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Action Academy | Millionaire Mentorship For Your Life & Business
From $114K in Debt to a $2.8M Cleaning Empire (Without Cleaning a Single House!) w/ Anthony & Jhanilka Hartzog
00:43:09
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- [00:00]
A
All right, all right. Time to clean it up, baby. We got Angelka on the Action Academy podcast. Guys, you started your company from millions of dollars, a trust fund. You were just making millions of dollars in your corporate jobs, Right? Like, it was all easy path, correct?
- [00:19]
B
Not at all. Not at all. We started from the ground up. Actually.
- [00:25]
C
We come from Brooklyn, New York, born and raised in the projects. And if people don't know what projects are just housing authorities where they cramp a bunch of New York City families into.
- [00:33]
B
These city has projects, not just New York City.
- [00:37]
C
Well, New York City.
- [00:37]
B
New York City is a little different.
- [00:39]
C
That's where we come from. Born and raised, Brooklyn, New York, in the projects, man.
- [00:42]
A
So, yeah, man. And then walk us through where are we at today? And then we'll walk through a few of the chapters of your story that took us there. Because right now you guys own a cleaning company. Is that correct? Tell us about this cleaning company.
- [00:56]
B
We own a cleaning company down here in Dallas, Texas, for the past seven and a half years. And we started it while we were trying to get out of debt. Now, our cleaning company has done about 2.8 million and growing. And, yeah, that's basically. We don't clean any homes. That's the biggest thing. We don't go out and do the cleaning, but we do own a cleaning company.
- [01:16]
A
Oh, my gosh. I freaking love that. So 2.8. 2.8 million over the last seven years. That is insane for a cleaning company. And there's so many different ways that a cleaning company can go wrong, and I think only a handful of ways it can go right. And you guys did it the handful of ways. But before we get into that, let's go into your backstory here a bit, because you guys did something absolutely insane, which is paying off $114,000 in debt within 23 months. And this is a story a lot of people can relate to that are listening to this at different financial levels. So walk us through this entire debt journey. What made you realize that? How'd you get into the problem? How'd you realize it? And then how'd you start calling your way out of that hole to a degree?
- [01:56]
B
First thing I would say is I never identified it as a problem. That was the first thing. But then I did. Yeah, he identified everybody has debt. What's the.
- [02:04]
A
That's how we. That's how we get into the problem.
- [02:07]
B
Yeah, we live life. And you'll pay it off eventually. That was my thought process behind it. But then I'll let him tell how we Jumped into it.
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A
Yeah.
- [02:15]
C
For me, it was like we got married. And I started listening. I was like, we got. We put our finances together like a good married couple. That's what you're supposed to do. And I was like, wait, this is a lot of. Of debt that we have here. And she was joking, was just like, listen, everybody has. Debt is not a big problem. But around that time, I was also getting accustomed to financial literacy, social media. This is back in 2016, 2017, and I came across the OG Dave Ramsey. And I started. I'm the type of person that finds something. I go all in, Brian. So I started consuming this content every single day. Three hours of podcasts from Uncle Dave every single day. And I said, janoka, like, there are people who make less than us, who live in more expensive cities than us, and they were able to pay off this debt. So I said, if they could do it, we could do it.
- [03:01]
B
What do you think? And she was like, no, that's what I say to everything. I literally said, no. I was like, there's no reason. Why would we do this? And then he started, like, he said, listening to his podcast. And I would hear it in the morning. I'm like, still sleeping. He's like playing this. I'm like, can you turn that off? And I'm hearing people say they're a debt freedom story and they're making way less than usual, a lot more debt. And I'm like, maybe we, I guess we could try this out. And that was the start of it. For Valentine's Day, I gifted him. Dave Ramsey has a course, like an eight week course that you do.
- [03:30]
A
Yeah. Total money makeover.
- [03:32]
B
Yes, yes. You go in person and do it. So I gifted that to him as a way to kick it off, as well as letting him sign a contract to also say that we will still be allowed to do some things while we're paying off the debt. So that was the kickoff.
- [03:46]
A
Let's hit on that. Let's hit on that a little bit. Because not for real, because there. It's a really interesting thing because there are so many couples that listen to this show that you've got the husband that is like locked in on financial freedom. They've got their. In the matrix. They took the red pill, man. Babe, we gotta buy these houses. We gotta get these businesses. We gotta get, baby. Have you heard of equity?
- [04:09]
B
Have you heard of equity?
- [04:10]
A
We gotta make some moves. And she's, I just want a Porsche. What are you talking about? And then flip flop too. Like we have in action Academy, we got 25% fee female members, and they are the ones that are like, hey, we need to be watching our spending and their husbands aren't on board. So can you give some advice from a couple that you are on both opposite ends of the spectrum, how you can come up with straight up an agreement, a contract, where you're like, I'm gonna give a little bit, I'm gonna take a little bit. How could you meet in the middle? What's some advice you can give to people that are completely on different ends of the the spectrum with their partners?
