438: Listener Success Story: From Idea to 6-Figure Side Hustle (Greatest Hits)

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Side Hustle Show | Episode 438: Listener Success Story: From Idea to 6-Figure Side Hustle (Greatest Hits)

Release Date: May 8, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 438 of The Side Hustle Show, host Nick Loper revisits a compelling listener success story featuring Anthony and Janilka Hartzog. Originally recorded in 2021, this episode is part of the "Greatest Hits" collection and includes a special "time travel" segment that provides an update on the Hartzogs' journey since their initial broadcast. With a mission to eliminate six figures of debt, Anthony and Janilka transformed their financial landscape by launching a thriving side hustle while maintaining their full-time jobs.

Meet Anthony and Janilka Hartzog

Anthony and Janilka Hartzog embarked on their financial freedom journey by following the Dave Ramsey debt snowball plan. Despite earning well from their day jobs, they realized budgeting alone wouldn’t suffice to eliminate their substantial debt. This epiphany led them to explore the income side of the equation, sparking the creation of multiple side hustles.

Chris Schwab (00:21): "A living, but your 5 to 9 makes you alive."

Launching MaidsToMatch.com

The Hartzogs diversified their income streams by taking on various side jobs, including gym secondments, car rentals on Turo, and dog sitting. Inspired by insights from Chris Schwab in episode 295, they ventured into the residential cleaning business, establishing MaidsToMatch.com.

Janilka Hartzog (02:29): "I came across one of your interviews where it was a kid, a guy that was making $10,000 a month in cleaning... At that time, we had never run a business before, so it was just kind of left field."

MaidsToMatch.com quickly gained traction, now generating $20,000 to $25,000 monthly with minimal direct involvement from Anthony and Janilka. They transitioned into full business owner mode, dedicating just a few hours weekly to oversee operations.

Building a Reliable Team

A critical aspect of their success was assembling a dependable team of contractors. The Hartzogs prioritized hiring cleaners before booking jobs to ensure they could meet client demands without personally handling cleaning tasks.

Janilka Hartzog (05:00): "We always say that we get the contractors first because we don't want to do the clean."

They employed various strategies to recruit cleaners, leveraging both free platforms like Facebook Groups, Craigslist, and Nextdoor, and paid services such as Yelp, Thumbtack, Indeed, and ZipRecruiter. Maintaining an ongoing recruitment process ensured a steady supply of contractors, crucial for scaling their business.

Effective Marketing Strategies

MaidsToMatch.com implemented a multifaceted marketing approach to attract clients. Their primary channels included:

1. Thumbtack: Their first booking originated from Thumbtack, albeit with initial challenges in lead costs and competition.

2. Nextdoor: Leveraging neighborhood networks, they engaged with local communities to secure recommendations and bookings.

3. SEO and Google Reviews: Investing in local SEO paid off over time, enabling them to rank on the first page for relevant keywords in the Dallas area. They also prioritized Google reviews over Yelp due to higher visibility and ease of acquisition.

Janilka Hartzog (19:15): "Our biggest one today is Yelp and SEO... SEO, search engine optimization, we've been cranking out leads from people just finding us organically on Google for three years now."

Their website featured a user-friendly booking system, allowing clients to specify details like the number of bedrooms and preferred cleaning frequency. Automated systems, powered by platforms like Launch27, streamlined the booking and contractor assignment process.

Pricing and Client Management

Transparency in pricing was pivotal. MaidsToMatch.com operated on a flat-rate pricing model, typically ranging from $25 to $35 per hour for contractors, ensuring fairness and simplicity for both clients and cleaners. This model prevented concerns about time-based billing and fostered trust.

Janilka Hartzog (09:09): "Yes, what we say is the rate kind of breaks down to even with the 60%, it ranges from about $25 to $35 an hour."

They established clear communication protocols to handle unexpected job complexities, allowing contractors to report discrepancies and adjust pricing accordingly. This flexibility maintained client satisfaction while preserving their revenue margins.

