Speaker 1: Episode two ninety three, Frugal Side Hustle Cleaning Business with
Speaker 1: Ken Carfagno. Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll
Speaker 1: learn to save money, embrace simplicity, rice and liver rig
Speaker 1: your life. Here are your host Jen and Jill. Mmmmm,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen,
Speaker 1: my name is Jill, and today we are talking about
Speaker 1: another frugal side hustle in our Frugal Side Hustle series.
Speaker 1: These are side hustles that are where Jill likes to
Speaker 1: say the juice is worth the squeeze and not expensive
Speaker 1: to get started. And I don't think cleaning businesses are
Speaker 1: talked about enough. I am really fascinated by them, and
Speaker 1: so I'm super glad to have my friend Ken come on,
Speaker 1: who is an expert on it and really dive deep.
Speaker 1: This is such an interesting one that I particularly love.
Speaker 1: I can't say all the reasons why, I probably don't
Speaker 1: even know, but I feel as though a lot of
Speaker 1: times when we talk about side hustles or starting a business,
Speaker 1: so much of it is digital, and I think I'm
Speaker 1: really drawn to this very hands on labor as a service,
Speaker 1: being engaged with other people and in their homes, and
Speaker 1: this one really makes sense to me, and I think
Speaker 1: it will be really excellent for others who are similar
Speaker 1: to me, who are like I don't want to create
Speaker 1: websites for other people. I just want to go in
Speaker 1: and clean. I want to be able to see a
Speaker 1: start product and an end product and a before and after,
Speaker 1: and I want to work with my hands and the
Speaker 1: ability to make really decent money as well. Hear from
Speaker 1: Ken is exciting, So I'm really excited to present this
Speaker 1: to others. And really it's for myself, that's why we
Speaker 1: do interviews. Yes, but first, this episode is brought to
Speaker 1: you by the Three Day Spending Makeover. If you are
Speaker 1: tired of busting your budget every month but don't want
Speaker 1: to live under a rock while getting your finances together,
Speaker 1: the three Day Spending Makeover is for you. By the
Speaker 1: end of this free three day challenge, you will find
Speaker 1: what you value spending on, learn strategies for saying no
Speaker 1: to the things you don't, and create a plan for
Speaker 1: guilt free spending that won't leave you broke. So if
Speaker 1: that sounds like everything to you right now, head to
Speaker 1: Frugal Friends podcast dot com Slash Makeover to start the
Speaker 1: challenge today free. I love that. What I also love
Speaker 1: is situations that don't leave me broke. So absolutely, I'm
Speaker 1: here for it. Absolutely. And if spending is not your issue,
Speaker 1: maybe it's earning money. That's why we do the Frugal
Speaker 1: Side Hustle series. Well, we think everyone could be better
Speaker 1: at being intentional with their spending all the time. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you can't cut anymore, you gotta work on earning more.
Speaker 1: And so if this is you, and maybe you listen
Speaker 1: to this episode and you're like, I don't think cleaning
Speaker 1: is for me. We have several other episodes. So we've
Speaker 1: got two fifty seven, which is freelance writing with Miranda Marquet.
Speaker 1: Freelance writing is how I was able to leave nine
Speaker 1: to five workforce and earn money at home, and then
Speaker 1: episode two forty two creating and selling digital products with Ledap.
Speaker 1: That one is a really good one, and we've got
Speaker 1: this one's a great hands on one. We do have
Speaker 1: a few more digital ones in the works, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: the one we did on Salesforce with Brad Rice. There
Speaker 1: are several of them and we've got more to come.
Speaker 1: So we're not going to leave you high and dry
Speaker 1: on the side hustle front and we're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 1: show you how to do it frugally. So, without further ado,
Speaker 1: our friend Ken Carfagno is the host of the Smart
Speaker 1: Cleaning School podcast and he's really passionate about helping people
Speaker 1: start cleaning businesses and helping those people grow in their
Speaker 1: business mindset because it's it can be easier to start
Speaker 1: a business and then it can be to maintain and
Speaker 1: grow it, and so that's where his passion really lies.
Speaker 1: So he has a podcast with like over two hundred
Speaker 1: episodes and the first one hundred and fifty of those
Speaker 1: were literally just step by step walking people through the
Speaker 1: starting and growing of a cleaning business. And so he
Speaker 1: and his wife, Teresa have five kids, so they know
Speaker 1: what busy looks like, they know what to prioritize. And
Speaker 1: I'm just really excited for you to meet Ken and
Speaker 1: hear about his philosophy and strategies for starting a cleaning business.
Speaker 1: Let's do it. Ken, Welcome to the show. We are
Speaker 1: super excited to get into this topic that we don't
Speaker 1: hear about a lot, but really is a very cool
Speaker 1: frugal side hustle and I'm very intrigued because I have
Speaker 1: friends who just launched their own cleaning business. Shout out
Speaker 1: to the Rigleys and Rizzos, and I'm curious to hear
Speaker 1: your thoughts in the behind the scenes. And I hope
Speaker 1: they'll listen to this. They're great friends. Who knows, Maybe
Speaker 1: they will, maybe they won't. I'm here and I'm excited
Speaker 1: to learn more and maybe I'll start my own business.
Speaker 1: They're in Pennsylvania, why not why not start one in
Speaker 1: Florida too. That's wrong that I'm a Pennsylvania Yeah, awesome, Ken, Well,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for being here. We are curious you're
Speaker 1: here to talk to us about the side hustle that
Speaker 1: you're an expert at and what you've done with the
Speaker 1: businesses and the way that you're training others. Can you
Speaker 1: just jump right in tell us what does it look
Speaker 1: like to start a cleaning business? What a time commitments, logistics, duties,
Speaker 1: all the ins and outs. Yeah? Absolutely. First of all,
Speaker 1: thank you so much Jen and Jill for having me
Speaker 1: on the podcast. You guys have had extreme success in
Speaker 1: this medium. I'm also a podcaster, so you guys are
Speaker 1: like big sisters in a sense to what I'm when
Speaker 1: I'm putting together. So thank you for having me on
Speaker 1: the show. It's an honor, and this is a this
Speaker 1: is a great segment. I mean, I remember, Jen, when
Speaker 1: you and I were at a retreat business retreat seeing
Speaker 1: Augustine last year. I kind of pitched this to you, like, hey,
Speaker 1: I have an idea for your show. It's awesome. I'm
Speaker 1: so glad we're able to pull this off. So to
Speaker 1: dive into your question, this is an awesome side hustle,
Speaker 1: I would say, like when I teach people in a
Speaker 1: course format or in a group, this is what I've
Speaker 1: personally done twice. I used to be a mechanical engineer,
Speaker 1: so I'm very analytical with things. But I've also spent
Speaker 1: time in MLM. Prior to starting a cleaning company. My wife,
Speaker 1: actually my wife started the company, and that I always say, well,
Speaker 1: my wife started a cleaning company. Teresa, give her the
Speaker 1: shout out. It's everywhere, It's on my Interrow podcast. So
Speaker 1: what I had before I started was some good analytics
Speaker 1: on how to process. I had some decent business. I
Speaker 1: came in. I had to learn people skills. I read
Speaker 1: a lot of books. These are all important things. Don't
Speaker 1: just jump into any side hustle with an employee's mindset.
Speaker 1: I don't recommend that you really want to learn and
Speaker 1: grow and develop your mind to become the type of
Speaker 1: person that can grow a cleaning business or any kind
Speaker 1: of a business. But it's a really great side hustle.
Speaker 1: The numbers. This is one of the one of the
Speaker 1: fastest growing industries where there's over fifty thousand people joining
Speaker 1: or starting a cleaning company right now. Every year that
Speaker 1: number has exploded since COVID. I mean we used to
Speaker 1: I used to it was tracking statistics. Maybe it was
Speaker 1: twenty thirty thousand per year, and then COVID it shot
Speaker 1: up to fifty sixty thousand, and I don't I don't
Speaker 1: expect that to drop when you have been big names
Speaker 1: like Mark Cuban during the pandemic talking about cleaning. I mean,
Speaker 1: that is a cool thing because we've always been a
Speaker 1: behind the scenes industry, like nurses, like the people that
Speaker 1: are out there doing the things every day for people,
Speaker 1: and they don't get any credit, they don't get into limelight.
Speaker 1: And cleaning suddenly became very important to people a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago, so a lot of people are coming in.
Speaker 1: It's a great industry It's got a tremendous upside for
Speaker 1: years to come. It is definitely one of the most
Speaker 1: inexpensive and more most frugal ways to enter your own business.