- [04:46]
B
I think for me, I had to probably listen at first. I'm just saying no. And I had to think about what's the reason I'm really saying no. Is it going to hurt me? Is it going to harm? Like, what's the real reason behind that? And once he explained further and brought me on board, and he explained further too, because that was the other thing. He said, let's just do this. And I'm like, wait, who is Dave Ramsey? Why are we doing, you know, all these things? Him explaining his side that I'm able to understand, like, okay, this is something good for our family. But then that balance, like you said, is important for us. In regards to the contract, it was just more along the lines of saying, one, you won't, like, bash me or talk down to me if I don't understand certain parts of it. Two, we'll still be able to do certain things that, like, I'm obsessed with Beyonce. So I'm like, if she has a concert, we gotta go. We paying off debt, but we have to go. And we've been to nine concerts since we. At that time, we were planning, like a full trip to Hawaii. And I'm like, I still want to do that trip. Like, we don't have to do so much every year, but so just meeting halfway. So he was like, okay, I understand how important that is for us and you. I'm willing to do that while we're still able to do this thing. So I think meeting each other in the middle was important. It made it fun. It made me still want to do it. Because if it was just like ice cold nothing, just this, it wouldn't have went over well in our relationship, in our marriage. So that was the thought behind doing the contract. And I know how he is. Like you said, he locks in and then he's straight. That's it, he's leaving. It doesn't matter if you're getting left behind. So just letting him know I'M willing to do this, but how do you meet me as well?
- [06:11]
A
So it's like setting up that vision, getting that vision for where you guys are going. Then you're like, okay, hey, this is for our family. You can go see Beyonce. I'm gonna sit you front row instead of in the back and we can have some. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So no, I absolutely love that. And then ant you had a conversation once you got started on your debt journey, you had a conversation eventually and you guys pulled it off. Spoiler alert for the people listening. You did a lot of hard. A lot of hard work. And then you had a conversation, you got into some different rooms where you started to have some different shifts about how you thought about money and saving. Can you share what happened?
- [06:45]
C
Yeah. So while we was going. While we were going through that journey, I said we could do this a lot faster if we just created more income in it. And that seems extremely simple. But I never thought about making more money outside of my 9 to 5 job because I made. We made pretty decent money. We were six figure earners at the time, but I never thought that there was more outside of my job. So during this time, I said we could pay off this debt a lot faster and still allow us to travel. Do what you want to do with Beyonce's. Sit on her lap if you want. But we were able to. We were able to create more income by picking up side hustles outside of our 9 to 5. Yes, we were cutting expenses, but we still wanted to enjoy our lives. So Uncle Dave, I love him, but there were some things that we started tweaking throughout our journey that allowed us to still enjoy our lives and pay off this debt fast. So we started picking up side hustles. So a few side hustles we did were. We had a dog. We just moved down to Texas. So like most Texans, they were like, I love dogs. So we started loving dogs, too. We started watching other people's dogs throughout this time on Rover.com that was like the first thing we did. The other thing was when we moved to Texas, I got a brand new car. Because you got to drive in Texas, and when you make a transition to your job, you start making more money. One of the first things people tell you to do is you got to have a new car. So I did that too. We got a new car and we.
- [07:59]
B
Had just turned 32. That was a good.
- [08:01]
C
And I just turned 30. And we took that car and put it on a platform called Turo.com. so we were renting out that car. While we were paying down his debt as well, she started picking up jobs as a mental health counselor. Throughout that time, I started counseling on the side. And then throughout that journey, I said, you know what? How about we start a business as well? And that's when she was like, wait, hold on. We doing too much right now. And we also started our cleaning business throughout that journey as well. At the very beginning.
- [08:27]
A
Yeah, yeah. I think it's such an important thing because that's how I view money, too. It's like closed fist, open hand is what we call it, which is essentially, okay, I'm going to hold on to every single thing, and I'm going to try to optimize every dollar that's coming in, but you can only save your way to zero, whereas you can earn your way to infinity. And so I was always on the camp where I was in sales, and I was just like, man, if I want to do some cool stuff, I'm just going to make some more money. And then eventually, because my goal is whatever I want to afford, I want to make double that to basically where I want to be able to live, whatever life I want to live, and then also be able to save 50%, because that's where financial freedom is found. It's not in that specific number that you save. It's in the savings rate. It's the percentage. And so I'm like, bro, I want to travel to Greece and live in the Greek islands. I want to go on a boat. I like boats. Boats are cool, bro. I'd give out, sit on Beyonce's lap. And so I'm like, how much is that going to cost? Double it. That's the income we're aiming for, man. I think that's so cool. So how did we land on a cleaning company? Because again, I can name so many people that crash and burn with cleaning companies, because what's the first thing they're going to do? They're going to think about it like an employee. You guys thought about it like an entrepreneur. Huge distinction. Can you talk about that?
- [09:47]
B
So all of I would just say before he says, like, the story, all of our ideas come from him and him listening to podcasts such as this and different, Just getting in that space, in that mindset. And once again, it was something that he brought to me, and I was like, absolutely not. And I'll just explain why before he gets into with it, because we've never thought of having. There was no discussion of a business. We don't have Any family members that own businesses.
- [10:10]
C
Like, no entrepreneurs.
- [10:11]
B
No entrepreneurs. It was just like, why would we own a business? Why would we do that? It was not a mindset that we had, which we eventually shifted, of course. So I was just like, immediately, no. And I had thought like an employee as well. Like, why do you think that I'm going out and cleaning? Like, I work from home full time. I'm not. That's not happening. So that was the start of the conversation because he had to bring it back one more time. But that's how it went.