Overcoming Challenges

Early on, Anthony and Janilka faced hurdles such as unexpected tax obligations and initial reluctance to embrace SEO. They acknowledged the importance of:

• Hiring Professionals Early: Engaging an accountant to navigate tax requirements prevented costly surprises.

• Continuous Learning and Adaptation: Transitioning from manual booking processes to automated systems reduced their workload and increased efficiency.

Janilka Hartzog (30:41): "Hire someone early... Someone to look at the books for you. Probably something we would have done earlier."

Scaling the Business

With consistent revenue growth, MaidsToMatch.com aimed to scale their operations by increasing their contractor base and expanding marketing efforts. They set ambitious targets, aspiring to reach $40,000 monthly sales while currently sustaining between $20,000 to $25,000.

Additionally, they branched into education by launching Cleaning Business Masterclass, a platform designed to mentor aspiring entrepreneurs in replicating their success. This educational arm has grown to host over 2,000 students, collectively generating more than $18 million in their own cleaning ventures.

Janilka Hartzog (35:26): "We're really trying to scale the business... We want to continue to scale that and that. And that's our big focus."

Time Management and Automation

To balance their side hustle with full-time jobs and family life, Anthony and Janilka leveraged virtual assistants and automation tools. This strategy minimized their direct involvement while maintaining business operations. They emphasized the importance of problem-solving and delegating tasks to specialized team members.

Janilka Hartzog (27:49): "So we were just texting in a group chat like, hey, this is what we have. But now through the platform, we just sort of send a blast and whoever answers first would get the job."

Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

In closing, Anthony and Janilka shared valuable insights for side hustlers:

1. Persistence: "Keep going, because you never know what's on the other side of that quitting factor." (36:32)

2. Flexibility and Passion: "Pick something that I think is flexible and maybe something that you're good at as well." (36:48)

Their journey underscores the significance of strategic planning, effective marketing, team building, and continuous adaptation in transforming a side hustle into a lucrative business.

Key Takeaways

• Build Strong Relationships: Establishing a reliable roster of contractors is essential for scaling service-based businesses.

• Prioritize Local SEO and Google Reviews: Investing in local search optimization and leveraging Google reviews can significantly enhance visibility and credibility.

• Automate and Delegate: Utilizing automation tools and hiring virtual assistants can streamline operations and free up time for strategic growth.

• Educate and Mentor: Sharing knowledge through educational platforms can create additional revenue streams and foster community growth.

Nick Loper (38:36): "If you can bake some sort of feedback loop like that into your process for a local business, I think you'll start to see some real positive results in Google which becomes self-perpetuating."

Conclusion

Anthony and Janilka Hartzog's success story is a testament to the power of perseverance, strategic marketing, and effective team management in building a six-figure side hustle. Their journey from debt elimination to establishing a thriving cleaning business offers actionable insights for entrepreneurs seeking financial freedom through side hustles.

For more detailed insights and resources mentioned in this episode, visit sidehustlenation.com/clean2.

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This summary captures the essential discussions and insights from Episode 438 of The Side Hustle Show. For a comprehensive understanding, listening to the full episode is recommended.

Transcript

[Nick Loper]

Here's an oldie but a goodie from the archives from the side Hustle show greatest hits collection. Plus stick around for the time travel segment at the end where we check in with present day Anthony to get his update on everything that's happened since this 2021 original. What's up, what's up? Nick Loper here. Welcome to the Side Hustle show because your 9 to 5 may make you.

[Chris Schwab]

A living, but your 5 to 9 makes you alive.

[Nick Loper]

In this episode you'll meet Anthony and Janilka Hartzog who who were on a mission to erase six figures of debt which they ended up doing in under two years. They were making good money at their day jobs. They're following the Dave Ramsey debt snowball plan. But they came to this realization like many listeners of the show do. There's only so much you can cut from your budget. That's when they turned to the income side of the equation and started a ton of different side hustles. They picked up second jobs at their gym. They were renting out their car on Turo. They were dog sitting and inspired by.

[Chris Schwab]

My episode with Chris Schwartz swab 295 they started a residential cleaning business called.

