Ep 22 From 1 Guy and a Van to over 778,000 TikTok Subscribers! Education is the Key To Massive Success

Summary

Locally Owned – Episode 22: From 1 Guy and a Van to Over 778,000 TikTok Subscribers! Education is the Key To Massive Success
Date: May 23, 2025
Host: The Street Smart Entrepreneur (Dave)
Guests: Scott and Miranda Gwillim, co-founders of Rugworx

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Episode Overview

This episode of Locally Owned spotlights Scott and Miranda Gwillim, the husband-wife team behind Rugworx—a family business evolving from humble local carpet cleaning to a premier, education-driven, high-end textile cleaning brand with a massive social media following. Dave explores how Scott’s craftsmanship and Miranda’s business acumen propelled Rugworx to serve discerning customers, partner with interior designers, and leverage innovation to thrive in a changing marketplace. Central themes: the power of education in business, intentional decision-making, and embracing local relationships over generic scaling.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Joys & Human Element of Service Work

[02:23–04:18]

• Scott: Loves building relationships with customers, especially those passionate about their rugs. “I can kind of teach anybody to do any of the labor intensive part… but when it comes down to having that relationship with the customer… it almost doubled or tripled in when we started the area rug cleaning facility.”
• Miranda: Finds reward in reviving neglected or damaged rugs: “Seeing a beat up rug… and then we fully wash it and revive it… it never gets old, for sure.”
• The appeal of transformation—before-and-after stories resonate universally.

2. Origin Story: Family Business & Early Hustle

[04:25–09:45]

• Scott’s childhood: Grew up helping his dad from age 13, originally motivated by both money and bonding. “My parents always told me, attitude is everything. And I had a great attitude growing up… I was making $8 an hour when you’re 14, seemed like I was making a fortune.”
• Chose work over college, leading to early property ownership and eventual independence with parental support.
• Maintained focus on quality, high-end residential, leveraging family reputation.

3. Pivoting from Carpet to Rugs: The Power of Not Settling

[12:57–16:44]

• Recognized a market shift: Less carpeting, more hard surfaces, rise of area rugs.
• Inspired by “Who Moved My Cheese?”—avoiding complacency.
• Spent months learning proper rug care, refusing to cut corners or rely on subpar subcontractors.
• Attempted partnership fell through, fueling the decision to launch Rugworx with Miranda’s full commitment—first as creative lead (logo design), then as operations partner.

4. Miranda’s Transition: From Corporate Sales to Entrepreneurial Growth

[16:44–21:30]

• Miranda’s background in sales and psychology proved vital. Left a demanding role at Golf Channel/NBC Universal to join the family business for better quality of life after having children.
• Took over admin, gradually became key player in operations, driving innovations like the fiber protector service and later, Rugworx’s signature programs.

5. Relentless Focus on Education: Mastery Before Growth

[21:50–29:13]

• Scott’s path: “I didn’t want to just start surface cleaning area rugs. I didn’t want dye bleed issues… I really wanted to be armed with the right information.”
• Attended workshops, learned from experts (Lisa Wagner, Lynn Tall, Robert Mann, Aaron Gross).
• Focused on high-end, hand-washing, slow growth based on expertise and doing right by customers: “Mastery is magnetic and it’s what high end customers are paying for.” (Narrator, 29:13)

6. Scaling Intentionally: Doing Less, Not More

[35:27–38:53]

• Business peaked at 7 employees, juggling multiple services—led to burnout and inefficiency.
• COVID forced a hard reset, revealing the impracticality of scaling broadly. Instead, they focused on “niching down” rather than scaling up, maintaining high quality and enjoying better work-life balance.

7. Courageous Pricing & Honoring True Value

[38:53–41:19]

• Analyzed profitability; upped minimum charges radically after COVID, resulting in lost bargain-hunters but retention of ideal, loyal clients.
• Automated referrals out for less lucrative jobs—helping other cleaners and maintaining the business’s standards.

8. Redefining Collaboration: Becoming a Resource, Not a Competitor

[41:36–42:21]

• Now serve as a specialty provider for other carpet cleaning and restoration companies: “We’re not seen as a competitor anymore… but more of a quality added service to the industry.” (Scott, 42:10)

9. Innovating with the Fiber Protector & Receiving Program

[42:48–50:31]

• Developed thorough in-house testing for fiber protectors, staying skeptical and scientific.
• Created a receiving program for interior designers: rugs are shipped directly to Rugworx, where the team inspects, photographs, corrects flaws, applies fiber protector, and delivers to clients.
• This “white-glove” solution eliminated a host of designer headaches and positioned Rugworx as indispensable in the high-end design world.

10. The Power & Mechanics of Social Media Growth

[51:24–62:12]

• Rugworx exploded on TikTok with “satisfying clean” videos (squeegeeing dirty rugs, before/after).
• Viral video success was somewhat accidental: “We got lucky.”
• The first video gained 25,000 followers over a weekend; quickly surpassed 650,000 in 8 months.
• Social provided exposure, education, and led directly to increased business, referrals, and industry respect.
• They manage all content in-house, believing authenticity and subject expertise are critical.

11. Education as Brand & Industry Leadership

[63:09–70:43]

• Scott and Miranda teach workshops, continuing education courses, and guest lecture at Scottsdale Community College (design programs).
• Position themselves as local authorities, supporting designers, industry peers, and even their competitors with guidance and answers.
• Education-driven relationship-building opens doors and breeds trust.

12. Intentional Business Design: Prioritizing Life and Purpose

[72:27–79:02]

• Miranda has transitioned to “intuitive business guide”—coaching other entrepreneurs to build businesses that fit their desired lifestyle, not someone else’s definition of success.
• Advocate “niching down” instead of relentless scaling: “We ended up kind of organically niching down instead of scaling up.” (Miranda, 78:26)
• Value flexibility—e.g., picking up their kids, going skiing, enjoying life—over endless expansion.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “With rugs, there’s a story to it... I am passionate about their rugs as well. And so it’s really nice to have those relationships and bond over those area rugs they bring in.”
  — Scott Gwillim [02:23]

• “Instant gratification, but it really takes time. So it’s fun in the video especially, it makes it look like you can do all work in just a couple seconds. But we know that, yeah, there’s a little more work behind the camera.”
  — Scott Gwillim [04:01]

• “My parents always told me, attitude is everything. And I had a great attitude growing up… making $8 an hour when you’re 14… was that little bit of drive for money and then obviously that bond that my father and I have.”
  — Scott Gwillim [04:51]

• “That kind of trust doesn’t come from flashy marketing. It comes from consistently showing up, doing great work, and building real relationships that last.”
  — Narrator [12:27]

• “If you’re starting a business… and you are going after the high end sector, catch this lesson from Scott. You have to take the time to skill up. Mastery is magnetic and it’s what high end customers are paying for.”
  — Narrator [29:13]

• “Sometimes growth actually comes by doing less. I know that sounds strange, but letting go of carpet cleaning wasn’t just a strategic move. It was survival.”
  — Narrator [38:17]

• “I was able to help those guys get through the COVID slow times. I helped them grow their book of business and I just essentially transferred all of those clients over to a couple of reputable carpet cleaners.”
  — Scott Gwillim [40:49]

• “That’s what innovation looks like at the local level. You don’t need a big budget. You need awareness and willingness and a little creative adjustment.”
  — Narrator [50:57]

• “We got lucky… We were the first one to shoot satisfying rug cleaning videos on the Internet. And it blew up. We went from zero to 650,000 in less than a year.”
  — Scott Gwillim [55:19]

• “If you have a small business, then you need to be. Somebody needs to be the face of the business… that’s the best way to become the expert…”
  — Miranda Gwillim [61:09]

• “Teaching builds trust, and trust is what business is built on.”
  — Narrator [70:01]

• “All of the big decisions that we have made in our business have been based off of intuition rather than revenue… The deciding factor is… get crystal clear on what we want for our life outside of this business.”
  — Miranda Gwillim [73:36]

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:23] – What keeps Scott & Miranda passionate about their business
• [04:25] – Scott’s upbringing and early business drive
• [12:57] – Pivot from carpet to serious rug cleaning
• [16:44] – Miranda’s background and transition into the business
• [21:50] – Investing in education & skills before expanding services
• [29:13] – Embracing mastery as a path to high-end clientele
• [35:27] – Facing burnout, COVID’s impact, and decision to niche down
• [38:53] – Pricing, profitability, and offloading non-core work
• [42:48] – Fiber protector development and designer receiving program
• [51:24] – Social media explosion with “satisfying cleaning” content
• [63:09] – Transition to teaching & education as central to business model
• [72:27] – Creating a business to serve life, not the other way around

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Themes & Takeaways

• Education Is Power: Investing in expertise and sharing it (with clients, peers, designers) sets you apart in any service industry.
• Quality Over Quantity: Taking on fewer, higher-quality jobs and clients led to more success, less burnout, and greater satisfaction.
• Relationships Trump Volume: Long-term trust—built through real relationships, good work, and local focus—is worth more than short-term growth or endless scaling.
• Innovation Starts Local: Spot problems nobody else is solving, then use your unique skills, space, or process to fill the gap (e.g., the rug receiving/fiber protector program).
• Authentic Presence Works: Managing your own social and public face makes you relatable, memorable, and distinct—critical for a local business.
• Intuitive Decision-Making: Build a business that supports your life and happiness, instead of forcing yourself into someone else’s idea of “success.”