- [10:36]
C
And if you think about social Media, back in 2016, 2017, we started Shanghai Journey. The entrepreneurship wasn't a thing. It was like there were little pockets. Yeah, there were little pockets of people talking about, oh, I have this side hustle or I do this entrepreneurship thing. Growing up, I thought an entrepreneur meant that you own a multi million dollar business. That's the only way you could do it. I never thought about just having a being a 9 to 5 employee. You could also have a business on the side. So when I came to her with that thought, it was just me being in a small pocket of entrepreneurs. And I saw there were people doing local service businesses. Back in 2016, 2017, we actually had.
- [11:11]
B
A cleaner come to our apartment too.
- [11:13]
C
And we had a cleaner come to our partner and we was like, wait, there are people out here starting businesses where they aren't the ones doing the work. And I learned after leaving my 9 to 5 corporate job that my CEO of my company, he owned a multimillion dollar IT firm and didn't know anything about technology. How can you run a IT firm and not know anything about technology? Is because he found the right who's. He's partnered with a cto, a chief technical officer who understood technology. He was like, that's how I ran my business. I don't have to know technology. I can know business, I can know entrepreneurship. And I have people to do now. I understand that. But back then I said, okay, we can find people to do the cleaning. We had cleaners come to our house, and that's how we started the business. And that's how we had that mindset shift around that time, man.
- [11:55]
A
It's. People think that when you go to these events, like right now, straight up, I'm spending freaking 100 grand for this next week where I'm going and I'm, I'm going with these people, with Tony Robbins and every single person in that room, it's like 200 people that spent the same. And at the end of the day, dude, it's not necessarily the things that they say is you getting around somebody that makes $100 million a year and you're just like, you're not that much smarter than me. Straight up there, y'.
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B
All.
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A
Tell me your experience. I would say from my personal experience, I would say about 5 to 10% of entrepreneurs that I meet, I'm like, your oven just burns hotter. Like you just, you're at 4:20, I'm at 3:50. Like you just are a smarter person than I am and I respect that. Like Jeff Bezos, like those guys, you're like, you just are built different. But for the most part, like you said, it's mostly just guys and girls that are just dumb enough to believe in themselves and they're super confident and they're good at directing people. I'm curious about Yalls experience and that.
- [12:58]
C
Was probably biggest thing for me because I managed a team of 35 people under me at my job and I was like, this is all I'm doing every day, just babysitting people, adults and I'm telling them what to do. Even though I knew technology. But you get to a point, even as my CEO, you get to a point where you don't know as much as you used to in the field because you're not doing that in a day to day. Now you're delegating and managing people. So that was one of the biggest things to the cleaning business for us. Yeah.
- [13:20]
B
And I would agree, just sometimes being when you're around other people, you're like, they're just doing this thing. So. Well, whatever it may be, it may not be that they're so more intelligent, but maybe they have more experience or they're like you said, more confident or they have more people to do the job or do whatever they're doing. So yeah, I understand that experience that you were speaking about.
- [13:39]
A
Cool. So let's walk up, let's walk up through this scale process because you guys coming at it with that intentionality of we are not cleaning a house. House is so important because what would most people do here? Again, they would come and they're saying, I'm going to clean a house. Okay, cool. I'm overloaded. I need some help, I'm going to hire somebody else. Okay, now they're overloaded. We're going to hire some help. How did you guys structure this business intentionally from the beginning to where you're really trying to work on the business, not in the business.
- [14:05]
C
Yeah, absolutely. You wanna.
- [14:06]
B
No, you go Ahead.
- [14:07]
C
So from the very beginning, we knew that we had nine to five jobs and we were not going to leave our nine to five job to go clean a house. Yeah, so, so that was intentionality, the intentional piece number one. Like you said, most cleaners are like, I'm going to go out and do this, I'm working myself. So that was part number one, going out and knowing that we weren't going to leave our job to clean the house. So we started hiring people. We started working with mom and pop shops who were that we found on Facebook, groups we found on nextdoor.com, we found on Yelp. And we were just reaching out to them. Hey, we have a cleaning business. Do you want to partner with us and you'll be able to earn more work. Just like Uber doesn't own any cars, Airbnb doesn't own any hotels, even Amazon at one point didn't even have their own products. And Netflix just started offering Netflix only releases. Right. So all these platforms, all they did was just partner you with other people who are already in the industry. So once we have that mindset that all these multi billion dollar companies are doing the same thing, why can't we do this at our level that we're working at? So we found mom and pop shops who were like, I don't just want to do what I'm good at, I just love cleaning. I actually don't want to run a multimillion dollar company. I don't want to deal with client client surveys, automations, technology. I just want to go out and do the job. And those are the people we started partnering with from absolutely day one so that we didn't have to leave our jobs. So that's, that's part number one. Part number two was then systems and automation, that start that started coming down the line over time because the cleaning.
- [15:25]
B
Business was our first business. So we didn't know what we was doing when we started. We had no idea what we were doing. We just knew, like you said, that we're not going to go clean. And over time we were just willing to do the work and learn the process. Like we didn't have to know it all to get started.
