ourselves.

Outside of the marketing, that would be, it would be our time.

So we'd be able to keep all of that money.

So when we're running our business and you see other people like one of our competitors, he's been doing this for like 20 years.

He's he hits us up.

He's like, i see you guys your name and branding is at the top of google and stuff like that right and he was like i wish i would have focused on that day one those are the things that people have been in the industry 20 years they're not focused on seo they're not focusing on yo pads google ads google local services you know marketing emails things like that so we're able to come into the industry and provide that so that's why we're able to focus on just dallas and if we said all right want to go on a market to other areas we could absolutely do that but i think with the teaching component our time has just been so limited that's the thing the way the way that we want to run our business right So, like, you may ask, can you hit six-figure in this business?

Yeah.

But what does that consist of?

Like, for my time, for people that I have to hire, for me having freedom of not speaking to you and my business running on my own, like, what does that consist of?

And so, we've learned that as well.

Because at times we were comparing ourselves, like, why don't we have more?

And it's like, eh, I don't really want more because of what you wish for.

Cause you don't know what that's going to look like.

Are you ready for it?

Yeah.

You handle it.

When you're teaching this, how much money are you recommending people to start off with to start a business like this?

We're telling them about $1,500.

That's it?

Yeah.

And we're talking $1,500 to get your LLC, get a bank account, and you even have marketing spending money.

Yeah.

Because all of it doesn't happen at the same time as well, right?

So, you know, LLC and stuff that can take a week or two, going on to market and your website, that type of stuff.

It's a transition.

So it may take a month to two months to spend that.

It's not like you start and you just give $1,500.

The more, the better, of course, because the way that this goes is the more marketing dollars you can put in, the more eyes, the more customers see you, more people will book you.

Because we do everything online, right?

So if we don't do anything in the field, like we don't go door-to-door, we don't do any of that.

Because we were in Dallas and we didn't know anybody.

So who are we going to?

Yeah.

Yeah, door-to-door for cleaning.

It's a bit weird.

I mean, it might work.

I don't know.

It might work.

I mean, you know, there's other things that if you know people, that's a place to start, right?

Family and friends.

But how long is that sustainable?

Right.

So marketing in places like Yelp, Google, those type of places, people are looking for cleaning services.

Yeah, Google is great because it's so targeted.

Yeah.

I love Google.

I just started running those actually.

Yeah, and we tell people like, where are you going to look for a cleaner?

Where are you going to look for any local service?

It's normally going to be Google or Yelp for the most part.

And Thumbtack, something like that.

So why not put most of your energy into the places where you know your customers are already looking versus trying to do these other platforms?

So you could like some of our students, they have experience doing like cold calling and stuff like that, which is totally fine.

We don't have any experience doing cold calling.

We're not going to tell you to do something we've never done.

So that's how we teach.

We're telling you, use your experiences.

If you have a nine-to-five, you're in marketing or you're in sales or use your experience that you already have, that you're already doing and to expand your business even further.

I want to hear that cold calling script for cleaning.

I mean,

so for example, if I was doing cold calling, I would probably call residential complexes in Dallas, Texas.

I want to talk to their front desk, what the front concierge, whatever that front desk person is, and ask them, hey, are you in the market for a new cleaner?

Are you satisfied with your cleaning service?

So maybe some people want to do a drop-in.

I know some people might bring some cookies to the front desk or something like that.

Old school, yeah.

Yeah, something like that.

And some Russell students have done that and it has worked.

That makes sense.

It's not something that we've done.

Yeah, on a commercial level, that makes sense.

I was thinking more residential.

Oh, no.

The funny thing was, we did try it one time.

We called it a door.

We tried knocking on.

It was

95 degrees.

He's like dressing a button down.

And we're putting flyers under doors.

We got nothing from it after the hour of that.

We're like, we're never doing this.

But we're like, let's try it.

We're new in the business.

We We don't know.

I've never been closed on a door of sales.

Ever.

Yeah.

Most people in this day and age, I don't think, will be.

It's a tough sell.

I mean, so right now, we just had

storms in Texas, and the roofers, they were doing door, and they're it because every single neighbor in our neighbor in our area is getting their roofs done by the same company.

So something like that.

That makes sense.

Patrice FOMO is like, why are they on their roof and their roof?

And now you're thinking something.

What's happening on mine?

And that's also a good offer because the insurance is covering it.

Exactly.

So they're not even spending any money.