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For Further Connection

• Website: rugworx.com (spelled with an X)
• Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube: @rugworx
• Direct contacts: Miranda and Scott respond personally to most messages.

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This episode is a must-listen for SMB owners, local entrepreneurs, and anyone looking to grow a business with intention, expertise, and a focus on human connection rather than just the next big trend or scale.

Transcript

[Dave]

Foreign. Welcome back to another episode of Locally Owned. And today I'm talking with two very inspiring individuals. Their journey started out from humble beginnings and they now have a thriving local business that is nothing short of remarkable. You guys are going to meet Scott and Miranda Gwillim. They are a husband and wife duo. And they are the force behind Rugworks, a family owned company that has somewhat redefined some things in the rug cleaning industry. What started out as a small carpet cleaning operation has transformed into a high end textile cleaning business. And their success story is one that blends a passion for detail, a deep love for their craft, and a social media presence that's captured the attention of nearly a million followers. That's amazing. From TikTok fame to working with high end interior designers, Scott and Miranda have built a brand that's not only changing the way people think about rug cleaning, but also setting a standard for education and community engagement. And through their story, we're going to explore how they took a simple family business and turned it into an educational powerhouse with an incredible social media presence. And they're a household name in the. In the area of high end textile cleaning or rug care. So whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur, a fellow small business owner, or simply someone who's fascinated by the power of passion behind hard work, you don't want to miss this conversation. Let's dive into your journey. Guys, how you doing?

[Scott Gwillim]

Great. Thanks for having us.

[Miranda Gwillim]

Hi.

[Dave]

Oh, man. Hey. It was. It was a lot of fun getting to meet you guys at the masters event. And that camera work I'm sure will be in the credits somewhere. Miranda, you and I for.

[Miranda Gwillim]

Yeah, we hit it off, didn't we, Dave?

[Dave]

We did. I wanted to learn a little bit about your journey, but actually, before we get started, you know what? I know that you guys have been in this business for a while. I was in it for a long time. So it's clear that you love what you do. Tell me, what are some of the things, or even just one thing that will never get old that you always love about this business that you're in?

[Scott Gwillim]

Well, for me, it's the people, the customers. You know, I. I can kind of teach anybody to do any of the labor intensive part of the business, but when it comes down to having that relationship with the customer. And it got even better with the area rug. Since I've been in the service industry for over 30 years, all of the encounters are fantastic. But with rugs, there's a story to it. And so I've always enjoyed the customer service Part of the business. And it almost doubled or tripled in when we started the area rug cleaning facility. Because people are passionate about their rugs, and I am passionate about their rugs as well. And so it's really nice to have those relationships and bond over those. Those area rugs they bring in.

[Miranda Gwillim]

And something else that never gets old is, you know, cleaning work in general can be very rewarding. And so, you know, seeing a beat up rug that maybe went a little bit too long in between cleanings or has tons of pet damage on it, and then we fully wash it and revive it, and it's very rewarding. And it just. It never gets old, for sure. Never gets old.

[Dave]

Yeah, those. There's something about our human nature that we love before and afters. You know, whether it's some, you know, someone like we're watching, like the TV shows that show you people that lose all this weight or the. The makeovers or, you know, the extreme house makeover, whatever it is, you know, we love seeing a transformation, you know, that's just sort of built into being human.

[Scott Gwillim]

It's instant gratification, but it really takes time. So it's fun in the video especially, it makes it look like you can do all work in just a couple seconds. But we know that, yeah, there's a little. There's a little more work behind the camera that happens to make that instant gratification possible.

[Dave]

Right, right, yeah. Yeah. It only takes 25 years to make that instant gratification possible.

[Scott Gwillim]

True.

[Dave]

Yeah. Well, Scott, you and. You and I share a similar upbringing. My dad had a flooring store, and I grew up working for him, so I started at a really young age. And I read where you started at 13.

[Scott Gwillim]

Correct.

[Dave]

Wow.

[Narrator/Host]

Wow.

[Dave]

So when you were growing up, was this something you ever saw yourself doing? Or. Or were you like me and your mom just made you go to work with your dad just to get her out of your. Get you out of her.

[Scott Gwillim]

So there's a little bit of both going on. I had two older brothers and a younger sister. And what happened is my older brothers would be asked to go to work, and as teenagers, they would throw a fit about it. And I grew up, and my parents always told me, attitude is everything. And I had a great attitude growing up. And so at 13 years old, I would hear my brothers fighting about going to work, and I would just jump out and say, hey, I'll go with you, dad. And it turned into a bonding experience between my father and I and more of one of those empowerment things over your older brother. Because after 14 years old, my dad didn't want them to work with him at all. He just took me with him all the time. And so making $8 an hour when you're 14 years old seemed like I was making a fortune. And so it was that little bit of drive for money and then obviously that bond that my father and I have had and we still have a great relationship in the industry. So it's, it's been, it's just one of those things that I enjoyed it from the beginning and I still love doing it every day. So. Yeah, forced on me.

[Dave]

$8 an hour. You were killing it. My dad gave me $2 an hour.

[Scott Gwillim]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Dave]

Dang. I would have worked for your dad.

[Scott Gwillim]

I know. I was pretty, I was pretty excited to go work in the summertime. There was a few months out of every year where I could come home with a couple hundred bucks. And those were the days.

[Dave]

Oh yeah. When you're that age, couple hundred bucks is huge.

[Scott Gwillim]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Dave]

Well. Well then what, what sort of kept you interested in it? You know, you stuck with it.

[Scott Gwillim]

Yeah. You know, I think I saw a lot of my friends going to college and struggling with finding out exactly what it is that they wanted to do. And I did go to a year of community college to kind of see if it was for me. And at the time I was probably making $40,000 a year at 18 years old. And I feel like that was a pretty good, pretty good step forward as far as where my other friends were. And so I was able to buy my first property at 21 years old. And I just saw the benefit of working in that, in that industry. And by the time I was 22, I was working with my father at the time doing commercial work. He and my mom both offered me assistance to go out and start my own business. And so I went from working in the commercial end of things, doing a lot of nights and weekends kind of thing, and doing some high end residential work for our clients.

[Miranda Gwillim]

Unlike the same day. Right.

[Scott Gwillim]

It was, it was within one week. My mom took me to lunch one day and my dad took me to lunch a week later and they both said, it's time to spread your wings and fly. Go get a truck mount and start your own business and we'll assist you. My dad was going to give me some good leads and my mom was going to help me run the books and she co signed for a loan and that was, that was it. 25 years ago we started what we know is Carpet Tech Services, so.

[Dave]

Wow. Wow. So, so what were you doing for your dad then? Was it cleaning or.

[Scott Gwillim]

Yeah, we originally started, I started working full time with them right out of high school, during high school. And so I was doing a lot of commercial maintenance. We were doing a lot of low moisture cleaning and dry powder cleaning, believe it or not. We had a, we had a really intensive dry powder cleaning process. And so for four years I ran commercial maintenance businesses and it was all nights and weekends. And so I, I was a little more intrigued doing the high end residential hot water extraction in the homes, but most of the work was high end commercial cleaning. And it was fine in my 20s, but wasn't for me.

[Dave]

Okay. Yeah. And so, so you were doing that and your, your parents really encouraged you to get out on your own, do your own thing. And so when you started, were you thinking commercial carpet cleaning or were you thinking more, you know, like, did you have it in your mind, I want to do residential cleaning.

[Scott Gwillim]

It was all residential based. And at the time I'm also a senior carpet inspector and so I was doing what my dad does now he's a flooring consultant and we call it flying and dying, but he's flying all over the country and inspecting jobs, writing reports and then fixing carpeting on location and doing some side match work. And so I was doing a lot of that when I, when I left that business. And so I contracted some of that out still. But I was focused mainly on high end residential hot water extraction. I didn't want to do any more nights and weekends.

[Dave]

The residential market is good for that. Most people don't want you in, in their home at night or on the weekends. So. Okay, well, did you have, how did you get a taste for that and know that that's what, that's what you were, the direction you were really wanting to go in was it just what can I do that's not going to require I work nights and weekends or.