- [15:40]
A
I think there's so many things I want to take out of that. And one of the things that I wrote down is that people think, hey, I work a 9 to 5 or I have a family I don't have, I have a limited amount of time, therefore I cannot start a business or buy a business or do the thing. But as I'm writing out what you guys just said. I wrote down constraint actually equals cash flow. Because out of necessity, you guys had to build systems, you had to build processes. I'm almost thinking if you had all the time in the day wide open, you guys probably would have deferred to just, I'm gonna go clean. But you didn't. You're. Yeah, you're like, we got kids. We got good paying jobs. The constraint actually yielded the cash flow and that I was actually the opposite. I had all the time in the world. So in the beginning, I worked my ass off, but then I had to learn real quick that hard work does not. More hard work does not equal more money. And it was all about that scale and that process. I freaking love that you guys said that because that's something people could take away that have small kids. Like, that constraint. Like, I've got three hours a day that I can focus on this good. Now you got to go build a business.
- [16:52]
C
I'll give you some context on that, too, is because when we first started, there were no kids involved. And when we moved down to Texas, we actually had more time than what we would have had when we were in New York because we had no friends, we had no family. So it was literally after work. Since we did have all these side hustles, the time constraint came from us being too busy to actually go out and do anything else. So we said after our nine to five jobs, we had another. We were working at a gym. We need to talk about that.
- [17:18]
B
Yeah, we were physically going into a location, into a gym on top of the 9 to 5, and doing the cleaning business.
- [17:25]
C
So we only had time either after our nine to five jobs or on weekends to build the business. We were like, all right, we're going to do at least an hour here, two hours here. And none of that included us going on and cleaning houses. So that's why we were able to maneuver throughout that.
- [17:37]
A
Bro, everybody's. I want pass. I want passive income. But it ain't no. Ain't no passive effort involved in making.
- [17:44]
C
Passive income effort before you get the passive income, bro.
- [17:48]
A
It's that input before the income, man. Like, you got to build the machine. And building the machine takes some effort before it can actually start printing out some money for. So before we start talking about what you guys did right with scale, it was your first time as business owners. What are a few areas where you completely botched it? You messed up. You're like, man, I can't believe we did this.
- [18:08]
C
So I Would say one of the first ones was our hiring process from the very beginning. Now our we vet people out. We know out of a hundred candidates, we're probably going to hire one or two. That's our vetting process. So we're not just finding people off the street anymore like we did when we first started. Now you have to have a job ad. Now you got to go through an interview process. Now you got to do a zoom call. Now you got to confirm that you're going to show up to the interview. Now we're doing background checks. We're doing insurance. We are doing a first job cleaning at a client. They give us the feedback to let us know how things went before we ever send you to your own job outside of that. So those are some of the things that we had to learn over the time. But when we first started, hey, we like you, we trust you, go out and clean. And that's how we started it.
- [18:49]
B
And then I think also we also learned throughout time that all money is in good money. And that came to clients because a client will call. And when someone probably isn't the best client for you, you can tell in any capacity, but you're still trying to make it work because you want that money. You're like, oh, they call. We got to make it work. And almost every single time, they burn you. So now we're at a place like, yeah, we won't take the client. It is, but it's okay not to take the client. But we had to learn that you want all the money at the beginning. But even as much as we try to teach our students, people still got to get burned to realize that.
- [19:19]
C
And then even with, even with that process there, one of the things was like, some of those red flags are the way they talk to you on the phone. So if you got, you learned this through action academ, I know you've had people that no longer fit the criteria. And some of those things for us is like, when they're on the phone and they're talking down to you as a business owner, imagine how they're talking to your cleaners and your team and your staff if you are the business owner picking up the phone. Some of those other red flags is that they're starting to nitpick. Some of the things they want is, yeah, I don't want to pay your prices and start trying to haggle you like, oh, this might not be the cleaning service for you. We refer you over here. Some of those other things might be they start trying to Change your services to what you. Something that you don't offer. Because now they're trying to nitpick on what you actually do. And as we own the business, how you tell us what we should and shouldn't do.
- [19:59]
B
But you have to have that confidence to nip it at the beginning. You. You don't usually.
- [20:03]
C
We just wanted all the money at the beginning. So, yeah, we're turning somebody down. We turned on a lady because she said so. We have a strict. We have a strict structure when it comes to pets because our cleaners, and we listen to our cleaners too, they're giving us feedback. We listen to them. So if they're like, hey, guys, we noticed that this home had three, four dogs. You didn't put that into the pricing. Oh, now we got to charge per animal versus just doing a flat rate. So this lady, for example, she had about three or four dogs, and we charged her per animal. She's like, why are you charging me per animal? We said, because each one of those animals have a certain amount of traction to bring it through the house. Certain amount of dirt, certain amount of hair. And she left us a one star review. And we were like, we can't take you if you're not willing to pay for your pets because that's more time than ever for our teams. And we had to be okay with telling her no throughout that time. So all money is not good money, man.