Exactly.

Right.

I want to talk about balancing dating and business.

You guys are on it.

A lot of couples struggle, you know, balancing the two.

Yeah.

What's been your experience there?

What's our experience there?

I don't think my first thing I always say is, I don't think every couple should be in business together.

And that's not being rude.

That's just like, you have to know your strengths and weaknesses of how it works because it...

can consume you.

We are very vocal on, you know, this is too much, shut it off, we're not doing it.

And being respectful of each other, not getting an attitude about that, right?

So we're very vocal in that.

We've also known each other for about 20 plus years.

Oh, wow.

I don't know if we haven't said that part, but we've known each other for a really long time.

So that probably helps the situation.

But I spoke about the strengths and weaknesses that we have.

And so focusing on that has been very helpful for us.

I know what you can handle.

I know what you handle.

And let's just focus on that.

We can get back together.

Right.

One last thing we do is we have family meetings.

And that's important.

That can go over everything from spirituality to family to business business to everything of checking the temperature to see how things are going what's not working what can we change who we eliminate whatever so those would be my few things family meetings how often are those that sounds cool so when we were paying off the debt they were like once a week and then they like fluctuated out we brought it back again this year we're like adamant about it to once a month uh but we both work from home and we're like constantly talking to each other so you can say things are happening day to day but when we actually like sit down babies away dogs with no tv once once a month at this point that's great advice because i've seen where couples get into business together it ruins a relationship honestly so it's a it's a balance you know

it's just like when a kid comes to come not comparing our business to a kid but

but it is kind of the same thing because that dynamic can change the the balance of the family you got a brand new business or a brand new baby a brand new entity to enter the family that wasn't there before now it's like how do you guys manage that relationship with that new individual, that new entity and yourselves.

So even outside of our daughters, like we still got to have our date nights, right?

We got to focus on ourselves.

All right, we still got to have date nights outside of our business.

Cause if we don't, and we go to the business meeting and we're just talking about business all the time, that creates a rift between us, us two.

So if the business is going bad, the relationship is going bad.

It was like, we got to be able to separate the two.

Yep.

That used to happen to me because even on date nights, I would just talk business the whole time.

I'm the same way.

Yeah.

So he would go for it.

I'm the one stopping it, by the way.

If anybody needs to know, it's me stopping it.

She's like, Tony, not tonight, no business.

And it's like, all right, I shut shut it off.

We're done.

I'm focused on a relationship.

Yeah.

It took me a while to get out of that.

Yeah.

My girl would give me a kick under the table.

I just go on and on, man.

I get so excited about business.

Yeah, yeah.

But it happens, especially at the beginning with the business when we were the only ones answering the phone, doing things.

If we got an angry customer, it would ruin our night.

It was one time, remember, it was Valentine's Day, and we're like, pissed because this person's like, I'm going to leave a bad review.

You know, people just go on and we're like, listen, we got to go out.

Let's just go out.

It's Valentine's Day.

Let's just go out.

And that's what we did.

So we're very intentional about it, really, of of knowing when it's becoming too consuming we need to stop it here and he's like well business doesn't stop i'm like yes it does and this house is stopping and it's stopping right now we're about to watch some housewives like it's stopping right now

um so that's important i think just being intentional about it as well yeah reviews must be brutal right because people are strict especially with restaurants and cleaning probably even stricter

because clean if you go to a restaurant you're probably not going to leave leave a bad review if things didn't go 100 you're probably like all right cool i'll just never go back right my house and and you're in my house you're in my sanctuary this is my private area and something didn't go to your liking you're gonna be pissed off yeah you paid a premium and you paid a premium for that service it's not like a i don't know another service right you're paying a premium for this you normally expect premium service yep so some of the things we try to use to make sure we get in front of getting bad reviews is number one The review doesn't happen at the point of the cleaning.

It happens when it gets to your website.

So now they are on our website.

They see where premium service.

Now they're probably calling us, right?