[Scott Gwillim]

Well, it was a little bit. It's in me, it's in my blood because my father started a maintenance company out of high school and he was one of the first owners of a hot water truck mounted unit in Arizona. And so he was kind of a pioneer in the hot water extraction world. I loved the concept of working with friends and family and creating my own schedule and things of that nature. And I love the customer service part of it. So going off on my, on my own just seemed natural for me. And it was always going to be high end residential based. It wasn't going to be go get commercial accounts and do maintenance that was never a part of it. But seven, eight years down the road, it did become a small part of what we were doing. But I was always focused on high end residential. I went out to 10 flooring stores on the day I got my truck mount and my last name is Gwilliam and it's kind of well known in Arizona. And so when I would go out and tell these flooring stores I was off on my own and doing residential carpet cleaning, there were a few people that were over the moon, excited about it because they knew who we were and we were doing a lot of commercial maintenance at the time. And so they were just happy to see that they were able to tap into the Gwilliam referral network. I've always been very educated. My father was very good at teaching me how to clean carpet. And so I've always just done a really good, top of the line white glove service when it comes to residential carpet cleaning.

[Dave]

Oh, that's fantastic. So you, you started out with a reputation.

[Scott Gwillim]

Yes.

[Dave]

That's great. Yeah, yeah, because that's, that takes years to get, you know, and once, once you have it, it's, it's so helpful. But getting it is, you know, you have to earn it. You know, there's no way around it. In my opening question, Scott said that the thing that never gets old for

[Narrator/Host]

him is the people, the relationships. And that's something, you know, that's easy to overlook in the daily grind of operations. You know, you spend a lot of

[Dave]

time focused on scaling and systems and

[Narrator/Host]

operations and your social media. But at the end of the day, the heartbeat of a service based business is still always going to be trust,

[Dave]

connection, and caring about people. And so when Scott stepped out on

[Narrator/Host]

his own, he already had relationships with local carpet retailers and they were excited to send him to their customers. That kind of trust doesn't come from flashy marketing. It comes from consistently showing up, doing great work, and building real relationships that last. So when he says that the thing that he still loves about the business he's in is the relationships, well, there's your proof.

[Dave]

So, so you're this guy that, you know, got this great reputation, well educated, lots of experience, and you know, you know what you're doing and you make a shift, right? You decide, okay, everybody knows who I am. They know they can count on this quality for carpet cleaning. And then you decide to get into rug cleaning, which if you know anything about rug cleaning, it's very different than carpet cleaning. And so what, what made you make that shift?

[Scott Gwillim]

Well, there's a book, and it's a quick read called who Moved My Cheese? And I don't know if you've ever read the book of who Moved My Cheese? But yeah, it's a quick story about mice and cheese and being becoming too complacent. I read it again the other day. It's about becoming complacent and what happened in the flooring industry. So over the last 20 years, we've really seen a shift in broad loom carpeting shifting to hard surfaces. And so what I found myself doing was I was educated enough to know to not steam clean area rugs in the home, but I wasn't smart enough to get them out of the home. And so I did a little bit of subcontract work when it came to the area rugs and took them to a business. I had some very poor results a couple of times. And so it just made me think,

[Miranda Gwillim]

not up to your standards.

[Scott Gwillim]

They weren't up to my standards. My father and I had been talking about what is now Rugworks. We called it Rugworks for seven years before I even started the business. And my dad always said, hey, the industry's changing. You need to start Rugworks. You need to start Rugworx. And I said, well, let's do that. And he said, I'm too old, I'm not doing it. You got to do it on your own. So he essentially masterminded the name of the company and he wanted a full blown rug washing facility, automated equipment. He wanted a, he wanted a big place. And I said, hell, hold on. I got to learn how to clean carpet. Clean rugs first. I know it's not like cleaning carpet. And so I did just that. I. I spent eight months just educating while I was still cleaning carpet on how I could wash the rugs. I was still working out of my house at the time. And I had a guy down the street from my shop that or from my house here that actually had a rug cleaning facility. Excuse me. And so I kind of partnered with him and I started bringing him area rugs and testing the waters to see if I could charge for $5 a square foot, would my customers pay for that? How would that whole thing go? And it worked out fantastic. And so I decided I wanted to purchase his business and bring him into the shop and have him do all of the work. And that did not go over the way I wanted it to. And so we couldn't come to an agreement. And I just looked at him and said, sorry, we didn't make a deal, but I'm going to start a shop right down the street from here and do it on my own.

[Miranda Gwillim]

Everything works out like it's supposed to, right?

[Scott Gwillim]

Yep. And that's when Miranda comes into the picture. Everybody listening. There is another beautiful business partner next to me. My wife Miranda. And when I was running the carpet cleaning business, she didn't do much except for help me with the taxes reluctantly. And when I started the area rug cleaning business, she had one of those aha moments where she said, oh, I get to create a logo. And I said that's what it took. You get to usual a little bit of your creativity. And she got so excited to create a logo and launch a business that that's when Miranda came into the picture and, and really dove in headfirst 100% started helping run the, the small businesses.

[Dave]

Yeah, yeah. You, you, you left a corporate sales career to, to do this, didn't you?

[Miranda Gwillim]

Yeah. And, and I'm glad that I did, but I might not have if it wasn't for us having kids. So, so I went the traditional route. It did take me a long time to get through college cause I didn't really have a clear path so I think I was a little bit more open minded. But I did end up taking a lot of psychology classes. I got my BA in psychology from asu. I actually met Scott while I was going to ASU and I didn't wanna go to school anymore so I didn't wanna go the traditional psychology route because I just didn't wanna school enough for me to have to get my doctorate or master's or anything like that. So I, I ended up just diving into sales because that's what my older brothers told me to do. And I usually would just do whatever they told me to do. Right. So they said look, no matter what you're going to do, you need, you need to get sales experience. Right.

[Dave]

And so it's a better way to use a psychology degree. For sure.

[Miranda Gwillim]

I know, for sure. But it helps.

[Scott Gwillim]

She's blended them together for sure.

[Miranda Gwillim]

Having a psychology degree has helped me in every single facet of my life. I got a job which I thought was gonna be like my dream job, which was I was doing sales, but I was also in the golf industry. So I thought that was fantastic because I was an athlete my whole life and so just doing anything in, you know, the athletic sector seemed great. So I was working for GolfNow.com and we were selling tee times online, which was not that mainstream back then. The company that I worked for actually started it here in Scottsdale. And I started, we had about 60 golf courses on our platform for online tee times in our market. And by the time I left, we had almost 220 golf courses on there. But it, but our company was purchased by the Golf Channel, so it quickly turned into this big corporate job. So I was all of a sudden working for Golf Channel NBC Universal. And I had 220 golf courses that had my cell phone number and my email address. And so it was a seven day a week, 365 day a year job because there's always something going on. So it was, it was not a great job for when I had a baby. And so I had this baby and he was colicky and crying all the time and I was trying to nurse and he was spitting up. And I'm like, I don't think that this job is going to be feasible for me as a parent moving forward. So Scott was kind of like, well, you know, why don't you stay home for a while? You can help me. You can help me with the taxes. And I'm like, I don't know how to do taxes. You know, so it kind of just started with me helping, you know, within.

[Dave]

You can't do it much worse than anybody else then way better than me,

[Scott Gwillim]

I can promise you that.

[Miranda Gwillim]

Exactly. So. But I never, ever would have chosen an entrepreneurial lifestyle. You know, I, you know, I was definitely wired to, you know, work for someone else. And Scott was definitely wired for entrepreneurship. And all of the entrepreneur skills that I have now, I definitely learned from him. And through us working together and kind of doing our own thing, you know, Scott's very, I don't know, he's, he's very strong in, in his opinions and what he wants to do and the way he wants to do things. And so I learned that from really early on from him. We've always kind of done things a little bit different, but very, very intentional, you know.

[Dave]

So you ended up leaving that corporate job?

[Miranda Gwillim]

Yeah, yeah, I ended up quitting and just staying home with our son. And you know, at the time it was Scott and one van, you know, and when he would get busy, he would have a helper. Cause he started his carpet cleaning business 21 years ago. He and I have been together for 20 years. We've been married for 18. And then our oldest son is 14. So we, I mean, I probably started like taking over the, the admin type of stuff like for about 14 years ago.

[Dave]

Okay. And so you, you've Been going along. So were you guys working together when. Cause I was reading a little bit that you, at some point you went on a rug adventure to make this shift from carpet cleaning to rug cleaning. So were you a part of things at that point, Miranda?