- [20:51]
A
That's why I always tell people. It's funny because when people. We help people buy businesses and start businesses and they buy one and they're immediately like, oh, let me move on to the next. Let me move on to the next. I'm like, nah, get that cushion. Get that cushion. Yeah, because the cushion, the cash cushion allows you to say no to stuff. So that's why when I started Action Academy, we. I sold my single family rentals so that I was able to pocket the equity. And so I could say no to people from the beginning because I was like, I don't need your money. And that's a really strong position to sell from because you're not like, commission breath on the phone because you're not taking every single customer. I would be able to say, hey, man, this ain't it. Or somebody would cut even. Somebody would be like, yo, I want to leave my job. Maybe someday one day I'm like, next two years. Or no, like, you're. We're 40. We're like 24 months. Or if you don't have that urgency, it's not a Fit because they're not going to do anything. And then that then degrades the value of the community of doers, the action takers. I want to hit on hiring a little bit more because I think that is probably the number one constraint that I can imagine in a cleaning company. So it's the same thing as in real estate. When you're hiring, like subcontractors, the people that are in there doing the painting, doing the drywall, stuff like that. How do you guys do something? What's some advice you can give on retention of these people? Because your entire business is the cleaner going out, not only showing up on time, but doing a really wonderful job. And that's like the hardest thing to do in the industry. So how do you guys keep that talent around?
- [22:21]
B
And that is the hardest thing. When someone says, what's the hardest part of the cleaning business? We say, finding good people.
- [22:25]
C
That's the hardest part of any business.
- [22:27]
B
And that's what I refer back to that as well. I'm like, find a responsible people. Just think about your job at a 9 to 5. I'm sure there's people at your job that you like. I don't even know why they're here. I don't even know how they're still getting paid here. So it's the same thing for us. Like you said, the process that we go through, that's one step. If they make it through that, then we know how serious they are in regards to like retention. Something as simple as. And you may be like, huh, like treating them as people. I say all the time, because we do have them complain about just working with other people and they yell at them or talk down to them. Cleaning is not a. A pretty business. Right? And so some people, just because of the job, look at them in a different light. And so that is something that they've complained about or they've told us, you guys have never treated us less than. That's another reason they come back. Or if a customer is treating them a certain way, we tell them to leave. I'm not gonna tolerate that. I will. I can deal with the customer, but there's no reason for you to be there and feeling bad about yourself. So we support them in that way as well. I think little things is just holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy birthday, little things like that they feel good about, Happy Mother's Day, those type of things of just treating them as a human being, a little special personal touch, I would say, goes a long way. And it's so simple. It's so simple that people don't even think about that.
- [23:43]
C
I'll say one thing is also in the past we've done like little holiday bonuses. So we'll give them a couple extra hundred dollars just to say thank you for the year of service. And it's based on 10 years, stuff like that. So we'd say about half of our cleaners have been with us maybe about four or five years now.
- [23:57]
B
Yeah.
- [23:58]
A
Wow.
- [23:58]
C
Seven years. Half of them have been with us throughout this, this entire journey.
- [24:02]
B
And along the same lines of him saying that we listen to them, that's just, we always make it clear like this is a partnership. We trust you, you're the expertise because you're, you go in the field. So if you see something, then let us know and we'll support it. If you say, okay, we probably should charge more for this because A, B and C, send us the pictures, we'll have the conversation with the client and we'll move forward. Or maybe we'll just pay you more for this job because the client doesn't. So we honor their expertise in the field and let them know that we hear them as well. And so that's another part of the retention process.
- [24:31]
C
So, yeah, when people call us like Boris boss or something like that, like, we're not bosses in this. We are partners in this business. That you do a bad job, it impacts our business. Right. So we want to make sure you guys get paid on time. Want to make sure you get up well above minimum wage. You have time to just. If you say, hey, I'm out for this week, can you keep my clients on my schedule? We'll talk to clients, we'll manage that relationship. So when you come back, you still got that money sitting there for you. So it's a partnership, It's a two way street.
- [24:55]
A
Yeah. When you guys are doing your pricing models, like something that I always talk about and that I've learned is try not to be in the middle. Don't play the middle game. Like, either be the most expensive or the most affordable. And I'm assuming, like I, I don't know how you guys do your pricing models. Are you guys aiming like up market? Are you guys aiming, like, how do you differentiate yourself so that you're not getting into a competition of, okay, cool. This person said that, this company said that I, they get, they can clean my apartment for $10 less I'm a leave for them. You know what I mean?
- [25:24]
B
So we are on the pricier side. We would say we're probably one of the more expensive cleaning companies and people, clients do tell us that, like they found somebody for significantly less. But then we find we have people that book our services all the time, every day. So back to that. Every client isn't for us and we just, I think the important thing is one, the amount of reviews. We have that social proof that we have now at this point and showing them the value behind it, we background check everyone. We have a 200% guarantee, so if there's any issues, we'll come back out, we'll contact you after the clean and make sure all went well. The process that we have on the front end, that you just put your car down, we put it on hold and we charge you when it's done. So all of that I think sets the client up to trust us and to understand and see why we will be more expensive. Absolutely. Somebody by themselves, just a clean that you find somewhere by themselves will be less. We're a company, so they are okay.
- [26:17]
C
Paying the pricing and that online branding is extremely important for us. Like she mentioned the social proof. So we have over 500 and I think 500 reviews and we have 4.8, 4.9 stars in a cleaning business. So that's crazy. That's. Yeah, it is. And automations and systems, that's what we came into the business and we, like, we are going to do this better than everyone else, even if we're not going out and cleaning. We know for a fact we got the automation to get more reviews than everybody else at a bare minimum. So that branding and that social proof definitely sets us apart. So when someone says, I can find somebody cheaper, it's like we have the social proof to charge more. Just like you and Action Academy people are leaving their jobs for 24 months. So what are we really talking about here? So this is why we're able to put that branding and that social proof to have higher prices. But in the beginning it wasn't like that. We were like, we're nervous, we're scared. But now it's like, it is what it is.