Speaker 1: For under a thousand bucks, you can have the basic
Speaker 1: supplies you need to get started in a cleaning cleaning
Speaker 1: business as a side hustle, and the income potential is
Speaker 1: over a thousand dollars a week part time. I personally
Speaker 1: in our first cleaning company. It took me a while
Speaker 1: because I had to figure out how to do it.
Speaker 1: But I was interviewed on John Ley Doomass show for
Speaker 1: this by four or five years ago. At that point,
Speaker 1: I was in the process of going from a five
Speaker 1: to six day a week cleaning job. I'm making about
Speaker 1: fifty sixty thousand a year part full time at that point,
Speaker 1: and I'm just working hard. I'm beating on my body.
Speaker 1: And we transformed that business through mindset and increasing price,
Speaker 1: decreasing how long it took to clean houses and buildings,
Speaker 1: and we went from five days to two days on
Speaker 1: the same income. So that became a part time business,
Speaker 1: and I had five day weekends with my family. We
Speaker 1: have five kids. I just I just wanted time, and
Speaker 1: so that was an amazing season for us, and then
Speaker 1: we sold that company from almost six figures, which was
Speaker 1: an upstate New York. I started teaching people that you
Speaker 1: could start a cleaning business that were new to the industry,
Speaker 1: that were already a part of the industry, that were
Speaker 1: struggling solo cleaners, which there's a lot of them out there.
Speaker 1: They don't have great mindset, They needed mindset, and the
Speaker 1: podcast started. I want to teach them proper business mindset
Speaker 1: so you can grow and optimize like I had done.
Speaker 1: And then we started a new solo cleaning business in
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania and two late eighteen early nineteen, and in eighteen
Speaker 1: months we went from the Century zero to a seventy
Speaker 1: thousand dollars part time profit working two days a week.
Speaker 1: And that is the first one hundred and fifty episodes
Speaker 1: of the podcast. It was an accountability tool. Ken says
Speaker 1: he can do it, Watch Ken do it. And that
Speaker 1: was the first hundred and fifty episodes where I shared
Speaker 1: week and week out the actual tactics, trick strategies I
Speaker 1: was using. So I really believe it's an incredible opportunity
Speaker 1: side hustle and the upside long term you could grow
Speaker 1: a company beyond working by yourself, Jill Jen, you can build.
Speaker 1: I've friends that are doing two million, three million, eight million,
Speaker 1: fifteen million, fifty million dollars in revenue making, have tremendous
Speaker 1: levels of freedom. And it starts with just saying yes
Speaker 1: to this, and I can clean one person's house, so
Speaker 1: I can clean one person's building. It just starts with that,
Speaker 1: the basic knowledge, and you can grow it to whatever
Speaker 1: level you choose. So essentially, we're asking you to summarize
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty episodes into this interview. I love
Speaker 1: that experiment though, that you're doing in front of the
Speaker 1: people who are following you and listening to you. Of
Speaker 1: you're not quite sure, but you're pretty certain that you're
Speaker 1: going to be able to make this happen based off
Speaker 1: of what you've experienced prior to and I really appreciate
Speaker 1: you throwing out some of the real numbers here. I
Speaker 1: think sometimes that's our biggest question when it comes to
Speaker 1: a side hustle. Is the juice going to be worth
Speaker 1: the squeeze? How much of a time commitment is this
Speaker 1: going to be? How much do I have to invest
Speaker 1: off the bat much can I expect in return? And
Speaker 1: it sounds like there's a growth that happens, like someone's
Speaker 1: not just going to dive in and be making a
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a week. There's a working up to that.
Speaker 1: But I appreciate how you've described some of the ways
Speaker 1: that you've been able to trim that and see increased
Speaker 1: revenue for decreased amount of time. I don't know if
Speaker 1: there's anything that you can say about that, how you
Speaker 1: got there, how you can get to the point of
Speaker 1: shortening the cleans figuring out how to maximize your time well,
Speaker 1: I mean the skill set. It seems as though this
Speaker 1: is one of those things that anyone can kind of
Speaker 1: jump into. There could be a bit of a learning curve,
Speaker 1: but hopefully we all have a general understanding of how
Speaker 1: to clean. But then it sounds like there was probably
Speaker 1: some tips and tricks along the way to actually make
Speaker 1: this profitable and worthwhile for people. Here's a great example
Speaker 1: of that last point you made. So we are currently
Speaker 1: scaling a cleaning company after doing it solo for so
Speaker 1: many years. Last year, some change and the profile of
Speaker 1: someone that we're hiring. So our team now has seventeam
Speaker 1: members and we're going to hire our first manager very soon,
Speaker 1: and that's allowed us to go from working two three
Speaker 1: two days a week and having long weekends. We were
Speaker 1: able to go to Florida, not far from jen for
Speaker 1: the month of February, and we're going back this February,
Speaker 1: so we can take a whole month off and have
Speaker 1: the business still run. That's excellent. So the profile of
Speaker 1: person that we hire, we have a very very stringent process.
Speaker 1: We look for professionals. We have a very particular business model,
Speaker 1: but we look for professionals, and I don't want someone
Speaker 1: that has cleaning experience. So the secret So anyway, I
Speaker 1: guess that someone's in my area and they happen here
Speaker 1: this podcast, they just learned Ken's secret to how to
Speaker 1: kind of get a job with Carpagner Commercial Cleaning and
Speaker 1: Philadelphia area. Yeah, you didn't hear it here. But if
Speaker 1: I see, oh I've got all this cleaning experience, I'm like,
Speaker 1: don't want you. I actually want someone that has integrity, character,
Speaker 1: They're professional. They understood like our core values is our ownership,
Speaker 1: excellence and safety. I want people that take ownership. I
Speaker 1: don't want to babysit people and professionals usually get that.
Speaker 1: They also understand that like we do commercial cleaning now,
Speaker 1: so they're going into buildings that have proprietary confidential information.
Speaker 1: I sign non disclosures with the that with the customers
Speaker 1: that we're not going to look at their stuff. We're
Speaker 1: just going to clean, We're not going to touch. So
Speaker 1: we need someone we can trust. So if you have
Speaker 1: good character and you're willing to learn, and you're willing
Speaker 1: to grow your mind to become the type of person
Speaker 1: like I think that's what you're kind of asking is
Speaker 1: who can do this? And I'm saying this is a
Speaker 1: if you want to clean houses during the day. If
Speaker 1: you're a mom, you want to clean houses during the
Speaker 1: day for extra money, this is for you. If you're
Speaker 1: a dad, you need some extra money nights and weekends
Speaker 1: after your full time job, this is for you. If
Speaker 1: you're a college student or a millennial, like people were hiring,
Speaker 1: they need to be like late twenties, early thirties, just
Speaker 1: starting their families. They have a professional job, like we've
Speaker 1: accountant engineers, people that work full time professional jobs applying
Speaker 1: in the droves for a part time cleaning job because
Speaker 1: they need extra money. Because what you're doing is important.
Speaker 1: People are struggling out there big time with the rising
Speaker 1: costs of everything. So you're helping them save money, and
Speaker 1: so I'm helping them make some extra money. So anyone
Speaker 1: can learn how I know for certain. I've done it
Speaker 1: for many years. I can teach anyone how to clean.
Speaker 1: It's not that hard. But it's hard to teach someone
Speaker 1: to unlearn what they've already learned if they have, if
Speaker 1: they have a lot of experience. That's so interesting. You're
Speaker 1: just reminding me that when I was in college, I
Speaker 1: did clean some people's homes. It started out as a
Speaker 1: babysitting job, and then I didn't really ever like to
Speaker 1: sit still, so I would clean, I would tie ity,
Speaker 1: I would do the dishes, and they loved that, and
Speaker 1: suddenly I then was getting hired on Saturdays to come
Speaker 1: back and do a full clean of their homes. And
Speaker 1: they paid me more, every single one of them, to
Speaker 1: clean their house than to watch their children. I don't
Speaker 1: know what that says about people and their values or
Speaker 1: the skill set that they think it requires. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I'm like, why would I come and maybe see
Speaker 1: your kid now? I'd rather just like throw in some
Speaker 1: headphones and wipe down some counters. This is great, but
Speaker 1: think of it like this. I we had a customer
Speaker 1: in our first business, Alicia. I share the second episode
Speaker 1: of our podcasts way back in nineteen called It's called
Speaker 1: Moms Helping Moms Helping Moms, and it was an interesting
Speaker 1: dynamic of there's moms out there that need cleaners. Okay,
Speaker 1: there's there's moms that are needing to make extra money,
Speaker 1: and that's a perfect like niche. I was starting to
Speaker 1: teach people, not Niche. I've expanded since then and the
Speaker 1: third mom or the moms that are already doing solo
Speaker 1: cleaning at that point, cleaning at different levels, and they're
Speaker 1: helping the newer moms learn how to clean, to help
Speaker 1: the moms out there in the homes. And when I
Speaker 1: learned from Alicia because I would always actively here's a tip, okay,
Speaker 1: tip from cant I'm cleaning right, it's not how to clean.