[Miranda Gwillim]

Yeah, I was a pretty huge part of that. He really started on this deep journey of rug education. And we both are very into education for business and for personal and for whatever skill we're working on at that time. And so we put the money and the effort and the travel into him traveling and going to, you know, specific courses taught by, taught by industry leaders and really learning how he fully knew how to wash rugs and care for them before we actually opened our doors here. But yeah, Scott and myself and one of his friends who's, you know, really consulted with us along the way, helped us with a business plan and, and we opened this little tiny shop and I had my office and Scott was in the back washing rugs. But we were also cleaning carpet. And so the carpet cleaning was always our bread and butter and it paid the bills. And, you know, I don't think at the time we ever thought that we would fully transition away from carpet cleaning to just to rugs.

[Scott Gwillim]

People used to say, when are you going to sell the carpet cleaning division? And I said, you're crazy. I will never do that. And maybe we'll get into that in a bit. But it happened.

[Dave]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we will get into that in a little bit. But I'm, I'm interested in, you know, this little bit of a journey that you went on to learn. So, and you obviously know a lot already. So what, what made you feel like you really needed to learn this, to spend some time, you know, said you traveled throughout the United States learning, so.

[Scott Gwillim]

Yeah, I did. I think, you know, in, in Arizona, in the, in our demographic, we're in Scottsdale Paradise Rally. Really, really, really high end residential. And when I walked over some of these rugs, I could just tell that they were tens of thousands of dollars. And so when I thought about cleaning area rugs, to me it wasn't necessarily like my dad thought about it. He wanted it to be this big automated throw a rug in, it washes it, spits it out, you hang it to dry, you clean it for, you know, buck 50 a square foot and it be real quick and easy. Well, I looked at it more on the hand washing, high end, take your time, delicate rug care type of service that we do run now. And I think what really was the, the big factor was how Nice. The rugs were. And so I didn't want to just start surface cleaning area rugs. I didn't want die bleed issues when it came to the rugs. I really wanted to be armed with the right information. And at the time I was working out of my house, so I really didn't have an operation where I can fully wash a rug and set up a drying room and all of that. So I wanted to find out how I could start and get my feet wet. But not necessarily.

[Dave]

No pun intended.

[Scott Gwillim]

Yeah, exactly. I didn't want to get a space. I wanted to kind of do it out of my house and just clean my customers rugs. And I found out with the very first rug I attempted to do at my house that that wasn't even an option.

[Miranda Gwillim]

I don't even remember you trying to

[Scott Gwillim]

clean a rug in our house. I could, I remember the exact word because it was a shag rug. And now that I know it, the shag rugs are the hardest to get dry and they are the most cumbersome when they're wet. And all of the stuff I didn't know, I just thought, oh, it's a machine made polyester rug. I can wash this real quick and it'll dry real fast. I didn't think about the jute in the backing. I didn't think about hanging it to dry and air flowing in certain, you know, whatever it was. But either way, it was one of those moments where I knew I had to get really good education. And so the, the gentleman I almost purchased out from him or partnered with, he told me about Lisa Wagner in San Diego.

[Dave]

Yeah.

[Scott Gwillim]

And so we went to the Ice Expo and I knew Lisa was going to be there and I had purchased her online course for kind of rug care 101 rug secrets 101. Are you really interested in cleaning area rugs? Take this course and it'll let you know if you're ready for it or not. And so I did that. I met her in Vegas. She introduced me to another industry lady by the name of Lynn Tall. And she was teaching a class in Iowa in a month or something along those lines. And at the time I was talking about buying a centrifuge and getting this big space. But Lisa Wagner was really big on starting small and using the equipment that you have to get to the spot that you need and kind of grow into your equipment. And so I did just that. But it wasn't before I went to Iowa, took a week long course, learned how to use a centrifuge. And wash rugs hands on. And then I also went to Denver and met with Robert Mann and took the IICRC rug cleaning course with Aaron Gross. Close. And so within that first year, I pretty much saw multiple shops. I cleaned rugs hands on without ever washing a rug myself. And then I finally built up the nerve to take one of my clients rugs to my buddy's shop and he started spraying it with a hose. And oh my God, I thought he was crazy. I was just like, oh my God, are we gonna screw this up? And he's like, it's okay. I do this all day, every day. And I had done it, I had watched it online. And when I finally was on the floor with my boots on the ground, it was one of those moments where it got real, real fast.

[Miranda Gwillim]

You know what's funny about that time period is I specifically remember myself and Scott and our friend Brandon, like sitting in our office at the house before we got this space. And our goal was to clean 15 rugs per month. Do you remember that?

[Scott Gwillim]

I do.

[Miranda Gwillim]

On top of like our carpet cleaning jobs. Because we still, at that time we were cleaning carpet, you know, four or five days a week. And I remember, I remember them going, how are we going to get 15 rugs per month in the shop? And now I can't help but look back and just laugh at that because, I mean, I have our rug inventory spreadsheet pulled up on my other computer and we almost always have between 100 and, you know, 180 rugs in the shop at almost all times.

[Dave]

Yeah, well, and you know, you had mentioned just going around to some different places and, you know, probably saw what was possible, you know, and that, that always helps, you know, because I'm sure you saw some things at Robert Mann's place and at Lynn Tall's place that gave you a vision for what, what could be, you know.

[Scott Gwillim]

Absolutely. And so it was just one of those things. I had to take a little leap of faith and just roll with it. And I guess I was right.

[Narrator/Host]

There's an upside and a downside to being a perfectionist. The downside is you never start anything because you feel you can always do it better. But the upside is, is that you do strive for excellence and pay attention to details. For eight months, he immersed himself in study and traveling to learn from the masters before he opened the rug side of his business. That's not hesitation, that's preparation. If you're starting a business business or adding a new service and you are going after the high end sector, Catch this lesson from Scott. You have to take the time to skill up. Mastery is magnetic and it's what high end customers are paying for.

[Dave]

So it seems important to you, Scott, that things are done really, really well and that they're done right. And there's definitely a lot of people involved in carpet cleaning that aren't doing it well and aren't doing it right. So there can be a drastic difference between, you know, someone who doesn't do it well, doesn't do it right, and someone who knows what they're doing and, you know, has a high standard for how it should be done. But, you know, to take that and then move that into rug cleaning where there, it offers a challenge because there is a lot more to learn and, and to, and to do it right. So walk me through that transition for you or how, you know, that transformation for you is going from like, oh my gosh, you're, you know, you're going to ru my customer's rug to, you know, being totally comfortable with, you know, these are what. This is the way you do it.

[Scott Gwillim]

Yeah, that's great, great question. And it certainly helped doing a lot of high end residential to start with. So when I'm in a home and you're pulling hoses and you're in and out and you're up and down the stairs, there are things to break in the home. And so I've always been a big proponent of corner guards and walk off mats and carrying the hoses in and not dragging them. And we don't have. We very rarely, if ever broke anything in a home because of the attention to detail. And so when it came to the rugs, I took that same approach and that same mentality. I just had a fear of ruining a rug. So that's why I educated myself for so long to learn. But truly it almost became easier for me because now I don't have to worry about the hoses in the house and the extra technician in the house to be blamed for something because it wasn't me and all of that other stuff, it took away a lot of those avenues of damage, I guess, or damage control. And it all brought it to the shop. And now are the rug colors going to bleed? Are you going to fray the fringes? Are you going to delaminate the backing? Is it going to sun fade when we put it outside? And so all of the in home worries that I had probably prepared me very well for the rug world because I was already a little hyper focused on attention to detail. And so I guess that's probably why I spent eight months educating on how not to screw a rug up before I did it. And of course I've screwed a rug up. There's no doubt that I, I bought two rugs in 10 years and I've fixed more screwed up rugs than I will ever ruin. So that I guess I'm, I'm ahead in that category. But there are times where rugs go south on you and you have to figure it out or you got to bite the bullet and you gotta, you know, step forward and explain how the process went and how we're gonna fix it. I think it's pretty simple. It's dyes, bleeding, backing, delaminating and fringe fading or something. But I can fix all those because I've educated.

[Miranda Gwillim]

It's nice that we can work on the rugs in a controlled environment.

[Dave]

You know, you guys have said it both different ways, but it's control. You have a lot more control over how things are going to go.

[Scott Gwillim]

It does.

[Dave]

And so, so now you're doing just rugs. That's, that's your, you're not doing anymore. You got the carpet cleaning is, is

[Miranda Gwillim]

something you don't do anymore or very, very rarely. So we focus on area rug cleaning here in our facility. We do a lot of pickup and dynam delivery because of that, but people also are more than welcome to drop their rugs off. And we do have drop offs every day now. But we also specialize in fiber protector services. So we clean a lot of, or I mean we, we treat a lot of brand new rugs and brand new furniture with fiber protector. And we do that for residential clients as well as interior designers and their clients. And then we do some in home cleaning, mostly from, for furniture for fiber protector clients. And sometimes along with that will come, you know, some carpet here and there.