- [27:03]
A
Yeah, it's a better, It's a better customer, it's a better member, it's a better everything. I always say, go up market, increase your value. If you feel like you're not confident enough to go up market, get better, go up market, do your thing. Because then what happens is then you have the margin and now you have margin to hire better people and to pay people better and to reinvest into systems and reinvest into management. And then now you're providing a better service. And it's just all across the board. I've been every single price point. I'm like, man, like the price. We've 5x our prices since we started, and it's just significantly better. I'm curious about y', all, because now you're at 2.8. And so now, like, I'm smack dab in that middle of right where you guys are at with your annual revenue. And so I know a few different key friction points when it comes to scale. Can you guys share? Maybe you're two or three friction points where you're like, okay, we got up to this level of revenue. And then I was like, man, this is a huge bottleneck. We gotta change something here. And then you get up to this level, and then you're like, man, we gotta change something here. Like, what kind of the friction points getting to where you are today.
- [28:07]
C
I'll also clarify one thing. We are doing $2.8 million a year in our cleaning business. So I just want to make that clear. We're at about 500, $600,000 a year.
- [28:15]
A
Oh, that's awesome.
- [28:18]
C
Yeah, 2.8 for the year would be.
- [28:20]
A
Like a. I was about to say y' all are worldwide, bro.
- [28:24]
C
Y'.
- [28:24]
B
All.
- [28:26]
A
No, but freaking even 600 is freaking gangster going through that. What are the different friction points?
- [28:33]
B
So certain things that was, I would say difficult or we didn't think about or, I don't know, we just didn't do it for a while. Was retargeting clients and emailing, texting. Once they come into our website, slash funnel. What are you doing with those clients or people that have those leads? Those people that purchased from you before, people that hit you up on Yelp or Google, do they just not purchase and you just keep it moving? Or what are you doing with those people? So that was a big thing for us, like the past two years, retargeting them, emailing, texting, calling to get these people either back on the calendar or just to even purchase something from us in general, that has been a game changer. And a lot of people don't do it at all. Especially in this business. They're like, yeah, they didn't book. Okay, but you paid for that lead. So you need to be making sure that you're working, emailing and texting them. I say all the time. Like, I use the example because I have Target, Macy's. All these people, I'm like, they email me three times a day, and they're billion dollar companies. A day and I haven't unsubscribed. I get text messages from luggage company like all these people and I don't unsubscribe. And one day I'm sure I'm going to purchase. And I have purchased. I'm at Target twice a week. But the point is you definitely should be doing it. They don't know who you are. They put their information one time a month ago and they don't remember who you as a business. So you should be retargeting and marketing to these people. And that has been a game changer for us that we never thought about something so simple.
- [29:55]
A
Yeah.
- [29:56]
C
To give an example of that, we had a client come back from 2020 that just booked our services literally like this month. And I was like, why haven't they booked this before? Because we never were remarketing to these previous clients. So we got over 10,000 previous customers and I don't know how many total leads we have. But now that's part of our. That's part of our system, part of our process procedure. Like we are emailing, we're texting, and then also we have. Now we have a operation manager full time who runs it. That's another constraint too, because you get to a point where you're at your 9 to 5 and now you're losing money because you don't have the right team in place that's actually managing the business. So one of the things we had is two years ago, we were about to have our first child and we said, we have to hand over this business to someone full time. Yeah. And we had a va. Chanel was our first operations manager and we were like, listen, we're going to get to a point where this baby's going to come and we're going to be unavailable for you. We have to hand this. We have to hand this over at some point. The problem was that we were too afraid, thinking that we could do everything ourselves and she's not gonna be able to run the business as well as us.
- [30:54]
B
Right.
- [30:54]
C
We had our. We waited to the last week, last four weeks before we had our baby.
- [30:58]
B
And we trained her and we said, here you go and write this down. As an SOP, we didn't have any SOPs. We're like, this is SOP. This is SOP.
- [31:05]
C
So we were trying to do SOPS hiring and we were trying to do SOPS and training her.
- [31:10]
A
Pregnant as hell.
- [31:12]
C
We handed her the business. And the very next month, we had our highest month in revenue at that time. That was like 60 plus thousand dollars. And we said, why do we wait too long to hand over the business? Because we were so attached to it as a new business owner. It's your baby. Nobody can do it as good as you. And we handed over her, the reins to her and we said, wow, we could take a step back now. We could focus on actually growing the business. We could do the back end. We could now think about other challenges we're having in business. So I've seen that a lot where you're so afraid to hand over the business to someone else because you think that no one could do as well as you. And I know you've been through that quite a few times.