Speaker 1: I'm always listening and I'm pointing to my ears for
Speaker 1: those that here in the audio version. I'm always listening,
Speaker 1: ear to the ground of what my customers are telling me.
Speaker 1: I'm always asking questions. I'm being curious and Alicia shared
Speaker 1: a story and I asked, I said, I've been cleaning
Speaker 1: your house. This is early on cleaning your house for
Speaker 1: a couple of years. You know what value is this
Speaker 1: to you? She's like, oh my gosh, you've no idea. Ken.
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, please share. My husband. My husband and
Speaker 1: I are very busy. We have full time jobs. We
Speaker 1: have three kids, and we're taking them everywhere. They're the
Speaker 1: soccer mom, back and forth everywhere, and they want to
Speaker 1: have their house clean. And so what they were doing
Speaker 1: is they were busy all week. Finally, the day that
Speaker 1: they have to themselves on Sunday afternoon, they go to church,
Speaker 1: they come back and they spent the whole afternoon on
Speaker 1: Sunday cleaning their house. It took them, because they're not
Speaker 1: trained professionals, it took them like six hours to clean
Speaker 1: their house every Sunday. They said, we hire you. You're
Speaker 1: in and out in two two and a half hours,
Speaker 1: and it looks better than we could do, and we
Speaker 1: pay you. We pay nothing for that, like maybe it's
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty dollars every two weeks. I would
Speaker 1: clean and they get the peace of mind of knowing
Speaker 1: that the house is cleaned. After I leave for two weeks,
Speaker 1: it's in better shape. Than they could do, and it
Speaker 1: didn't cost them a lot that you know, the opportunity
Speaker 1: costs essentially of them having to do it was greater
Speaker 1: and they got their Sundays back. And so that's how
Speaker 1: I can do and that at the time, there's there's
Speaker 1: value to that. There's absolutely valued to that, both monetary
Speaker 1: and otherwise. Yeah, so Ken, that kind of leads me
Speaker 1: into my question, what are the different types of cleaning bitnesses?
Speaker 1: Because you've touched on it so far. You've got your commercial,
Speaker 1: your residential, like, so tell us about the types of
Speaker 1: cleaning business and who, like who's best for each. Okay,
Speaker 1: there's there's a broader industry of cleaning where you're gonna
Speaker 1: have a home and office, which is residential commercial. Then
Speaker 1: you have carpet cleaning, floor refinishing like you know the
Speaker 1: tiles and the grocery stores. There's people that go out
Speaker 1: with these big machines and they do floor resurfacing. There's
Speaker 1: carpet cleaning, upholstry cleaning, window cleaning. There's a lot. It's
Speaker 1: bigger than you think, but I know I'm speaking to
Speaker 1: a general audience, so I'm just gonna shrink it down
Speaker 1: into the realm. Of we're going to go inside and
Speaker 1: clean houses or offices, and we're not. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to go much into like carpet upholstery, floor cleaning, steam
Speaker 1: cleaning windows, just like actually bathrooms, kitchens, like the dusting,
Speaker 1: the main components of a cleaning service. So here's what
Speaker 1: I would divide the two categories. One time recurring. Those
Speaker 1: are the two things you want to consider. I am
Speaker 1: all in on recurring. I am not going I'm going
Speaker 1: to be very biased because when I want to want
Speaker 1: to teach someone how to start a cleaning company, how
Speaker 1: to grow one successfully, I really like predictable income. I
Speaker 1: like to get a new office contract that I'm going
Speaker 1: to keep for five or ten years and it's month in,
Speaker 1: month out month. I like that versus like a carpet
Speaker 1: cleaning job of a window cleaning job. Or I'll share
Speaker 1: you something that are in than the cleaning space that
Speaker 1: are one time. That also it's like, well, what's my
Speaker 1: next job. I remember early on that I didn't have
Speaker 1: recurring set up, and I was trying to hire and everything,
Speaker 1: and it'd be Friday, so ken where we work on Monday.
Speaker 1: I have no idea. I don't know, but I'll get
Speaker 1: I'll get a call over the weekend and I'll know
Speaker 1: where we're going Monday. Like, that's how bad it was,
Speaker 1: and it was stressful. It was eating me up. I
Speaker 1: don't like that kind of life. I don't recommend it
Speaker 1: for somebody. Recurring is better. So in general, you make
Speaker 1: more profit on one time, but you make more long
Speaker 1: term stability on their curring. So I'll put I'll put
Speaker 1: them in those two buckets. All right, it makes sense. Good,
Speaker 1: So we'll do one time first. I guess I'll include
Speaker 1: the other ones. Like window cleaning is obviously a one
Speaker 1: time service, although you can set it up. There's window
Speaker 1: cleaners that can sometimes get they get contracts for office buildings.
Speaker 1: They can go in once a month, sometimes once a week,
Speaker 1: so that can be recurring, can be twice a year.
Speaker 1: On carpet cleaning, you can get contracts that's like twice
Speaker 1: a year, but typically those are one time things. And
Speaker 1: then you have someone needs to have their house deep
Speaker 1: cleaned for a spring spring cleaning. That's called a deep cleaning.
Speaker 1: That's a one time thing. Someone's moving you you're helping
Speaker 1: a realtor to do a move out cleaning or actually
Speaker 1: move in cleaning and move out cleaning someone that bought
Speaker 1: the process of buying and selling a house. Right, so
Speaker 1: someone's getting a house ready, Hey, help us get the
Speaker 1: house look amazing for the sale. I call that a
Speaker 1: sale red cleaning. Then that couple sells the house and
Speaker 1: moves out, that's a move out cleaning. It's totally empty
Speaker 1: and you clean that to a level ten detail because
Speaker 1: you wanted amazing for the next people moving in and
Speaker 1: to move in and then to move out as the
Speaker 1: people backwards people moving out have it, have it barely
Speaker 1: cleaned enough to satisfy the contract at the real estate
Speaker 1: deal people move in. Those are all one time things.
Speaker 1: Post construction cleaning. So new houses are being built and
Speaker 1: you've got contractor cigarette butts and all kinds of sandpaper
Speaker 1: and stuff the building supplies that are stuck in the
Speaker 1: you have to pull up the vents and stuff. You're like, ooh,
Speaker 1: look at that all that stuff down there, and you
Speaker 1: have construction dust, the white powder everywhere. You rub the
Speaker 1: wall and it's like an inch thick. That's post construction.
Speaker 1: Great money, Jenna, and I know nothing about the type
Speaker 1: of dust and you're talking about Okay, I flipped flip
Speaker 1: the script as the interviewer. Now, so tell me the story.
Speaker 1: I want to hear this one. I'll finish mine. We'll
Speaker 1: do that post show. But our listeners know that we
Speaker 1: both Jen and I are in the midst of our
Speaker 1: own renovations. D I y ing it though so not
Speaker 1: as many constructions. We are our own cleaners for that.
Speaker 1: See okay, so you so you understand that's post construction cleaning.
Speaker 1: That's another one. People love those airbnbs. This is like
Speaker 1: the big thing I want to do Airbnb cleaning. I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: thank you, vacation rentals. Airbnb's like, you can't keep me
Speaker 1: far enough away. But people love those. That's fine. Are
Speaker 1: they recurring? They can be, for sure because people depending
Speaker 1: out how if it's short term a long term. I
Speaker 1: don't like it because you have very little time. It's like, hey,
Speaker 1: here you go, Ken, you can clean it between one
Speaker 1: and three on Saturday, thanks so much. I prefer to
Speaker 1: have its scheduled. I'm at the house every other Thursday
Speaker 1: for the next five years. So those are the one
Speaker 1: time buckets, and there's others, but those are some general ones.