[Scott Gwillim]

And so I said earlier I didn't do much commercial maintenance, but I ended up getting back into it. We ended up acquiring a couple million square feet of carpeting through these buildings that a good friend of ours owns. And he just wanted me to do the maintenance on them. He was tired of using the 5cent, 10cent guys. And so we were doing, we were doing low moisture maintenance in this building, at these buildings at 25 and 30 cents a square foot, which was printing money. And so we were making a very good living doing some of the commercial work. But I sold that whole division off to a good friend of mine who does a lot of that low moisture maintenance now and then. All of our residential work that's incoming. We sub it out to different cleaners that bring us area rugs. And then I have a very short list of VIP clients that way too much money to clean carpets, but they want me to do it. And so they're paying me upwards of a dollar a square foot to clean master bedrooms and a couple of high end residential jobs that still trust me more than anybody else. And money's not an issue to them. So I will do carpet every once in a while.

[Dave]

Right. I mean, if the numbers make sense, then yeah, of course, you know, but. But rugs are obviously your passion now.

[Miranda Gwillim]

Yeah. And you know, one thing that we haven't touched on, that we have to bring up because it's such a huge part of our story, is that after we started the rug cleaning facility, we were still growing the carpet cleaning, because that was the bread and butter and that's what was paying the bills. And we got to a point to where there were seven of us and we were cleaning residential carpet, commercial carpet, residential furniture and hard surfaces, and doing pickup and delivery of the rugs and cleaning rugs here. And we had started fiber protector services, which was really kind of one of my babies. And so we were in the middle of that whole summer scale method, which is what most of us are taught in the home service industry and in the just service based businesses in general. And it was a lot. And Scott was like borderline hitting burnout every once in a while. And I had way too much on my plate. Plus we have two little boys and it was just, it was too much. And I was personally, you know, in charge of a lot of the scheduling and the dispatch and the billing and. But I'm also trying to grow the rug cleaning, but now I'm trying to grow the fiber protector services. And now we're working with interior designers. And I'm, you know, Scott and I were very passionate about that and we wanted to start doing our own forms of education. And Scott really wanted to educate the interior designers on fibers and rugs and all of that. And it was like, it was almost like something had to give, you know. And I think one pivotal moment for us was during the COVID shutdown. We actually had a little bit of a shutdown here in Arizona. We had to put some our employees on unemployment. And so I was running the whole business by myself from home with two little kids that I was homeschooling, by the way. And that was a really interesting situation. And I wonder if that would have never happened. We probably wouldn't be here today and wouldn't have the business that we have if we wouldn't have been forced to stop cleaning carpet.

[Narrator/Host]

Scott and Miranda just painted a picture every small business owner knows all too well. You keep finding ways to grow, you keep finding ways to grow your reach, but you can't seem to grow your infrastructure, and eventually you have too many plates spinning, and it's just a matter

[Dave]

of time before things crash.

[Narrator/Host]

This is such an important moment. Sometimes growth actually comes by doing less. I know that sounds strange, but letting go of carpet cleaning wasn't just a strategic move. It was survival. If you're overloaded right now, ask yourself, what's one piece of your business that's making noise but not making impact? Cutting that loose might just open the door to something better.

[Dave]

Right, Right. So, so was that a mo. Was that sort of like a time where you just never really went back to it unless it made sense?

[Scott Gwillim]

We started crunching numbers. That's exactly what we did. I went to another Mark Kennedy course. He talked a little bit about punching numbers and finding out which customers made sense and which ones didn't. And we started learning the value of our worth and realized that we had a lot of irons in the fire. So once you, once you learn how much you're worth, you'll stop giving discounts. And I am the worst at giving or the best at giving discounts, but worse if you're the accounting department, because worst salesperson. I'm just too nice. I just take care of everybody, and I just want to help them out and hook them up. And I learned that that's not going to really benefit me to acquire more employees and grow the business. And so I, I, I became, I got fired from scheduling and fired from billing and fired from quoting prices.

[Miranda Gwillim]

He's not allowed to go do estimates.

[Scott Gwillim]

But what really happened was it was one of those moments where we started crunching numbers and we found out what customers were profitable, what price point we were profitable, and services were, and what my time was worth because they wanted me on the job. And so it got to the point where we took our minimum from 175 to 225 to $249. And after Covid, I just said, just go to $495. That's our minimum from now on to go to a house. And if they want us to clean, it's going to be a dollar a square foot. And we started kind of testing the waters. And sure enough, the really good clients never balked. At a dollar a square foot, it was 700 square feet in their house, $700 to clean their carpet. They would pay the bill and give me a cookie on the way out the door. And then there were the customers who said, oh my goodness, you were already too expensive. What should I do? And I found them an alternative. And I found a couple of carpet cleaners that were still in that 200, 250 minimum range. And I was able to help those guys get through the COVID slow times. I helped them grow their book of business and I just essentially transferred all of those clients over to a couple of reputable carpet cleaners that also bring us rugs and trust us with their clients things as well.

[Dave]

Yeah, I love that. You know, that's, I mean, that's just another way that you really care about the quality of things, you know, is, is taking care of your customers, referring them to people you know are going to do it right, and, and caring about even your competitors.

[Miranda Gwillim]

You know, that's always loved working with carpet cleaners. And it's neat how our business has really, you know, kind of changed into something different because now we do a lot of rug cleaning for carpet cleaners and restoration companies. So they'll bring. Some of our biggest clients actually are carpet cleaners and restoration companies, and they bring us quite a bit of rugs. And so I'm glad that we can still work with them and, you know, really be a part of those communities because it's, it's a big part of who we are. For sure.

[Scott Gwillim]

We're not seen as a competitor anymore, more with the carpet cleaning. So it's been good to not be seen as a competitor, but more of a, more of a quality added service to the industry.

[Dave]

Right, right. And you know, so you're getting into the, you know, the area rugs and, and specializing in something that's a little more challenging to care for. So it would make sense that you guys got into, I would imagine this, this happened close, close to the same time where you got into protecting, applying a protector. Tell me a little bit about that and your thinking behind that and how that's become a part of your business.

[Scott Gwillim]

I started researching what protectors do and what is the benefit and what could be a con, the pros and cons of using protectors. And so I did my due diligence of trying multiple different products. And so I've tried and used many different products from all different manufacturers.

[Miranda Gwillim]

And, and he did his own research. I mean, he's telling you that he did research. Well, he did that research, but then he also would get products and then do all of his own testing here. So all of the products that we've ever used and all of the ones that we didn't use, he did his own. He did his own tests on here because he just didn't want to take anybody's word for it. And he was not that much of a believer in protectors for so long. And so he really needed to prove it to himself and figure out for himself how they worked and what the benefits were. For sure.

[Scott Gwillim]

Yeah. And so when we got into the industry, we met a gentleman who introduced us to a flooring store and they asked us to create the CEU or continuing education class for designers. And in that I touch on. On fiber protectors and how they're beneficial. And at the time we were just using whatever product ABC protector, and it was working fine. But once we started working with designers, we realized there was a niche in the market to where designers wanted brand new rugs and brand new upholstery treated with. With fiber protectors of some sort of. We started working with designers and in that we created a niche receiving program to where these designers will buy rugs direct from India or China or wherever it may be. They're ordering them customade and they're direct shipping them to our facility. And so we are the receiving warehouse for brand new area rugs when they come in from out of the country. And we charge a fee for that. But what that fee entails is we open up the packaging, we either unbale it, or we open up the crate that it comes in, we dispose of the packaging, we dispose of the crate, we photograph the rug, and if there's anything damaged on the rug, we're able to make note of that within the first seven days of delivery. And they can go and talk to the powers that be. Whether it's a shipping damage or it's a manufacturer flaw, all of that is covered under their claims time frame of seven days. And so we're beneficial to the designers in that we're the first ones to see it. We're educated on what we're looking for. We can assist in steaming out any creases if they're bailed. They fold these rugs and they roll them, and when they come out, they look like a checkerboard almost. And so we can assist for a fee in steaming those creases out. And then we can apply fiber protector to those rugs. And so it's a whole white glove service that really didn't exist in the industry. Before we brought it to the market, they were just shipping these rugs to warehouses, unwrapping them when they get to the client's home and unrolling them onto the floor. There would be creases in them, there would be damage from shipping. They would be stacked on each other in the warehouses improperly. And so we found a system to really benefit designers. And all of that came from the fiber protector in general. But it all ties together with a really nice receiving program that can benefit them and just much more of a white glove service for these high end clients that we work with now.

[Dave]

Is that something? I've never heard of anybody doing that. So are they coming to your facility?