So making that experience the same amongst everyone so now it's like all right who am i speaking to what can i provide how can we help you but then also setting expectations so we tell you what time we're going to be there another thing we do is we give you arrival windows so it's like if we said we're going to be there between 8 to 10 a.m we're going to make sure we're there between 8 to 10 a.m just like you know the cable guy gives you eight to like noon we say we're going to do a two hour arrival window our goal is to get there within that arrival window every single time if we can't get there we will give you a discount or we'll call you and let you know in advance setting expectations we let you know after the cleaning we're going to call you to make sure you're satisfied our clean is going to do a walkthrough make sure you're satisfied and then also once we get them on the phone we want to find out are you satisfied were you good are you happy we call every single client every single client every client our team does not wow our team our team card every single client was us so we want to find out if you were satisfied if you were not satisfied we have 100 satisfaction guarantee we'll send a team back out we try to get them before they could go on any platforms to to bash us or anything it doesn't work 100 of the time i'm not even gonna lie to you in this i mean i'm a a therapist, so I know that people can be people, but really in this field or in this business, it's like, okay, some people you just cannot reason with no matter what.

You can't avoid the review.

It is what it is.

You could have done everything right.

You could have done one thing, one little thing, and it just, it is what it is.

So you just got to stand by your policies you have in place and kind of take the L and understand that you're going to get it.

I've gone through like five clean ladies out here.

It's tough finding good ones.

That's what people say.

I think they're so gassed because they're cleaning all day.

So like they're not putting in 100% effort on your specific house because they got to clean four more after, you know what I mean?

And that's the thing.

It's a difference when you hire a person versus a company.

That's what we tell people all the time because they're like, oh, this is a bit pricier.

We are pricier than if you're hiring a person because then a person, if they don't show up, who you going to?

You're going to find another one.

A person, if they steal from you, who are you going to?

Hopefully you find them.

You don't know.

But a company, you know, it can be a different person.

If this person didn't do well, and then we can keep this same person with you if you're available, those type of things.

So it is different compared to an individual.

That makes sense.

Booking with a company.

What are you guys currently working on now?

And what's next for this year and next year?

Oh, just we're always trying to do bigger.

And also just with the cleaning business, we're like, okay, how can we continue profit as well?

Like, how do we make sure our profit margins are well?

That's something that we focus on in team building.

It's something that we focused on.

Once we had our daughter, we finally put like a manager in place.

Prior to that it was just us for five years wow managing we did have vas but it was just us managing so growing our team is important impacting more uh students in different ways figuring that out as well that journey for our student um is important for us this year yeah so we've hired when we first started it was just us so now we have an operations manager she this is why we could do sit here and do a podcast because she's running the business for us full-time yeah uh she has a customer service agent she has a customer service manager so she has a full team under her nice um so that's and we've also expanded to another

another area and a subsidy of Dallas as well.

So thinking about if we want to keep that expansion model going, what that looks like for us,

we've also dove in 100% into the education model because it's a lot, you could impact a lot more people across the world than just in Dallas, Texas, obviously.

So focus on the education model, we've done, we've brought some team members in-house from, we also, we used to also own a virtual assistant business for cleaning business owners, but we decided to take that business and bring it 100% into our education side.

so now they're supporting our um our students on the emails on the customer support we have a community of over what 250 students now in there and we've serviced over 2 000 students so focusing on the education side that's my that's my role that's my job that's my day-to-day yeah making sure they're seeing success making sure they're seeing results and uh continuing to just grow our own cleaning business i love that yeah i think that's the right move because with education you could scale not even just countrywide but worldwide exactly we've got our first student not our first our second student just launched in UK.

Nice.

In two weeks, he was like, hey, does this work in the UK?

He was like, well, not really sure, but I'm sure if they have cleaners there, we could figure it out.

And then two weeks later, he said, hey, I got my first cleaner.

And we're waiting for the next update.

Hey, I got my first client now.

So we got a couple UK students.

We got some people in Canada.

Canada.

We were on Instagram live and him and his wife joined.

It's like, hey, I'm looking into this model.

And he came back.

I was like, I got my first client.

I got my first cleaner.

Thank you guys.

So

definitely expanding worldwide at this point.

Love it.

Where can people find you guys and more about the course and business?

So people can find us our course in business at cleaning business university.com.

We also, the heartshimony.com is where you can find us on YouTube or on Instagram.

And that's the H-A-R-T-R-I-M-O-N-Y.com.

Anything else I miss?

I would say we also have a podcast too.

We teach people how to start remote cleaning businesses.

Also, just about entrepreneurship in general.

That's more than a side hustle podcast.

And that's just us sharing our story, what we've learned about business, entrepreneurship, relationships, and life.

Love it.

We'll link it all in the video below.

Thanks so much for coming on, guys.

Thank you for having us.

Yeah, thanks for watching, as always.

See you tomorrow.