Speaker 1: And I think there's a follow about who would do
Speaker 1: certain ones. But the recurring ones. The two main are
Speaker 1: you can clean houses, you can clean offices, commercial cleaning,
Speaker 1: residential cleaning. Yeah. I mean I think that you've described
Speaker 1: well the pros and cons of each one, and I
Speaker 1: think depending on who we are in our own personalities,
Speaker 1: personhood schedules, we can kind of know based on the
Speaker 1: pros and cons, what doesn't sound like a big deal
Speaker 1: and what is a really big deal. Certainly if you
Speaker 1: want flexibility, Yeah, that Airbnb gig is going to be
Speaker 1: a difficult one. It is. What this is just a
Speaker 1: really side question, But do you ever get any concerns
Speaker 1: about well, you've said one of your core values or
Speaker 1: I don't know how you described it, but is safety
Speaker 1: and going into people's homes. I could see that being
Speaker 1: one of the most draw for people, the reoccurring I'm
Speaker 1: going into these homes every other Thursday. But yet you're
Speaker 1: going into people's homes. It's a really intimate experience to
Speaker 1: be invited into someone's home. How have you navigated that?
Speaker 1: Like for someone who's thinking about this and that might
Speaker 1: be a barrier, what do you have to say to that?
Speaker 1: That was particularly difficult for me in the beginning, So
Speaker 1: I started cleaning homes on a regular basis in two
Speaker 1: thousand and six, so we've been in this bit. We've
Speaker 1: been in the cleaning industry. I left engineering, like I
Speaker 1: got fired of engineering in two thousand and five, and
Speaker 1: then two thousand mid thousand and five we started the
Speaker 1: cleaning business. My wife started. As I said earlier, then, yeah,
Speaker 1: we were doing apartment cleaning. That's another thing to apartment cleaning.
Speaker 1: Apartment turnovers. Those are also non recurring. They're just whenever
Speaker 1: they hey, five units need to be done by the
Speaker 1: end of the month. So when I was starting out,
Speaker 1: I had a particular disadvantage because I'm a man cleaning houses.
Speaker 1: I did that for fifteen years. I do office cleaning now.
Speaker 1: But in the world of house cleaning, it's dominated by women.
Speaker 1: I mean I dealt with women ninety percent of time,
Speaker 1: as far as the customer, sometimes the husband, but usually
Speaker 1: the wife, the mom, the women, and then the women
Speaker 1: are cleaning, and so it's heavily dominated by women. And
Speaker 1: so me as a man cleaning a house, that was
Speaker 1: a particular challenge for me coming into someone's home, dealing
Speaker 1: with a wife that has kids, Like how do I
Speaker 1: build trust? That was a particular challenge so if I
Speaker 1: can do this, then any mom out there should feel
Speaker 1: a way more comfortable. So there's the piece of trust
Speaker 1: and comfort, and then like do I feel safe in
Speaker 1: this post? Like you know COVID world. There's a two
Speaker 1: part question. I'll answer the first one. So going into
Speaker 1: someone's house, if you're a trust if you're a person
Speaker 1: that's trustworthy, you won't have any problem. It's an honor
Speaker 1: to for someone to let you in the door, as
Speaker 1: long as you carry yourself with trust and you do
Speaker 1: things that you would do, like I would say, treat
Speaker 1: someone's home better than you would even your own home, Like,
Speaker 1: treat it like it's your work location. You're not going
Speaker 1: there to open the refrigerator and get a ham sandwich.
Speaker 1: You're not you're not there to. I mean, I mean
Speaker 1: the bathrooms they're not quote unquote public restrooms. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're not there to. I mean, obviously they're there if
Speaker 1: you need to and you clean them, you know, but
Speaker 1: you have judge shower there while I'm yeah, don't get it,
Speaker 1: don't get in the shower. Yeah, it just just think
Speaker 1: of it like you're going to going to it. There's
Speaker 1: some crazy things that have happened, but there's some crazy
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. So just treat it like it's your workplace.
Speaker 1: It's someone else's home, but it's your workplace. Think of
Speaker 1: it like if you're going to the office, what stuff
Speaker 1: do you do? What's considered okay? Think like that. Be
Speaker 1: a mature human and treat treat other people stuff with respect. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you know integrity. Never to never take anyone stuff. Don't
Speaker 1: put stuff away. They might leave rings out and jewelry out,
Speaker 1: or twenty dollar bills out. Sometimes those are tests or
Speaker 1: they just forget. Just be someone that builds trust and
Speaker 1: earn the chuck. It really sounds like you're highlighting, though,
Speaker 1: can the vulnerability on the owner of the house or
Speaker 1: the rental of the house who's inviting you in to
Speaker 1: clean the home, and so that can take a level
Speaker 1: of concern away to be able to enter into people's homes.
Speaker 1: The majority of the risk is on their part, not
Speaker 1: necessarily yours coming in with your cleaning supplies. So that's helpful.
Speaker 1: But I know you wanted to mention the safety aspect
Speaker 1: related to just sickness and COVID in this post COVID World. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: one little extra to last piece to what you just
Speaker 1: said a huge trust builder, and it's what separates one
Speaker 1: of the biggest separators of the amateurs to the professionals
Speaker 1: that are cleaning. And I don't promote anyone. Just start
Speaker 1: and stay an amateur, meaning you need to become a
Speaker 1: legit business. I get a business entity set up, it
Speaker 1: can be a DBAI and I have a whole document
Speaker 1: how a new cleaner can start it up. It's a
Speaker 1: quick star guide. But like, get legit as a business person. Okay,
Speaker 1: there's bank accounts, there's a a N there's a DBA.
Speaker 1: There's an insurance policy two million dollar general liability insurance,
Speaker 1: and potentially get a crime bond. Are you afraid that
Speaker 1: you're going to steal something from them? No? But if
Speaker 1: they know you have bonding, what does that mean? I'm
Speaker 1: bonded and insured. Bonded means that the customer knows if
Speaker 1: something was ever stolen, you have insurance against that. You
Speaker 1: really don't need it here do you have employees, but
Speaker 1: it's just something that makes them feel warm and fuzzy.
Speaker 1: And the same thing with insurance policy is this is
Speaker 1: a huge because if a homeowner brings someone into their
Speaker 1: house to clean, that doesn't have insurance. If not if,
Speaker 1: but when something happens, because it will. Something breaks, that's
Speaker 1: the smallest thing that can happen a liability claim right, well,
Speaker 1: homeowner stock paying that. Or what a force case scenario
Speaker 1: the cleaner leaves some fluids, some cleaning solution or some
Speaker 1: water on the floor and someone slips, falls down the stairs,
Speaker 1: breaks a bunch of bones and then the rehab for
Speaker 1: two months and it's a quarter million dollar bill. Okay
Speaker 1: if the cleaner's fault, but the cleaner's not going to
Speaker 1: pay for that. They can try to take them to claims,
Speaker 1: but I mean it's gonna be on the homeowner. So
Speaker 1: they're putting a lot of risk. So when they know
Speaker 1: they're hiring a professional service, even if it's a solo person,
Speaker 1: they know they're bringing someone in that's a business person
Speaker 1: that understands what they're doing and they're protected. There's not
Speaker 1: just the character of the person or the company, but
Speaker 1: it's what that person a way that they're showing characters
Speaker 1: that's saying they're also saying, hey, we've also invested in
Speaker 1: this as a real business. Okay, we're set up. It's
Speaker 1: not the second part to this is, yeah, COVID happened,
Speaker 1: and things used to be ali ali oxyten free. We
Speaker 1: just show up people's houses and we clean. We use
Speaker 1: the same stuff and well house one house to house,
Speaker 1: and it's just there's a lot more to think about now.
Speaker 1: Cross contamination. Not people have always thought about it, but
Speaker 1: it's just way right there and find you. And it's
Speaker 1: even receipted quite a bit since COVID. But there's definitely
Speaker 1: a settling point. I would say in the worlds of
Speaker 1: house and office cleaning, there's different perspectives, maybe a little
Speaker 1: bit more intense in a house cleaning situation because it's
Speaker 1: someone's personal space versus the office, right, And so because
Speaker 1: of that, every cleaning company instituted like some kind of
Speaker 1: a safety protocol. Okay, we're gonna put little slips around
Speaker 1: our sneakers, a little disposable you know, fabric pieces or
Speaker 1: a little rubber peat you put right in your shoes
Speaker 1: to minimize the cross contamination. Or we would do like
Speaker 1: special indoor shoes. I would carry them in my cleaning
Speaker 1: bag and I would spray the bottoms of them with
Speaker 1: rubbing alcohol. It's a very good disinfectant. Clean that off,
Speaker 1: and now I had a clean surface of a bottom
Speaker 1: of a shoe. That's the number one that's the number
Speaker 1: one place that cantamment entered virus bacteria is tracked actually
Speaker 1: from your feet if you're walking all over plates, you
Speaker 1: go on lows or home. Do you apell on a
Speaker 1: wal Mart? You know it's on those floors over there.