[Miranda Gwillim]

Yeah. So I started this program I want to maybe two years ago. It's been a while, but the first year it was kind of like just two or three people. We were doing it for a couple of rug dealers and a designer. And it came very naturally, it happened very organically, just like a lot of stuff that we do does. But it came because we keep getting all these issues inherited to us after all of this damage is done. And so it was one of those things that we knew we needed to get, get to these rugs ahead of time. We knew we needed preventative measures. And I wanted us to be the ones that they came to, not just three years down the road, after they've had the rug for three years and now they need it cleaned. But after they purchase it, I want to treat it with the right stuff and install it and all of that. And so I think I did hear about somebody having a receiving program. I can't remember, maybe not. But it wasn't just the designers and the clients. A lot of this stuff would be installed and there would be issues with it. There are also other warehouse places here in town that the designers use where they house their rugs and their furniture. And we were doing. We kept getting all these calls and Scott would have to go out and he would clean spots on brand new furniture and spots on brand new rugs. And I'm like, why is this stuff getting damaged? Why is it getting dirty if it's all brand new? And so I started just asking a lot of questions and learning a little bit more. And I was like, obviously we don't have the facility to be to house a lot of furniture, but I am very set up here to handle a large number of area rugs. And we have all these shelving systems and tubes and things like that, that. And we can store rugs here and at the time I had already started a storage program. And so I'm like, why don't we do a receiving program? And we just started it with two or three clients and it went great. And we were kind of perfecting it and just learning more and more. And then I just started telling designers when I had them on the phone, hey, you know, I started a receiving program. If you ever need to have rugs shipped here, let me know. Here's my two page PDF. It was like an instructional thing that I had made on Canva where it just explains everything about the program. How much the receiving fee is, how much the fiber protector is, and just more and more people are using it and it's become like my favorite thing for sure. And I just like that we establish the relationship right from the beginning and then we're the ones that have treated it and maybe even delivered it. And then when they need to have it cleaned, then they know who to call. So it just really works out great. And the designers like it and the homeowners like it too.

[Dave]

Yeah, yeah, no, that's great. That's like almost like your OB being a pediatrician too, you know?

[Miranda Gwillim]

Right, exactly.

[Dave]

I'm there delivering this thing, and then when it needs its first appointment, I'm gonn take care of it.

[Miranda Gwillim]

And so we get a lot of calls from rug dealers and designers that are out of state as well. And so they physically don't have a place for these rugs to go, you know, to ship these rugs to anyway. You can't ship them to their house or their, or their office. And so they're really reliant on these storage places. Well, if they only have rugs that they need, you know, delivered here and there, then this is a perfect, perfect solution for them as well.

[Dave]

Right, right. Yeah, yeah. Because you guys know what you're doing. You got a system for tracking everything. Yeah, that makes sense.

[Narrator/Host]

This is one of my favorite moments in the interview. Scott and Miranda didn't wait for someone to give them permission to do this. They saw designers were struggling with where to send high end rugs, and they realized they already had the space, the knowledge and the trust to step in

[Dave]

and solve that problem.

[Narrator/Host]

That's what innovation looks like at the local level. You don't need a big budget. You need awareness and willingness and a little creative adjustment. And the best part, it didn't just increase the revenue, it added real value to their clients workflow. That's the kind of innovation that turns a good relationship into an indispensable one.

[Dave]

I gotta ask you, you've got over a million followers on social media.

[Miranda Gwillim]

Talked about social media.

[Dave]

Yet as a local business, that is such an achievement. That's so. That's really difficult to do. How. How did you do that?

[Scott Gwillim]

We got lucky.

[Miranda Gwillim]

Yeah, we did get lucky. But I did. I started, you know, I started the way everybody else started with the first Facebook and then eventually Instagram. And it's like you invite your friends and your family to like it. I was very intentional. I was trying to get local people to follow us. That is a hurdle for local businesses, which is, oh, yeah, social media is great, but I'm a small local business, so I don't really need, you know, a billion people to follow me. I need people in my market to follow me. So I had this long, slow grind of lots of local friends, family carpet cleaners, our clients, our designers, and our referral sources. But it kind of was taken to another universe when we started TikTok. I'll let Scott tell that story.

[Scott Gwillim]

Yeah, so we were washing a rug on a Friday, and it was.

[Narrator/Host]

Hey, everyone, I just want to take a quick minute to thank you for being a listener and share something to personal with you. A little while back, I sold my business and I ended up with a sizable bank account, investments and investment properties that all of that allows me to spend time creating a life I want to live. But it wasn't always that way. Starting a business is really difficult, and I spent a lot of time being really busy getting nowhere. At the end of the year, I would look at the goals that I had at the beginning of the year, and I just want to wasn't much

[Dave]

further down the road.

[Narrator/Host]

There was one thing that turned it all around, and it was this system that I developed for setting and achieving goals. Now I'm able to spend time helping others learn this system. If you'd like some help learning how to once and for all set and achieve your goals, I'm inviting you to give me a call. There's a link in the show notes. Just click on that link and it'll take you to my calendar. And it's just that simple. You'll see my calendar, you grab a spot and we'll talk. And I want to see how I can help you. All right, let's get back to the show

[Miranda Gwillim]

started TikTok. I'll let Scott tell that story.

[Scott Gwillim]

So we were washing a rug on a Friday, and it was a bleeder and it was a Kashon. And these rugs are notorious for bleeding. And before we wash that rug. We were slowly getting into photographs. We have our good friend, and her name is Yasmin. And she. She came out with her phone and she said she wanted to do social media and she's a photographer. And she goes, hey, I want to start a Tick Tock. And I said, I don't even know what that means. Just don't waste time doing it. But whatever. So while I'm washing this rug, not thinking anything of it, I'm just scooping out red dyes like it just wouldn't stop. And this rug happened to come from a restoration company out of a hoarder's house that had been flooded. So it was just the perfect story. It was already bled out red. It was really dirty. It was the first video we ever shot. And I didn't know what she did with it. I just. I didn't think anything of it. Monday morning rolls around. So that was Friday afternoon, Monday morning rolls around, she freaks out, runs into the shop, and she goes, oh, my God, we have 25, 000 followers on TikTok. And I said, what does that even mean? And she goes, you have no idea. This is going to be huge for you. And I thought, I don't know, it's if that. Go ahead, make another video today. Well, later that week, a lady brought in two Persian rugs from Scottsdale, and it was an $875 order. Again, I had thought nothing of Tick Tock. And I said, how did you find out about us?

[Miranda Gwillim]

Because we're referral only.

[Scott Gwillim]

Because we're referral only. And we don't really have walk in clients at the time. Time. I mean, we did, but not a lot. And she said, my niece in Montana sent me a clip of a video you have on Tick Tock. And she said, you have nice rugs like this one, you should take it to them to have it cleaned. And right then I looked at Yasmin and I said, make a video every single day. And she did. And I believe from my recollection, we were the first one to shoot satisfying rug cleaning videos on the Internet. And it blew up. We went from zero to 650,000 in less than a year, probably eight months. And so we did monetize that for a while, and TikTok was paying us quite a bit. I was making a thousand dollars a month just on video views, and people were kind of recognizing us. And then everybody else kind of started doing it. And now it's kind of viral sensations, and we're still doing it, but it has raised Awareness on how rugs are supposed to be washed properly. I love that it raises awareness. I love that people understand that you can squeegee a rug and it's the proper way to wash a rug. So it's just good for brand awareness and really recognition on how rugs can be washed properly and not necessarily throwing a wand over it in the home.

[Miranda Gwillim]

Yeah. And we, Scott and I, we're still very into education, and we go to all of these, you know, cleaning events all over the United States. That's where we met you, Dave. We just met you in San Diego. But I've had carpet cleaners and rug cleaners come up to us and say, I use your videos. I've used your videos in clients homes to show them and tell them, this is why we need to take your rugs out of the home and have them properly cleaned in a facility.

[Dave]

Yeah, yeah. And what did you call these videos, you call them had something to do with how satisfying it is to wash.

[Miranda Gwillim]

Watch satisfying clean videos.

[Scott Gwillim]

Satisfying. Like the hashtag is hashtag satisfying or satisfying?

[Miranda Gwillim]

You know, and so it was like clean ocd. There's. There's different people online that like to watch rug cleaning for different reasons.

[Scott Gwillim]

It's. The viral world is interesting, but you have to embrace it because, you know, it's. It's just part of the program. You're not. It's. It's. It's invasive to some extent, but if you just expect. Accept it for what it is. It can be really fun. We enjoy it.

[Dave]

Yeah. Yeah. And is it. It accounts for. I thought I saw somewhere about 20% of your business now is.

[Scott Gwillim]

Oh, yeah. At least, I would say, you know, and tracking that kind of stuff is a little bit difficult, but if you ask how people found us, a lot of people will say, my wife saw you on Instagram, and then we looked you up on Google and then we saw your reviews, and now we're here and wow, we couldn't have found a better place. And so, yeah, I think a lot of it is people probably think that people find you in one way only. They don't anymore. Everybody, no matter what people say, they're gonna go look at your website, they're gonna look at your Google presence, they're gonna see your review and read one or two of them, and they're gonna go check you out on whatever platform they're on, whether it's Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok. And so I think being current in all of those and just focusing on what we really want to get across just folks. It's all that we're really trying to do.