- [31:46]
A
Yeah. Because people are like, oh my God, like handing off the admin stuff. I'm like, bro, that's not even the hard stuff. Everyone, anyone knows how to go get a virtual assistant from the Philippines, six, six dollars, eight dollars an hour to hand off some admin stuff. The hard things are what you're really good at. Because for me, it's like you're either really good at like back end systems, ops, retargeting, that type of stuff, or you're really good at sales. And so for me, I did the first thousand sales calls, but then I realized that was our bottleneck because I would market and I'd fill up my own calendar and I'd go start selling. And then all of a sudden I'm selling and my calendar and I'm not having time to market. And so now that we've separated that over the last year, So I did one full year of selling, one full year of now. It's like we have other people that are within our community, members that are the ones that do the calls now. It's. I can actually focus full time on marketing. And so that's another thing is once you completely delegate and elevate everything off your plate, what are you supposed to do? Because everyone thought and I thought, I don't know about you. I'm curious about your perspective here. I was like, okay, cool, I got nothing to do now. I'm gonna go sit around. I don't know what I do now. And I learned, no, there's work to do. The game is to figure out what is the work that only you can do and you only do that work. So I'm curious for y'. All and y' all see, what's that work that you guys are focusing on where you're like, everything else. We ain't cleaning houses, but man, this is what we focus on.
- [33:11]
C
So the first thing we focused on was having that brand new baby.
- [33:17]
A
Father. Fatherhood. Fatherhood, yeah. Can we raise a life?
- [33:23]
C
We said, can we raise a life and continue going on with our life? So we also had the podcast and we also were doing coaching and everything else. So we had that. When we had our first child, we said, okay, now we're going to take time, focus on the family. But I'm really good at the back end stuff. I'm really good at the automation, this technology. Janoah was really good at the people, so she's. Can I get our operations manager to the point where she feels comfortable and confident doing everything else in the business that we were doing? So she handled that part, doing the SOPs, going over the project procedures, and I was like, all right, let's get the automation technology in place so she doesn't have to do every single task in the business. And then she got to the point where she was completely confident. And then she hired someone under her where she didn't have to do every single admin task. So now we got two people running the business. We had about three people, but then we just let somebody go and we moved them into the actual university side of things.
- [34:10]
A
Beautiful. And I want to highlight something real quick, which is like a little bit of a pivot, but you left your job to start doing this. But Janilka was still doing her job on top of all of this until what happened? Because this is crazy. This is insane.
- [34:25]
B
Exactly six months ago, about six, six and a half months ago, I had our second daughter, Amaya, and that was in July, and three weeks after I got laid off from my job, my 9 to 5, which I was for nine years. Like, July made exactly nine years that I was there. And I got the call that they were doing a reduction in force, which was like the second one in under a year. And yeah, they eliminated my position. And that was the end. That was really the end. Thankfully, they set me up that I was paid until January, so, like, covered for six months, so it didn't feel so disruptive. But at the same time, it's like a conversation that we've had for years, since 2017 when we started paying off the debt. It was also competition of who's gonna leave their job first. No, I'm gonna do it. No. When we make this amount of money and then this amount of money and we still just never. We just never did it. So 20% was like, damn, okay. When I had a child, this is the worst time and then that month as well, he had lost his younger brother. So it just was a lot in one shot. It just felt like the wrong timing. And the 80% was like, you said you was gonna do this for years, so it's probably time. God is okay, come on now. Now's the time to go all in, do what you guys want to do. And so that's what it's been.
- [35:38]
C
It's never going to be the right time or feel absolutely right. When you make that decision to take that leap to start that business, start that side hustle, leave that job, it's never going to feel 100, right. Even when I left my job, it was like, I'm not really sure, but eventually you start to figure some things out.
- [35:53]
B
Yeah. Because you feel like you can do it. All these years we've been doing it all. All these years, we Both had a 9 to 5 and this. But at the same time, we do knew. We did know we were limiting our growth in the entrepreneur side because we're giving eight hours somewhere else. So really, at the end of the day, how much effort can I really put in? I'm tired. All these things. That was part of it. So unfortunately, that's how it happened.
- [36:15]
A
It's just crazy. It's crazy to think about. My mom's in a nurse. She's been a nurse for 40 years, and she freaking loves it, but she's had nurses. That a hospital gets bought out by another corporation, and then all of a sudden, a nurse has been there for 30 years in leadership, now no longer has a job. And so it's just the tale of two cities. Right. Like, there's. There's the reality, number one, which is you had that six months of severance, which was. That's very gracious of them and good. So they. At least they did it the right way. But then you're going back and getting another job versus now you guys have been building the business in the background, and you can't get ready. You got to stay ready. And now you got momentum that you can immediately fall back into and say, okay, cool, now we can do our own thing a thousand percent. So I think talk a little bit more about that importance. I don't think people need to start something and immediately quit their job. I like how y' all did it. You're like, I'm gonna hold on and I'm gonna keep going while we build this thing, while we maintain the job.
- [37:14]
B
So you have a little pep in your step or a little dip to your chip when you have. When the entrepreneurial side of it or business is, you don't need it. When you're not only relying on it, it's okay. I'm building this at my own, own pace because I have something else. This is supplemental to me. So that makes a huge difference as to us leaving our job six years ago versus now. Right. Because we have built it up. But I don't know how it feel like when I was only relying on this. And you do desperate things on the entrepreneurial side of it. You do things that didn't make sense and you do it just because I need this money. I need this money. So, yeah, you have, you operate differently when you have a business. And we always say when we have students come into us, we're like, like we're not here to promote you leaving your job. You want to leave it. If not, don't. We're here to tell you to have options so that if something happens or if you do want to leave, you have something to fall back on and you can grow your business at the pace you want, be able to put money into it, be able to put time in it, using your job to help you do that.