Speaker 1: Don't look at a microscope. But then you bring that
Speaker 1: in someone's house. So protecting the bottom of your shoes.
Speaker 1: Masks were definitely a thing. I don't personally use them
Speaker 1: now unless someone asks or requires them. And also, okay,
Speaker 1: that's that's fine, but companies are still using those gloves.
Speaker 1: Protecting yourself is a big thing. So nitrial or latex
Speaker 1: gloves while you're cleaning is a good one. They're disposable.
Speaker 1: So and then the cleaning supplies. In commercial cleaning, I
Speaker 1: actually have a dedicated set of cleaning supplies for every
Speaker 1: building we clean, and so an employee can go to work,
Speaker 1: show up and there's the stuff there and there's no
Speaker 1: cross contamination. We have different sponges for different rooms, separate
Speaker 1: color cloths, everything set up so that you can minimize
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. And it's it's definitely and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of optics there it's almost impossible to eliminate
Speaker 1: cross contamination, but the optics of it is building trust
Speaker 1: that you're at least trying and you're doing a good job.
Speaker 1: And then those are the main things, like you use
Speaker 1: your hands. And then during COVID for sure the masks
Speaker 1: and some people were still required that today. And then
Speaker 1: just having a knowledge, like a basic knowledge of how
Speaker 1: to actually clean, how to disinfect. In twenty twenty ate
Speaker 1: rate in aprils, things were getting really bad. I dug
Speaker 1: in because there was nowhere to clean, I mean, everywhere
Speaker 1: shut down. So I'm like, what should I do? I
Speaker 1: invested into learning the fine science and art of how
Speaker 1: to disinfect properly, and I came up with nine. I
Speaker 1: made this a podcasts became very popular in my area,
Speaker 1: which Hill apparently you know my area ball We discovered that,
Speaker 1: and I taught the chamber. I was on webinars. I
Speaker 1: was teaching the local pharmacy, like just helping people, like
Speaker 1: what do you do? I discovered nine mistakes people were making,
Speaker 1: disinfecting nine of them, and I laid them all out
Speaker 1: and did a whole talk on this, and ninety five
Speaker 1: plus percent of people were making one of these mistakes.
Speaker 1: Should I tell you the number one? Number one? One?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we at least want the number one. Yes, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's the number one. It's the number one mistake
Speaker 1: that people were just shocked about. It's not the one
Speaker 1: they're doing the most, but the mistake they're most shocked about.
Speaker 1: And this is part of the knowledge the science of cleaning.
Speaker 1: Understanding it. Okay, here it is. People think, disinfect I'll
Speaker 1: use bleach. That's fine. Bleach does work. But you know
Speaker 1: when you mix a bottle of bleach with water, that's
Speaker 1: only good for twenty four hours. I did not know
Speaker 1: that exactly. You would have failed my test either. You
Speaker 1: both would have failed my tailed Oh maybe, And I
Speaker 1: can't have that on my record. If you saw my
Speaker 1: house would be surprising. So that's that's the one that
Speaker 1: got people. And when you buy a one gallon jug
Speaker 1: of bleach, it's it only lasts for one year. Shelf
Speaker 1: life is one year. You see, there's something called a
Speaker 1: half life. Half life is on the you know. Half
Speaker 1: life is okay, it's the amount of time it takes
Speaker 1: to degrade a substance. Bleach bleach water dilution mix has
Speaker 1: a fast, very fast the twenty four hours, it's it's
Speaker 1: still it'll still take things and make them white after
Speaker 1: twenty four hours. But you have to dig into the
Speaker 1: Clorox's web peach really deep to find the line like
Speaker 1: in the bottom of the commercials for pharmaceuticals you'll die
Speaker 1: and have like you'll you'll die right, Well, here's it
Speaker 1: deep in the clorox is. By the way, this only
Speaker 1: works for twenty four hours, so that's the big one. Wow.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, that covers. Those are the main things.
Speaker 1: It's like like your personal protection masks, hands, feet, and
Speaker 1: then your actual knowledge of science of cleaning so that
Speaker 1: you can you can identify a type of pathogen and
Speaker 1: know what actually cleans it. How to do it? Do
Speaker 1: you do? You know that you have to clean a
Speaker 1: surface before you can disinfect a surface, and then you
Speaker 1: clean it again. Yeah, most people just oh, I got
Speaker 1: this spray, I'm gonna put it on there. I'm good,
Speaker 1: or you know, I'm gonna you know, all the people
Speaker 1: that get you know, for those the hand sanitizer stuff,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna pour h Well, you still dirt in
Speaker 1: your hands, you poor hand sanitizer. It doesn't do that much.
Speaker 1: Post and get the dirt off, then sanitize, and then rinse.
Speaker 1: Don't tell my toddler that because sometimes all I can
Speaker 1: do is get the alcohol on his hands. The well,
Speaker 1: don't let him listen to this podcast. Then I never do.
Speaker 1: If you're safe, then So so those are those are
Speaker 1: some tips. It really does come down to personal protection
Speaker 1: and your knowledge and then how trustworthy you are, how
Speaker 1: much of a professionally you are, and are you willing
Speaker 1: to continue to grow because we don't. I don't know everything.
Speaker 1: I never will, but I'm always learning. I have to
Speaker 1: stay in the learning mode, and that's how I can
Speaker 1: be a better help and service to those around me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's great. So let's talk about like some brass tacks,
Speaker 1: nuts and bolts. How can somebody who wants to start
Speaker 1: this side hustle get started. Like I'm assuming we don't
Speaker 1: need to hire a cleaning team right off the bat,
Speaker 1: but like if maybe that's our goal, if maybe we
Speaker 1: do want to scale, how do we just get started
Speaker 1: just off the bat? All right? First, go get yourself
Speaker 1: some insurance, get yourself set up as a DBA, and
Speaker 1: get a bank account. Get the basic things to become
Speaker 1: a legit business. That is the first thing, and then
Speaker 1: from there you can go get some basic supplies. I
Speaker 1: don't think you don't have to go to the level
Speaker 1: of like a janitorial supply company and spending thousands of dollars.
Speaker 1: But you will need a vacuum cleaner, you will need
Speaker 1: some spray bottles and some chemicals, and you don't have
Speaker 1: to do a ton of research. You can literally take
Speaker 1: the things that you have under your kitchen sink, put
Speaker 1: them in a kind of a tope to make them
Speaker 1: look professional, clean them off, grab your own personal vacuum
Speaker 1: cleaner if you need to, and then go clean someone's house.
Speaker 1: I always recommend that you start with someone that you
Speaker 1: know and just say, hey, can I just I'm practicing,
Speaker 1: I want to get going in this. Can I just
Speaker 1: clean your house? Let me get practice? Who's gonna say
Speaker 1: no to that? Here? And then all all I ask
Speaker 1: for in return is when I'm done, would you would
Speaker 1: you be willing to give me a review on my
Speaker 1: Google page? Set up a Google page, set up a
Speaker 1: Facebook page, Get some basic like, hey, I have a
Speaker 1: cleaning business. I mentioned the insurance already, right, it costs
Speaker 1: about it's different across the nation. But let's say five
Speaker 1: hundred bucks to eight hundred dollars per year to get
Speaker 1: a two million dollars policy for general liability, all in
Speaker 1: on equipment, especially if you're using your in stuff five
Speaker 1: hundred dollars. If you spend more than five hundred dollars
Speaker 1: and get started, I'll personally slap you over the head
Speaker 1: with a vac and cleaner. You don't need it, or
Speaker 1: with the hose attachment, you don't need to do that.
Speaker 1: Over time, you get better equipment, you become a professional.
Speaker 1: But you gotta get started. Don't don't overthink it. Right, well,
Speaker 1: how do I find my customer? Go clean for free?
Speaker 1: If you a friends houses, Join a local networking group,
Speaker 1: not okay, B and I people, okay, close your eyes,
Speaker 1: close your ears here, don't join B and I. Join somewhere.
Speaker 1: That is very loose requirements that you can just get
Speaker 1: to know some other business people. I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: you're familiar with a different type of networking groups and
Speaker 1: stuff for local businesses. But just find a group, join
Speaker 1: the chamber. These are things you can do over time.
Speaker 1: Start building your local network to see if of others
Speaker 1: in business want to grab breakfast, want to grab lunch?
Speaker 1: Go out find other cleaners locally, connect with them. Figure
Speaker 1: out who you want to serve. Do I want to
Speaker 1: be in houses? Do you want to be in offices?
Speaker 1: Do I want to do recurring? Don't want to do
Speaker 1: one time? What's my goals? Like? Think about all these things.