[Dave]

Yeah. And you mentioned Yasmin, I think you called her. So do you have someone that just does your social media for you or.

[Miranda Gwillim]

No, I mean, I. Again, we'd like to do everything a certain way and we like to do it all in house.

[Scott Gwillim]

So we're not really control freaks, guys. We're just trying to find good stuff, systems at work.

[Miranda Gwillim]

I mean, we have a small operation, so if we can do it then, then we will. And, and social media, it's. I was having this conversation with somebody the other day because I do help now I. I do help other business owners. And social media is the one, I think one of the things that I can help them on. But it's. It's an interesting. It's an interesting conversation because when you're thinking about hiring an outside source to do your social media and let's use rug cleaning as the example, because it's perfect example if you have to take all the videos and you have to come up with all of the verbiage and content because they under. Because a social media manager understands social media. They don't know anything about rug cleaning. So if you just say, if you just give them videos, well, who knows what these topics and hooks and subjects and content hashtags are that they're going to use. So if you look at our social media, you can see that it's written by us and that it's educational in nature and that the videos are of our facility and a lot of them have Scott in them or myself or our rug washer, Manny. And it's just, it's one of those things where I'm like, if you're doing all of the work, if you're shooting all the videos and you're writing the educational content or, you know, writing all of the text, then I don't really know why you would pay somebody just to post it. You know what I mean? So. And also I'm a firm believer that if you have a small business, then you need to be. Somebody needs to be the face of the business. Right. So for, for a long time, Scott was the face of the business. And I kind of made him be the face of the business. I put his face.

[Dave]

It's a good face. I mean, you're a good looking guy.

[Miranda Gwillim]

I put his face on stuff without asking his permission a couple times, and he's like, what are you doing?

[Scott Gwillim]

And then I drop in some hair.

[Miranda Gwillim]

Yeah. And then I slowly would. Sometimes I would be in a photo here and there. And then every once in a while, I'd put a photo of us and the kids. And now I'm kind of over those blocks. And so now he and I are kind of both the face of the business. But I think whoever is the face of the business, their pictures need to be on the website and they need to be on social media, and they need to be talking, because that's the only thing that's going to set you apart from anyone else in your local market, in your industry. And that's the best way to become the expert or become known as the expert in your industry in your local market. And social media is free.

[Scott Gwillim]

Yeah. To answer your question, Miranda does ours.

[Miranda Gwillim]

Yeah, I do. I do most of the social media.

[Scott Gwillim]

Kyle. Miranda writes it, does the video, and Kyle posts it. Yeah.

[Miranda Gwillim]

So I have a.

[Scott Gwillim]

It's a little bit in house, A couple things we do in house. And Yasmin now has her own photography business, and she's very successful. And she does all of our photo shoots for us.

[Miranda Gwillim]

Yeah. So we do a photo shoot. We do like a branding photo shoot with her about once a year. And it's great because I can use these nice photos for, you know, social media here and there or websites or whatever, whatever we're up to. So she's still a part of it.

[Dave]

Yeah. Sounds like that has been a big part of what gets you some business now and has helped people know about you. And, you know, I know education was super important for you, Scott, to make sure you knew what you were doing, but it seems like it's important for you as. As far as the relationships that you're building with designers and with rug retailers and, you know, the. The other people that are involved in your industry. Tell me a little bit about that, because I know you've kind of offer some classes on that.

[Scott Gwillim]

Yeah. So I've always. I always wanted to be a teacher, but I guess it just didn't pay enough. And I never really went that route. Route. I just kept doing the carpet thing. And then I found out that I really enjoy educating my clients and just building those relationships and having good customer service. I think what really sparked it for me was I just didn't have passion for carpet anymore. And when I started learning about area rugs, it reinvigorated my passion to learn. And by learning, I went and learned from multiple people that were really, really good in the industry. And what I learned from them was I could do what they do if I just learned what they know. And so I just continued to learn what I knew or what they knew. I realized that, one, I had a good understanding of fibers and rug construction after a few years to where I was able to teach designers and rug retailers around the valley and kind of become that expert in the Valley. And then I found, going to these events, people started asking me how I built my wash floor and how big my wash floor was and things of that nature. And so I just wanted to do my part in giving back to the industry. And so I think that's kind of where I am right now. I'm still learning, but there have been a few fantastic people in the industry I call mentors. Lisa Wagner, Robert Mann, Cam Mayville, Paul Lucas. There's a. There's a whole list of. Aaron Gross, close is a good friend of mine growing up. And so at this point, I just want to pay it forward and pay it back to those educators who really got me to where I am.

[Miranda Gwillim]

And aside from that, he also, you know, aside from the education within our own industry, he is an ID CEC approved instructor. So he has a continuing education course that he teaches to interior designers. So we do a lot of free education to designers in our own market. And we actually just drove down to Tucson on Saturday for a big event that they were doing an interior design event at a firm down there. And Scott taught his intermediate rug course while we were down there. But he also teaches that course at the local community colleges and design colleges and things like that. So we're just involved with a lot of education on a lot of different levels, you know?

[Dave]

Yeah. Yeah. Now. So you teach it at a college level?

[Scott Gwillim]

I do, yeah.

[Miranda Gwillim]

As a guest speaker.

[Scott Gwillim]

Yep.

[Miranda Gwillim]

He's not a college professor.

[Scott Gwillim]

Yeah, I'm not a professor, but I am a guest speaker for the design college at Scottsdale Community College. And so every semester, they're learning fabrics, and they're learning broadloom carpeting. And I go in two days in a row each semester. So I do it four times a year, and I've been doing that for about four years now.

[Dave]

Right. Right now, do they find that. How valuable do they find it that you not only understand fibers and understand the construction of it, but that you have the experience to see how it holds up in that it's not just theory. You actually see how these things hold up under normal foot traffic and, you know, what kind of stains or become permanent on these. You know that you're not just someone who is in the classroom. You know, you're seeing it from both sides.

[Scott Gwillim]

Exactly. And so essentially we're arming them with good information at the same time that we're setting ourselves up as the expert in the industry. So it's nice to talk to those educated designers and get them to that next level and talk about the wearability of a fiber and how it wears in that home and how important texture is. And then I say, so today we're going to forget about all of that and we're going to talk about how the rug is constructed and the fiber types and how they wear in the home. And they all go, oh, that's not very fun. And then by the end of the class, they're lined up with questions saying, oh my goodness, I had no idea that xyz, whatever it is. And so it's been very invaluable for all of them to learn things that they didn't even know they needed to know.

[Miranda Gwillim]

And it's so fun and it's so rewarding. We were just down in Tucson and, and it was a, it was a smaller group, which we actually like because you get to go deeper and you get to connect with people and really establish these relationships, which is kind of right up our wheelhouse since we have a referral based business, because we get to, you know, establish. I'm not, we're not going out to the masses and trying to get high volume. We're trying to connect with certain people and certain designers and, you know, offer something that no one else is. And the head designer, who was actually the president of the design association down there, whose place we were at, she said, how do we compensate you for all of this, like, educational information and all this great information that you're giving us? And I said, you are welcome to call us anytime. We love this. We love being everyone's resource for rug education. And I know Lisa Wagner in San Diego is the same way. I mean, she has the most trafficked rug care blog on the Internet. And so we're really, you know, we really genuinely do want to help out and, you know, arm people with the right decisions so that they purchase the right rugs. And when they do purchase the rug, if it's an investment piece, they can keep it for as long as they want to keep it for, right?

[Dave]

Yeah, yeah. You're essentially helping professionals make better decisions, you know.

[Miranda Gwillim]

Absolutely.

[Dave]

You're giving them your experience.

[Miranda Gwillim]

Actually, that's the name of the course, Making Informed Buying Decisions.

[Scott Gwillim]

That's the. And this, this particular designer, she has a firm and she's got, I mean, she's big time. She chose to sit through my ceu. There's two others going on at the same time. And she was engaged the entire time. She was shaking her head, holding her head, like, I can't believe you just taught me that. She was asking questions and she's, she is, I mean, veteran designer. And she couldn't believe it. She, after I was done, she's like, how can I give you money? How can I pay you for all of this information? I said, just trust that I know if you have a question, I can help you. And if I don't have the answer, I will help you find the answer. I'm not going to say I don't know the answer. And she was just, she was open arms to us and it was, it was just a great relationship building experience for us. And I guess that's what, that's what I'm passionate about anymore. You know,

[Narrator/Host]

you can hear how much Scott loves to teach, and that's something every business owner should pay attention to. Because education, while it's a great way to give back, it's also a smart, sustainable way to grow your business by becoming someone who's trusted for their knowledge and education in their field. Scott isn't just helping others, he's positioning Rugworx as the authority. And when people trust your knowledge, they're going to trust your service. So if you've ever thought about sharing what you know through classes, workshops, or even just helpful videos, maybe this is your nudge. Because teaching builds trust, and trust is what business is built on.