- [38:11]
C
Because we never want to tell, we never tell anyone things that we haven't done or experienced. So we had our, we had a million dollar side hustle while we had the nine to five. If you can understand how you walk into work and the energy you bring in, if your business is outside of that, is making you 10, 20, 30.
- [38:26]
B
Triple the amount that I'm working here like a dog for. Yeah.
- [38:30]
C
And we got to the point, even when we were on Good Morning America, we had walked into work and my boss asked me, he was like, wait, wait, I don't know. I just heard some rumors about this stuff. It's like, why are you doing all these things outside your. Your job? We pay you. I was getting paid over six figures and I made a decent bonus that we're paying you this money. Why are you doing these things outside your job? And I said, I was like, honestly, there's only so much you could pay me. There's only so much money I can make here. And I have the ability to make as much money as I want outside this job. And as long as it's not interfering with my work, I'm gonna keep doing it. And we got to the point where they were like, you gotta choose what you want to do. And when it came to that conversation, me and Janoka had a real sit down talk. It was the end of the year. I just got all my managers promotions. I got all of them bonuses. I got to the point where there was nothing more that I could do in my job that I wanted to do. And I was just there literally as a body to promote the bridges between my team and their promotions and their goals. And we can't. We sat down and had that conversation. I was like, I think it's time. And we just had the baby, we just bought the house, we were moving. And I was like, I don't know if there's gonna be a better time than this. And it's never gonna be the right time, man.
- [39:34]
A
Yeah, that's so powerful. I remember when I was doing my real estate and I had the podcast starting to print out some money on the side. I remember I couldn't have a beard at my job. I had to be clean shaven. And so I just started showing up with a beard. I was diva, bro. Yeah, they were like, they're like, bro, shave the beard. What are you talking about? I was like, fire me. I don't. Well, what I told him was I was like, bro, when I am going out into these factories to sell uniforms and I'm a baby face, like they think I'm a freaking teenager. But I was like, is working. But that's the excuse I use. But man, I thought that my original plan was I was like, okay, I'm gonna ride this out for six months when I was really starting to make some money. And I was like, nah, three months deep. I was like, it's time to go. But anyways, guys, in closing, you now teach other people how to do this as well. If people want to learn how to build their own cleaning business, if they want to find you, follow you, partner with you, or hire your company, where can they go?
- [40:36]
B
So cleaningbusinessuniversity.com that's where we teach people how to grow and scale their cleaning business without having do the actual cleaning. And that's where you can find us. And in regards to our social media, that's the hartrimony or you can. That's YouTube. Tick tock. Instagram is the H A R T R I M O N Y And that is actually a play on matrimony and our last name, it was our wedding hashtag that we've now made a multi million dollar business. Yeah, we share all the things there. About our podcast. More than the side hustle podcast and the cleaning business and our family and traveling, we share all the things there.
- [41:16]
A
Beautiful. Yeah, man. I've been following you guys for a while. That's how we got connected and it's good stuff. I highly recommend people follow and go check that out and we'll put everything in the show description. That's a hell of a domain too. Cleaning business, university. That's a steal. That's a good domain, man.
- [41:31]
B
And that's trademark. So don't.
- [41:34]
A
Let's go.
- [41:35]
C
I know there's a lot of people out there today that has had similar conversations around it, but we are some of the OGs in the space and I always got to give. I always got to give props words too. Like I said, we didn't come up with this idea. We learned it and then the person people that told us, we started sharing it alongside them thousand percent.
- [41:52]
A
We all stand on the shoulders of giants. There. There is not anything that's been done besides Elon Musk sending a rocket into space, catching it with chops all the time. Everything else has been done, bro.
- [42:02]
B
Like, you're not a Tesla or Amazon.
- [42:05]
A
Yeah, no, it's a. It's a funny quote where it was just like everything that's. That's needed be discussed in life has already been talked about by the ancient Greek or Japanese. Like it's all done. Like we're just regurgitating it. But guys, it's been freaking awesome. If you had one closing piece of advice for somebody that is on the fence right now, they're like, man, I want to build my thing. I want to get going. What's the piece of advice you can get them? Tell them to get them started.
- [42:29]
C
I would say if you're in the Action Academy or you're just someone who has a 9 to 5 and you're like, I want to start that title. So it's never going to be a perfect time for us. Back in 2016, 2017, we just said we just going to try and we just gonna get started and just see where it goes. And that's what I tell people today. Like, the worst thing that happens is you lose your job and you got nothing to fall back on. You start from scratch. So you got an idea. Just start it, start talking about it, start sharing it, start posting it, and you never know where you're gonna end up. You might end up on the Action Academy podcast.
- [42:55]
A
Let's freaking go, guys. This has been aunt janelka. Theheartrimony cleaning business, university.com the action academy. Guys, thank you so much for coming on. It's been awesome.
- [43:05]
B
Thank you for having us.
- [43:06]
C
Thank you. Appreciate it, man.
- [43:07]
A
Let's go. Signing off.