Speaker 1: Like a basic business plan is good to also have,
Speaker 1: Like you don't have to sit down and write a
Speaker 1: twenty page report it says in college. But something simple
Speaker 1: as well, I need to make some money? Well how
Speaker 1: much money? And I would this is something that I
Speaker 1: would put in on the podcast or in the course.
Speaker 1: I call it. I call it the peace factor and
Speaker 1: the piece factor. And this is for those that are
Speaker 1: really following budgets. I grew up on the Dave Ramsey experience,
Speaker 1: and we did the whole thing and all the you know,
Speaker 1: the baby steps, and we took us like eleven years
Speaker 1: to earn our debt freedom. It took us a long time.
Speaker 1: The peace factor is a metric I use breast tacks
Speaker 1: on how to measure your progress in let's say a
Speaker 1: solopreneur type of clean business. And as you're growing a
Speaker 1: little bit too, it's how much money do you need
Speaker 1: to hit your goal? If you have a full time job,
Speaker 1: but you need five hundred bucks more to hit whatever
Speaker 1: goals you have as a family. Five hundred dollars is
Speaker 1: your number. If you're looking to get out of your
Speaker 1: job and you're like, hey, I love this cleaning thing
Speaker 1: to be my full time thing. How much money do
Speaker 1: you need to run your household? We need forty five
Speaker 1: hundred dollars a month. Whatever that number is. I highly
Speaker 1: recommend going the recurring income route and when the prop
Speaker 1: when the predictable profit. For example, as a solo cleaner,
Speaker 1: you should expect at least seventy five percent of your
Speaker 1: revenue to keep profit. I've seen some go ninety percent.
Speaker 1: When someone says I'm a sixty percent, I'd be like, hey,
Speaker 1: you're not really doing that great. You're spending too much money.
Speaker 1: Seventy five percent eighty percent. So if you need to
Speaker 1: make forty five hundred or keep it keeping numbers easy.
Speaker 1: If you need to make four thousand to run your home,
Speaker 1: make it a goal for the profit of your cleaning
Speaker 1: business to be four thousand. That means you need revenue
Speaker 1: of at least five thousand per month. That's sixty k
Speaker 1: in revenue produces four thousand in profit. Per month. That's
Speaker 1: a piece factor of one hundred percent, meaning I'm making
Speaker 1: enough to make it. But when when your profit is less,
Speaker 1: Let's say that person they won five hundred bucks and
Speaker 1: they clean two houses and they're profiting to ninety or
Speaker 1: three hundred dollars a month, but they need five hundred
Speaker 1: third sixty percent piece factor. They're not quite there. They're
Speaker 1: feeling a little bit of strain that like not peace unrest.
Speaker 1: And on the other side of that, if they're making
Speaker 1: eight hundred a month profit and they need five hundred,
Speaker 1: that's one hundred and thirty percent piece factor, and they're like,
Speaker 1: this is awesome, we have extra money. There's a feeling
Speaker 1: of like empowerment. So that's a metric I use. So
Speaker 1: make something like that very simple as a goal. How
Speaker 1: much do you need? Okay, what's the how many customers
Speaker 1: do you need to make that? So if you're looking
Speaker 1: at the house cleaning world, I would say I put
Speaker 1: this on a basic blog and one of my most
Speaker 1: popular episodes is how to start a solo cleaning business.
Speaker 1: I go through all this. I have a quick start
Speaker 1: guide as well. You'll find a house cleaning the average
Speaker 1: house should earn you in revenue one twenty five to
Speaker 1: one fifty. If you're getting per clean every two weeks
Speaker 1: is a typic most people get. Most people hire bi
Speaker 1: weekly every other week in house cleaning, probably sixty percent
Speaker 1: just as a quick number, sixty percent higher every two weeks,
Speaker 1: twenty percent higher every four weeks, twenty percent higher every week,
Speaker 1: just just basic numbers. And one hundred and twenty five
Speaker 1: is a solid number. One fifties becoming more normal. Two hundred.
Speaker 1: I'm over two hundred easily when I was doing house
Speaker 1: cleaning because I'd earned my way up to higher prices.
Speaker 1: If you're charging under under a hundred dollars, to stop now,
Speaker 1: just just quit like or just don't don't quit, but change.
Speaker 1: You don't start under a hundred dollars, learn how to
Speaker 1: do in the whole house, that's yeah. If you're spending hours.
Speaker 1: I know when when I when I was doing house cleaning,
Speaker 1: and I would if someone call me, hey, can you
Speaker 1: come up for a nest of it? And I find
Speaker 1: out that their current house cleaner is charging under one
Speaker 1: hundred dollars, I could figure that out on the phone call.
Speaker 1: Then I knew that they were an amateur cleaner. Amateur
Speaker 1: cleaners don't have any expenses. They just they just clean
Speaker 1: like they just take their stuff. They have no insurance,
Speaker 1: they have no business and they make like nine percent
Speaker 1: of what they bring in so they can charge eighty
Speaker 1: bucks and they undercut the industry and they don't. Some
Speaker 1: of them do a good job. I'm not saying, hey,
Speaker 1: don't do it. I'm just saying it's not the way
Speaker 1: that you're going to want to build and sustain something
Speaker 1: long term with the potential to grow something for francial
Speaker 1: freedom in your life. I'll put it that way. You
Speaker 1: want to know what has grown so much freedom and
Speaker 1: is our piece factor? Just never all around the board.
Speaker 1: Never what the bill of the week. That's right, it's
Speaker 1: time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe
Speaker 1: a baby was born and his name is William. Maybe
Speaker 1: you paid off your mortgage, Maybe your car died and
Speaker 1: you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore.
Speaker 1: Duck Bill, Buffalo bills, Bill Clinton, this is the bill
Speaker 1: of the week the week, Yes, all right, Ken. Every
Speaker 1: week we invite our listeners or our guests to share
Speaker 1: with us their bill of the week, and we would
Speaker 1: love to hear yours. Now. I'm so glad you prepared
Speaker 1: me for this. My Bill of the week is actually
Speaker 1: a man named Bill. I want to give a shout
Speaker 1: out to a guy, a new friend of my name Bill,
Speaker 1: who just came on board our team, the C three team,
Speaker 1: as the seventh member, and thankfully he's the last member
Speaker 1: we needed to bring along so that we could go
Speaker 1: to Florida again in February. So he's going to be
Speaker 1: cleaning two of our buildings. And here's what's so cool
Speaker 1: since this is a financial of sorts podcasts, He's a
Speaker 1: full time accountant works for a major accounting firm, and
Speaker 1: he has all the right characteristics of someone that I
Speaker 1: wanted to bring on the team integrity, professionalism, ownership. He's
Speaker 1: in training right now. So the bill of the week
Speaker 1: I guess for this podcast is my new friend Bill.
Speaker 1: Bill shout out. I won't I won't share his last name, James,
Speaker 1: but I will say but I'm definitely excited to have
Speaker 1: Bill on the C three team, And thank you for
Speaker 1: being that last piece so that our family could enjoy
Speaker 1: a trip to Florida. The Bill who made Florida possible,
Speaker 1: Thank you. Hat is we are here for that beautible Bill?
Speaker 1: Is that a good bill of the week. So this
Speaker 1: is this is sure. My favorites are when we have
Speaker 1: people named Bill. We don't get them very often, but
Speaker 1: they are one of my personal favorites. And then a
Speaker 1: bill that makes Florida possible. Shout out to Bill. Thanks,
Speaker 1: the children your team are my favorite. Little Yeah, when
Speaker 1: you name your child after the bill of the week,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna weep. I'm going to weak. Ed
Speaker 1: might just need to do that herself. We've got a
Speaker 1: few money if I'm not willing to do it myself.
Speaker 1: So nobody has done yet, but I will weep eventually. Well,
Speaker 1: if you all listening, have a team and you just
Speaker 1: hired a bill and they're the last final piece to
Speaker 1: the puzzle that allows your family to go to Florida,
Speaker 1: I mean, call in. This is a great bill, or
Speaker 1: just any other bill like Jen said, you got a
Speaker 1: new baby you named it Bill. That's great too, or
Speaker 1: you know you paid off a bill, Classic Bill Stuff,
Speaker 1: Frugal Friends podcast dot com, slash Bill. Leave us your bill.
Speaker 1: We actually really do need them. You've heard us. We
Speaker 1: were at two episodes of week Friends. We need your bills.