[Miranda Gwillim]

Had a really, a really nice Persian rug got dropped off recently and it hasn't been cleaned in 20 years because he hasn't found a cleaner that he, he can trust to clean it. And he called out of the blue on the phone and he grilled me. I mean, he was asking some very high level questions and he is Persian and his rug knowledge is incredibly high. And I said, you know, I mean, I'm not here to convince him that we should be the ones to clean it, right? I was just answering questions and I said, why don't you bring the rug down? And, you know, it'll be a day that both Scott and I are here. We can take a look at the rug with you and all this stuff. And he brought it down and one of the first things he said was, my kids grew up on this rug. And his kids are older now and they've left the house. And so I get it. I absolutely. It's not necessarily the value of the rug itself, but they do. Do people do have emotion around them. And that's why I always tell other rug cleaners, you know, don't ever think about how much someone purchased a rug for or ask them how much they purchased a rug for. Don't ever tell anybody that they should just have the rug replaced or that they could go buy a new one instead, because you don't know that rug's story with that. So we just keep everything purely based off of square footage and education.

[Dave]

Yeah, yeah. And that's, that's why trust is everything, you know, when it comes to that. So. Well, is there anything new that you guys have on the horizon?

[Miranda Gwillim]

We always have new stuff going on.

[Scott Gwillim]

We got lots going on.

[Miranda Gwillim]

Yeah, we have a lot going on.

[Scott Gwillim]

I mean, personally, obviously, we got our boys that play club baseball, but. But Miranda is actually branching out. And since we're on the topic of education, I guess Miranda comes from a line of educators herself. And I have been doing what I'm doing with the designers and obviously educating through our career. But in all of this, we've grown quite a bit, and we've done it in a little different way than a lot of people. Again, we've taken a lot of information from people that we've been learning over the last five years, and we found what worked for us, what fits in our daily life and kind of how we wanted to build our business. And in that, naturally people ask us questions. And Miranda has since kind of formulated. It's not a system, but it's more of a, Of. Of a. Well, why don't you tell them what it is? It's. It's education for business. It's business coaching.

[Miranda Gwillim]

Yeah, kind of. Yeah. So I don't. I don't like to. I never wanted to be a teacher like Scott, but.

[Scott Gwillim]

Intuitive business guide.

[Miranda Gwillim]

Yes. That.

[Scott Gwillim]

Yeah.

[Miranda Gwillim]

I don't like to refer to myself as a coach, but it is easier in some situations to just say that I'm a coach. But I don't want people to think that I'm a traditional business coach. And so I kind of just created this term on my own that I'm more of an intuitive business guide. Scott and I have a very unusual relationship, not just with each other, but with our business. And we have made all of the big decisions that we have made in our business have been based off of intuition rather than revenue. And so if we're talking about traditional business, you're always going to make all of the decisions based off of revenue. And so although we do take revenue into account, it's not the Deciding factor. The deciding factor is, you know, we get in touch with ourselves and we get crystal clear on what we want for our life outside of this business. Because for a long time I felt like I was putting on my mom hat, and then I would take that off and then put on my business owner hat, and then take that off and put on my, you know, manage my employees hat, and then I would take that off and put on my base baseball mom hat. And it's the truth. The truth is it's all one in the same, right? And so I wanted a business that would give us the life that we have now, which was more ease and more flow. And for a long time, I thought that the only way that we could be successful in having a service business or in the home service industry was to scale and have, you know, 20 employees and five or 10 vans. And, you know, that made me so stressed out just thinking about that. I was like, do you know how much I'm gonna have to work just to. Just to get any of that going or off the, you know, get that off the, off the road? And it just never sit right with me. And so we've always made our own decisions very intentionally. And I started writing online courses, and I never really wanted to work with business owners privately, but what happened was I started doing a lot of, I guess, more metaphysical and energetic work. And I created a private program, like a private journey program. And again, I never set out to do that. I just wanted to do the online courses. But I was interviewing people via Zoom. I was interviewing all of these business owners. And then when I was done interviewing them, I would send them an intuitive business assessment for free. But. And then it was done, you know, and I wasn't really working with them one on one. And what would happen is I would start to get all these, you know, these downloads and, you know, ideas for them, but I wasn't working with them. And I'm like, oh, wouldn't that be great if I was working with her or working with him and I could help him with this and that. And so I kind of created this four week and six week private journey program where I can kind of work on, you know, the online social media and website cohesion, or we can work on manifesting dream clients, or we can work on, you know, healing money stories and money psychology and things like that. So it's, it's, it's great because I'm kind of taking the traditional business stuff, but I'm also kind of infusing it with energetics and, and intuition as well.

[Dave]

Oh, that's great. That's great. And it's, it's so needed, you know, because I think, you know, we have this, you know, there's this idea of, of what you mentioned, scaling of what business success looks like. And there's one definition. It's scaling, you know, it's, it's grow it as big as possible. You know, if somebody asks you, Miranda, or you, Scott, you know, well, how many trucks you run in, you know exactly what they're asking. You know, like they're wanting to compare whatever number you say to whatever number they think would be impressive, you know, and, and, and so redefining what success looks like based on what's going to make you happy in life. Life is, is so needed because there's that pressure to feel like, I'm not doing this. Well, look at that guy. He's got five trucks. I've got three, you know, and, and, you know, and you could put a lot, you could put so much pressure on yourself to build this thing into something that you don't even want. And, and so I think it's much needed what you're doing. I love that. That's, that's great. And I'm excited.

[Scott Gwillim]

We're gonna ski. I just want to ski, that's all.

[Miranda Gwillim]

Yeah, I want to pick my kids up from school every day and watch

[Scott Gwillim]

baseball on the weekends.

[Miranda Gwillim]

And so we just, we ended up kind of organically niching down instead of scaling up. And, you know, I didn't really know that that was an option. And so I do like the idea of working with others. Whether they want to scale or they want to niche down, you know, that's up to them. So that's why I'm calling myself a guide is because I can guide people through, you know, figuring out what path they should take next and what their journey should look like and what they really do want, because you don't have to follow all of these systems.

[Dave]

Yeah, yeah. And I'm, I am, I'm excited about that interview we're going to have because.

[Miranda Gwillim]

Yeah, we'll get into that.

[Dave]

Yeah, yeah, we'll get it. We'll get all into that. Well, if somebody needs to get ahold of you, wants to get a hold of you, talk to you about, you know, all the things that we've mentioned here, I will put links to your Instagram and your Tick tock and all of that. But, you know, just for the listener, now what say, what's the best way to get a hold of you if they've got, you know, they got rugs they want cleaned or if they've got any work that you guys do.

[Miranda Gwillim]

Yeah, we're really easy to find online because we have so many social media channels. And like I said, if you message us, it's typically going to be either myself or. Or Scott. Scott kind of manages the TikTok sometimes, or my office manager, so usually I'll see it. But all of our social media channels are UggWorks, that's R U G W O R X. And, you know, we're on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube and Google. Yeah. And we're really easy to find on Google if you're in Arizona, for sure.

[Scott Gwillim]

And we are rugged. Rugworks.com.

[Miranda Gwillim]

yeah.

[Dave]

All right, sounds good. Sounds good. Rugworks.com and spelled with an X.

[Miranda Gwillim]

Yes.

[Dave]

All right, well, thank you guys so much for being on here. This has been great.

[Scott Gwillim]

Yeah, it was great. Thanks for having us.

[Miranda Gwillim]

It's nice to see you, Dave. Thank you so much.

[Dave]

You're welcome,

[Narrator/Host]

Scott. Miranda's journey is full of strategy and intention. But what really stands out to me

[Dave]

is how much they love what they

[Narrator/Host]

do and they love helping others. That shows up in how they work with other companies in their industry, how they love to educate the designers that they work with, and how they love serving their customers. They consistently made decisions based on value rather than volume. So here's a few questions for you to think about. What's one part of your business that you could walk away from and everything would get better? Are you building a company that at the end of the day, you really love? What knowledge and skills can you teach to others? Hey, thanks for listening to another episode of Locally Owned. I hope that you found this information to be inspirational and easy to implement. And remember, your goals are my goals. Thanks for listening to another episode of Locally Owned.

[Dave]

I hope you found this episode to

[Narrator/Host]

be helpful and offer quick, actionable strategies.

[Dave]

Please don't forget to hit the subscribe button and leave a review. You can find more episodes on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or go to our

[Narrator/Host]

website, Street Smart Entrepreneurship to find show notes and links and more.