[Nick Loper]

Maidstomatch.Com today that business is doing 20 to 25 grand a month in sales with other people doing the cleaning. Anthony and Chinoko are fully in business owner mode, dedicating just a few hours a week to it. Stick around in this one to hear how they got it done while working full time, including how they connect with reliable cleaners and the marketing tactics that are paying off. You can follow along with their journey at thehartrimony on Instagram Hart and you'll find the full text summary of this episode along with the links and resources mentioned@side hustlenation.com clean2clean and then the number two. While you're there, make sure to download the free list of 101 service business.

[Chris Schwab]

Ideas that you might be able to.

[Nick Loper]

Apply Anthony and Janilka's strategy to Once again, that'[e-mail] clean2 or through the link.

[Chris Schwab]

In the episode description of your podcast Fast Player app.

[Nick Loper]

I'll be back with my top takeaways after the interview. Ready?

[Anthony Hartzog]

Let's do it.

[Janilka Hartzog]

I came across one of your interviews where it was a kid, a guy that was making 10,000amonth in cleaning and cleaning, but the caveat was he wasn't cleaning houses himself. That was a big caveat. So I brought the idea to my esteemed wife and I said no.

At that time, at first I thought he meant that we were going to be cleaning. And he explained no, but at that time, we had never run a business before, so it was just kind of left field. It's like, well, how would we do this? How would we know where to start? He's like, I'm telling you, I listened to this podcast and he's been doing it. So it kind of was a no. And then he brought it back maybe two, three months after with more results, more information that he's gained, that he gained. And that was the kickstart for us.

[Chris Schwab]

All right, so this is Chris Schwab, you know, from Thinkmades. Like, if he can do this, you know, while he's still in college, like, we ought to be able to figure this out. After convincing Janilka what was the next step to make this thing a reality.

[Janilka Hartzog]

Before she even came back around and.

[Chris Schwab]

Quote, unquote, me convincing her.

[Janilka Hartzog]

The idea had to be planted first. That was a big part of it. Plant the idea, plant the seed, and then we'll revisit it over the next couple of weeks. So I spoke to Chris and he explained some of the basics. I did a lot of Googling, a lot of researching, and it was like, listen, we could do this. We're not going to have to clean. Here's how we're going to do it. We're going to hire contractors. It's going to be similar to, like, handy.com or Airbnb or even or Uber Lift Door dash. We're not going to deliver food.

[Chris Schwab]

We're not going to have hotels.

[Janilka Hartzog]

It's going to be us connecting cleaners with people who want their houses cleaned.

[Chris Schwab]

Yeah, it's an interesting one because taking advantage of the current state of the business, where a lot of these existing operators in the cleaning space and in really a lot of local service businesses, they don't have a great online presence. They kind of rely just on the clients. They've always had, you know, maybe a little bit of word of mouth, but, like, they're not doing a lot of proactive marketing stuff in the digital age. And so you're saying, okay, we can come in here and present a well thought out brand, which you've done at Maids to match.com, and then go out and find cleaners for that. Was it a matter of trying to book the jobs first or try and find cleaners first?

[Janilka Hartzog]

Oh, that's our number one question.

The chicken, which come first, the chicken or the egg?

We always say that we get the contractors first because we don't want to do the clean. So if you start booking the jobs and they come in, unless you're able to go out there and do the clean, you need to have the contractors. And I know sometimes people are saying, well, I don't have enough work for contractors, so why would I continue to bring them on? But as a contractor, they have other jobs. They're not just relying on you. So that's okay for them to just be waiting maybe a week or two to get jobs from you. But we definitely say get the contractors unless you are comfortable going to clean the home yourself.

And we tell all of our students that because it's important to know what you're going to do first, because a lot of them get stuck on that what comes first part of it. And if we tell you what should come first, you should just go and do that. So we try to make it as simple as possible when we're talking about this business structure, not only for us to learn it, but also for our students as well.

[Chris Schwab]

What was that process like for you guys to find those cleaners?