Speaker 1: Call it in and now it's time for Bill. All right,
Speaker 1: it gets intense this last unraffles. There was there was
Speaker 1: no sound effects there. That was all their natural voices,
Speaker 1: by the way I watched it natural. Yeah, we don't
Speaker 1: pay for that. No synthesizers. Nope. All right, So this
Speaker 1: week's Lightning Round question, what's the worst thing you've ever
Speaker 1: had to clean up? Oh? Gosh, A dear carcass in
Speaker 1: a house or where? Context? A context. I was cleaning
Speaker 1: for a property management company to one time move. I
Speaker 1: was apartment turnovers and I was in with an employee.
Speaker 1: As soon as we got in and were like, what's
Speaker 1: the smell? That's like death m And we just cleaned.
Speaker 1: But we're so in the modal, like we gotta get
Speaker 1: going and get a good going, and I'm just cleaning
Speaker 1: and cleaning. I was like, oh, I was getting bad.
Speaker 1: We're like covering our covering our mouth and our nose
Speaker 1: and trying to clean. We get to the kitchen. I'm
Speaker 1: in the bathroom and I hear his name is Cole.
Speaker 1: He's like, oh, I'm like, oh, well, what is it.
Speaker 1: I run out to the kitchen and it's like the
Speaker 1: freeze that the freezer and fridge had some leftover dear
Speaker 1: Carcass me in there that the fridge and everything was
Speaker 1: unplugged probably three months ago. No, and so when the
Speaker 1: when you opened the freezer to clean it, it just
Speaker 1: dripped out. It was like it was like it was
Speaker 1: like red rum, red rum. It was. It was not good.
Speaker 1: So that was the bad. That was a pretty bad one.
Speaker 1: Will I will give a caveat your bill of the week.
Speaker 1: My version is the funny papers and I have done
Speaker 1: about one hundred plus funny stories of my own and
Speaker 1: I and I sourced them from other cleaning companies. So
Speaker 1: if you just want to hear like Dear Carcass and
Speaker 1: one hundred other if you want to tune into our
Speaker 1: podcast just to hear the funny stories, they're always in
Speaker 1: the beginning, so you can you can just listen to
Speaker 1: the funny stories just as some just as a little
Speaker 1: bit of humor. But there's some crazy ones. There's a
Speaker 1: reason for the side hustle just to like be in
Speaker 1: other people's homes and see how other people live and
Speaker 1: collect your own crazy stories. But with that recurring, you're
Speaker 1: not going to run into dear Carcass, deer carcass that's
Speaker 1: been left in no unplugged freezer for three months. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's another pro of going recurring. And so if
Speaker 1: you want to work and move in move out cleaning,
Speaker 1: the money's great, but just make sure you have a
Speaker 1: good mask and good gloves. Yeah, yeahs gloves. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: top that, Jill oh Man. I had opportunity to think
Speaker 1: on this, and I've engaged with a lot of really
Speaker 1: gross stuff. I'm trying to think, like what you know,
Speaker 1: You've got the poop and the vomit and the dead things,
Speaker 1: and I think I've engaged with all of it. But
Speaker 1: I think one of the grossest things to me is
Speaker 1: sludge when you when it really smells and you don't
Speaker 1: know what it is. And so my experiences with sludge,
Speaker 1: there's a variety of examples I can give. You know,
Speaker 1: snake in a drain is really gross. Yeah. We lived
Speaker 1: in an RV, so we were always really, really deeply
Speaker 1: connected with our waste. There was one time, this might
Speaker 1: be the grossest. I did a project in school of composting,
Speaker 1: but I apparently didn't learn enough through that project where
Speaker 1: you have to, you know, combine the wet and the dry,
Speaker 1: and it was just a bunch of wet that then
Speaker 1: I left in my locker for the whole rest of
Speaker 1: the year. Like this was early on first semester, and
Speaker 1: I didn't see it until the end. And it was
Speaker 1: the grossest smell mold go and juice and solids too
Speaker 1: still somehow, and that was probably one of the worst
Speaker 1: things I've ever smelled in my life. I'll go with
Speaker 1: that one. And I was responsible, Like no one was
Speaker 1: going to clean for me. I had to clean it.
Speaker 1: Now you did that, but now I know how to compost. Well,
Speaker 1: I learned learned the hard way. Don't do what I did.
Speaker 1: Put it in a plastic tupper where in your walker
Speaker 1: for the rest of the year. Oh okay, okay, go ahead, Jen.
Speaker 1: I mean you're a mom, so you've engaged with it all.
Speaker 1: So for me, it's gonna be poop in two ways.
Speaker 1: So the first, oh yeah, the first was actually I
Speaker 1: didn't have to clean it up. But when we were
Speaker 1: renovating an RV before we had kai this RV, this
Speaker 1: man who had owned the RV before flushed things down
Speaker 1: the toilet that shouldn't be flushed, like paper clips and
Speaker 1: aluminum foil, And really I think he just used it
Speaker 1: as a garbage can, so trying to clean that out.
Speaker 1: Travis is still scarred by like having to getting a
Speaker 1: masticator and just all the things. So so that's more
Speaker 1: his story, though mine is during so potty training with
Speaker 1: poop has just been so degrading to my life, to me, um,
Speaker 1: to my mind. And I think the worst one was
Speaker 1: we had our power out during Hurricane Ian and Kai
Speaker 1: woke up no no lights in the house. This had
Speaker 1: to that. This was obviously he had to do this
Speaker 1: when there was no power and he his entire pull
Speaker 1: up was just full of poop, like not explicit. We
Speaker 1: don't have an explicit rating, chen um, So that's all
Speaker 1: I'll say about it. It was um sorr. When they're
Speaker 1: an infant like versus they're three and a half years old,
Speaker 1: they just proticial there they're suddenly a full grown adult
Speaker 1: and it was just not formed. It was everywhere and
Speaker 1: there was no light. I just put him in a
Speaker 1: dark tub, like thankfully there was a window in the bathroom,
Speaker 1: but that was all we had. And it was the
Speaker 1: first thing in the morning too, so it was like
Speaker 1: the first thing I did for the day. So like
Speaker 1: that and the times where he just like poops his
Speaker 1: underwear three times in a day, and I'm just like,
Speaker 1: I give up, I quit parenting. Yeah, I'm done. Yeah
Speaker 1: that I decided to have it done. Yeah we have.
Speaker 1: We have five of those and every single one has
Speaker 1: done what you just said, and add the stomach bug in.
Speaker 1: When they do, they explode it both ends. And your wife, Teresa,
Speaker 1: who started the business, doesn't want to touch vomit or that.
Speaker 1: So I'm doing all the clean up because I'm the
Speaker 1: professional that the life of a parent. Yeah, that's a problem.
Speaker 1: When the teacher becomes the master, when the student becomes
Speaker 1: the master. Fun fact, I also have a son named
Speaker 1: kai We talked about this before. Oh that's so cool,
Speaker 1: but we spell them differently. Mind's kye okay, Mind's kai
Speaker 1: Ya technically kai r ro os tyros. Yes. Yeah, Ken,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on and sharing this
Speaker 1: wisdom with us. Where can people find your podcasts? Find
Speaker 1: more from you find all of this goodness that we
Speaker 1: could not get to on the show. Oh well, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for having me on the show, Jill
Speaker 1: and Denett was an honor. And you guys are doing
Speaker 1: great things. You're educating the masses that are struggling out there,
Speaker 1: so we keep doing what you're doing. Thanks for bringing
Speaker 1: me on for this feature on side Hustles. The best
Speaker 1: place to find me is just go to the Smart
Speaker 1: Cleaning School podcast. You can go to the website Smart
Speaker 1: Cleaning School dot com. There's links there, and then you
Speaker 1: can go to any major podcast player and find us.
Speaker 1: We're over three in fifty episodes as we speak, and
Speaker 1: I believe we're the second second largest podcast in our industry.
Speaker 1: So it's a good one. It's a really good one
Speaker 1: because I bring on the best and brightest. I'm an
Speaker 1: ambassador for the industries. I'm bringing on the best coaches, performers.
Speaker 1: I kind of look at like I'm like a Tim
Speaker 1: Ferris in a sense for the industry, Like how can
Speaker 1: I bring the best from our industry and showcase them
Speaker 1: and have them teach and then I'll do solo episodes
Speaker 1: to teach the solos and teach mindset. So check out
Speaker 1: Solo Clean School dot com and just look up our
Speaker 1: podcast and yeah, check it out. You want to reach
Speaker 1: out to me. There's places you can on the website
Speaker 1: you can you can do a free coaching call. There's
Speaker 1: a link for it. So I look forward to hearing
Speaker 1: from you and hearing what you think of the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, Ken. Okay, I think I might leave
Speaker 1: you to go clean. It's so satisfying clean my house.
Speaker 1: Don't leave me come to my house, let me come practice.
Speaker 1: Oh I I would love to have someone just come
Speaker 1: practice on my home. That I appreciate all the different
Speaker 1: directions you could go. I think I had a much
Speaker 1: more simple view of cleaning, and my horizons have been
Speaker 1: broadened with what can be done with it and the
Speaker 1: fact that you could start a business like this and
Speaker 1: eventually hire others to do the cleaning and you just
Speaker 1: run it and it is even more passive income. Obviously
Speaker 1: that's going to take steps and learning along the way,
Speaker 1: but so much opportunity here. I'm so glad to have
Speaker 1: heard from Ken and find out and this was off
Speaker 1: the recording that we have a lot of mutual friends,
Speaker 1: me being from the Philadelphia area as well. But that
Speaker 1: was just fun for me. I hope it was fun
Speaker 1: for you. Thanks for listening. We also love, love love
Speaker 1: reading all your kinder views and especially this one. Poodle Crab.
Speaker 1: You know it's a good one. Poodle Crab leaves you
Speaker 1: five stars here for that says, I kept hearing commercials
Speaker 1: for this podcast on other podcasts I listened to, and
Speaker 1: finally decided to give it a try. After a few episodes,
Speaker 1: I was still in denial about how bad my finances
Speaker 1: were and wasn't really considering their advice, but kept listening.
Speaker 1: After a few more episodes, I realized the host felt
Speaker 1: like my friends, and I began to open my heart
Speaker 1: up to their advice. Now I'm back on my debt
Speaker 1: payoff journey and feel so much better about my life choices.
Speaker 1: I'm still quite always behind on episodes, so you ladies
Speaker 1: will keep me company for months to come before I'm
Speaker 1: caught up. Who knows, maybe then I'll go back and
Speaker 1: start over again and keep myself motivated. Heart emoji, So
Speaker 1: many heart emojis for you, poodle Crab, and also the
Speaker 1: celebratory emojis and the hug emojis and the gratitude emojis.
Speaker 1: Poodle Crab. I don't know if it's because of the pregnancy,
Speaker 1: but this makes me want to cry. You look like
Speaker 1: you're holding back tears right now. Actually, I oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: This is everything is this is everything, This is why
Speaker 1: we do what we do. And I always say it's
Speaker 1: It is so encouraging to hear your reviews and to
Speaker 1: get your emails and to talk to you guys, because
Speaker 1: like sometimes it's it's easy to think that maybe our
Speaker 1: best episodes are a hundred episodes behind us, and we're
Speaker 1: kind of just like I don't know, doing this thing,
Speaker 1: hanging on right, hanging on so that we can hang
Speaker 1: out with each other. And then to hear this, this
Speaker 1: is what I want to do all the time, is
Speaker 1: just inspire people to make changes so that they can
Speaker 1: feel good. Yeah, well say the safety that you feel
Speaker 1: and the fact that we feel like friends and that
Speaker 1: I couldn't ask for more. Yes, we are the frugal Frist.
Speaker 1: So glad you found friendship and safety here. Good job,
Speaker 1: poodle Crab, keep going. Thank you so much for listening everybody,
Speaker 1: And if you enjoyed this show, please take a minute,
Speaker 1: like poodle Crab to leave a rating and a review.
Speaker 1: It does help our show so much. It helps other
Speaker 1: potential new listeners, other frugal friends know what the show
Speaker 1: is all about, whether or not it's gonna be a
Speaker 1: good fit for them. So if you like the show,
Speaker 1: you've got some insight onto Here's why others might like it.
Speaker 1: Please let them know and we can just make this
Speaker 1: community even bigger. Amen, we'll see you next time. Be
Speaker 1: Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni Jen. Yes, I
Speaker 1: have a frugal fail. It happened to me, and it
Speaker 1: happened to me recently. Okay, I needed I need stamps,
Speaker 1: and I've needed stamps for a very long time. I
Speaker 1: don't often send letters, so you know, one book of
Speaker 1: twenty stamps usually last me a good long while. But
Speaker 1: now we're running out, and stamps have been on my
Speaker 1: list for a very long time. But I never find
Speaker 1: myself with the post office. I apparently Walmart cells stamps,
Speaker 1: but waiting in that customer service line. And then by
Speaker 1: the time I'm going out with my groceries, I don't
Speaker 1: remember when I'm coming in and when I'm leaving, I
Speaker 1: got frozen stuff and I can't wait in the long line.
Speaker 1: And whatever the thought occurred to me, why don't I
Speaker 1: buy stamps online? Surely that's possible. Usps literally they deliver
Speaker 1: things to people's door, for that's their entire job. They
Speaker 1: should be able to bring stamps to my door. So
Speaker 1: I go along line and I don't know, I get
Speaker 1: all caught up with the pictures of the stamps that
Speaker 1: suddenly thinking about wanting forever stamps leaves my mind. And
Speaker 1: I'm so confused at why there's so many different prices
Speaker 1: for all these different stamps. And I'm like, well, how
Speaker 1: about these stamps. They're like ten dollars less for the
Speaker 1: same amount as all these other stamps. Like, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get these stamps. They're coral reeves. Look at this. Look
Speaker 1: at how pretty they are. They're so pretty. They are beautiful.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at them right now. They are beautiful. And
Speaker 1: then they show up at my door and I'm like,
Speaker 1: wait a second, what are these stamps? They just look
Speaker 1: like stickers. Can I even mail anything with them? Yes,
Speaker 1: I can mail something with them. And I'm still uncertain.
Speaker 1: I think I'm going to have the postcost office. They're
Speaker 1: postcard stamps, but I can't figure out what the value
Speaker 1: of them. Is. Then, anytime I look on the internet,
Speaker 1: value one postcard? Yeah, okay, so on the internet, they're like,
Speaker 1: it's the value of whatever's listed on the stamp. That's
Speaker 1: not what's there's no value listed on the stamp. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's just whatever the current rate of a postcard
Speaker 1: is I don't. I never knew mailing stuff was so complicated.
Speaker 1: And I'm getting into like the deep web of USPS
Speaker 1: where they're like, this is how much to send this
Speaker 1: kind of envelope, this is how much to send this
Speaker 1: some level of ounces this is and I'm just like,
Speaker 1: I don't know just what what is a stamp anymore?
Speaker 1: And am I going to have to use? Am I
Speaker 1: gonna have to like buy a scale to figure out
Speaker 1: how much it's going to cost to mail this thing?
Speaker 1: So now I think I'm gonna have to just put
Speaker 1: two of these stamps and like hope and cross my
Speaker 1: fingers they put two of the stamps on a regular envelope.
Speaker 1: Google doesn't like I can't like it. I can't. It's
Speaker 1: not saying information anything real. It's like the matrix and
Speaker 1: spreadsheets and no real information. I am this close and
Speaker 1: if there, if you could imagine video, it's like a
Speaker 1: very thin closeness, like a dime's width of closeness too.
Speaker 1: Just going to the post office and asking them solve
Speaker 1: this riddle for me. If I forever stamps while you're there,
Speaker 1: If I have one hundred postcard stamps, how many regular letters.
Speaker 1: Can I send this is treasure or check like outline
Speaker 1: at publics? Should I just stamp? I don't go to publics?
Speaker 1: Should I just only send postcards? Would it be good
Speaker 1: for any postcard? Is it a forever postcard stamp? Or
Speaker 1: is it only the amount of money that you would
Speaker 1: spend on a postcard stamp in twenty nineteen because it
Speaker 1: does say twenty nineteen on it. You have to figure
Speaker 1: out the answer to this question. And you're listening still
Speaker 1: Friends podcast dot com wants to know how new the
Speaker 1: postal ser This was such a riddle to figure out.
Speaker 1: I got caught up with beauty, and beauty steered me wrong.
Speaker 1: I should have just went with the American flag, even
Speaker 1: though it's not what I wanted. I wanted coral reefs.
Speaker 1: It's what I got. But who knows if I can
Speaker 1: send a letter now? Yeah, I wish i'd known. I
Speaker 1: was just at the post office and I just picked
Speaker 1: up some forever stamps again. Or I make a life
Speaker 1: shift where now all I send is postcards. I'm fine
Speaker 1: with that. I'm not writing anything that everyone else can't read. Fantastic,
Speaker 1: and if I am, it's just good. You know. My
Speaker 1: other favorite words, salacious material for the Postman. They love
Speaker 1: that stuff. Yeah. Stick figure drawings