[Janilka Hartzog]

That's part of the business. People finding people to this day, when people always act as we would say, always be hiring. So we're always marketing the same way we market for our cleaning business, we market for contractors as well. Because, you know, as a contractor, they have the flexibility of one day saying, yeah, I don't want to work anymore, or moving or whatever the case may be. So if we want to continue to grow, we need to continue to market to them. So that is an ongoing process for us.

And we try to market in various different ways. So we do. We talk about free marketing versus paid marketing. So a lot of free places where you can find people are Facebook groups.

[Chris Schwab]

Believe it or not, a lot of.

[Janilka Hartzog]

People are looking for jobs on Facebook, Craigslist. A lot of cleaners, when you talk about looking for contractors, look for cleaners. They're still marketing in places like that to find cleaning jobs. So if they're still on Craigslist looking for jobs, they'd be on Craigslist looking for work as well. Nextdoor.com is another big place. We look for cleaners on the. The free side of things, but paid. I'm looking for people on Yelp, Thumbtack also, indeed, ziprecruiter. So we teach people different ways to kind of find the cleaners, but there's numerous ways to find them.

[Chris Schwab]

And let's say you find somebody through a. Next door through a Craigslist.

[Nick Loper]

What's the pitch?

[Chris Schwab]

To them is it just. We'd love to add you to our roster. We're a new cleaning business. If you have any availability in your calendar, we'd love to be able to try and help you fill that. Like, what's that conversation?

[Janilka Hartzog]

Like, we basically let them know, like, what we can provide for them. Why would you work with us? Basically, what's in it for me, for them? And how we. How frequent we pay, how much we pay. All those type of things we go over with them in the process before we continue on with the interview process. So, yeah, we do pitch the services in that way. It varies. Some people, like, have done it before. They know the platform, they know, like, how it works. So they're like, totally understand. And some people feel like it's too good to be true. Yeah. And so they're like, huh, like, so. So I just get this amount. So we basically say, like, you do the job well, we handle everything else. We handle the marketing, we have everything else. You just gotta show up, do the clean, and that's it.

You don't have to worry about the pricing. You don't have to worry about the customer service. You don't have to worry about rescheduling. We handle all of those things that they're usually not good at. And most cleaning technicians are good at cleaning. So most people in the local service business is really good at cleaning.

[Chris Schwab]

Right. Talk to me about the pricing conversation, because this is, I mean, you got to make money on the spread. If they're used to charging, I don't know, 80 bucks to do this job, and you're going to charge the customer 80 bucks, there's no margin left over. Tell me about how that piece of the puzzle works.

[Janilka Hartzog]

Okay, so when it comes to pricing, we do. We're very upfront about that. Our cleaners get 60%, we get 40%. And they're able to see right away how much they'll get paid for a job when they're accepting it. We also encourage them to go onto our website so they can see how much we are charging clients. But also it's a partnership. So if they are somewhere and feel like, hey, the client should be charged a bit more, they kind of communicate that to us as well. So that's an ongoing conversation. But we're very upfront about the pricing and we're priced a bit higher so that the split does make sense. And we also ask them when we start working with them, how much do they charge their clients so we can get an idea of, okay, once we Split this. Does it make sense? Is it too high, is it too low to kind of go from there?

And it also makes sense for our clients as well because we always get the conversation as to, oh, I had a private cleaner and it was a lot cheaper than you guys. Why are you guys more expensive? But there's a reason why you're talking to us, why you're having a conversation with us. Because either your previous cleaner wasn't good enough for you or what happens more likely is that they cancel.

Yeah.

And now you're stranded. You need somebody last minute. But if someone cancels on us, we have an entire team that we could get out to you versus just having one person.

[Chris Schwab]

Okay, is there a target hourly rate that you found cleaners are happy with?

[Janilka Hartzog]

Yeah, what we say is the rate kind of breaks down to even with the 60%. It ranges from about 25 to $35 an hour. But honestly, it's usually probably 30 plus. Yeah, usually depending on how fast they clean or how good they are, how many jobs they're able to take. Do they have a team so they can take bigger homes? All those things varies, but I would say it's usually no less than $30 an hour.

[Chris Schwab]

Okay, and do you guys have it where it's somewhat fixed pricing? Like, hey, if you got a two bedroom place, it's this. If you have a three bedroom place, it's this.

[Janilka Hartzog]

Yes, we have a flat rate. But obviously if you add on things, if it's a deep clean or if you're looking for a move in, move out. Where we're doing inside, fridge and oven square footage does come into place when it's like 2,500 square feet and higher. So those type of things. But mostly it is the flat rate. What you see there is what you're going to pay.

And that works out for our clients as well because they don't feel like if you're doing the hourly rate, they may feel like we're trying to milk the clock. But also it helps us with our cleaners as well, so we don't have to worry about them or anyone attempting to milk the clock while they're cleaning as well. So our clients know once we get there, that's the price. And our cleaners know once you get there, that's the price for that you're going to make. So if you finish it really well and you do the job well, that's what you're getting paid. If you want to take your time, that's totally fine because you're getting Paid the same rate. The owner's going to pay the same rate as well.

[Chris Schwab]

And you ever roll up to a house or have one of your cleaners roll up to the house and be like, no way. There's no way I'm getting out of here and making any sort of money. This is going to take days.

[Janilka Hartzog]

We have a very open relationship. So if they get somewhere and it's more than what they like what the client had put on the booking form. Because all these homes are sight unseen. All of our clients are booking us online. Yeah. So we go by their word. But we tell our contractors, you're our eyes and ears if you get there. And it's not what it says, we need to know. So we've had that happen and we have them send us pictures and we have the conversation with the client of like, you know, this is more than what was said, you know, this is what, what the price will be, yes or no. And that's how we proceed.

And even with that flat rate pricing, we have an asterisk that says, this is for the average house that's normally cleaned on a periodic basis. So if we get to the home, we have the right to give you a new pricing based on the conditions that we see. And you have the right to decline the service at that time, which is totally fine.

But that's why we tell them as soon as we get there so that it's not like we're cleaning and in four hours. And they're like, yeah, no, I don't want you to, I don't want to pay that.

[Chris Schwab]

So you're kind of building this informal Rolodex of cleaners who have agreed to, you know, open up their schedule or be open to extra bookings at this price split. And then you go about the marketing stuff for the clients.

[Nick Loper]

Tell me about that.

[Chris Schwab]

Tell me about how you guys found your first bookings.

Oh, yeah.

[Janilka Hartzog]

So our first booking was from thumbtack.

[Chris Schwab]

Yeah.

[Janilka Hartzog]

And we got, we got them on Thanksgiving Day, the day after, day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday, we were with family. And one thing about thumbtack, it's very hands on.

[Chris Schwab]

You have to have, you have to.

[Janilka Hartzog]

Nurture the client multiple times. And we tell our students very early on, get as many reviews as you can, try to do free cleanings for family and friends, so that by the time you start paying for marketing, you already have some initial reviews there. So on thumbtack, you got to nurture the client, you got to massage the conversation. And then also early on, we price ourselves a little Bit lower so that we can start getting bookings on those platforms as well. First booking came in on Black Friday.

And we had a contractor ready for the job night before. She says she can't make it, of course. Why would the first cleaning be easy?

Yep.

So we went into, like, a group out here in Dallas that has cleaners, and we said, hey, we need assistance. Can anybody take this job tomorrow morning? And we found someone who ended up working with us as a contractor who was able to go to the job. And she did a great job. This first job actually had a farm in their backyard.

[Chris Schwab]

Yeah.

[Janilka Hartzog]

Which was just like, what? She was like, yeah, they have, like, pigs back there and like four or five dogs. So the place is very hairy.

Well, she said a pigsty. And we was like, oh, it's dirty. Literally, it's a pigsty. I was like, what?

But she got the job done, and that's how that first job went. But we've had other jobs at the beginning that, like, somebody. It was a married couple, they got into an argument. Somebody left somebody on the side of the road. We actually went and did that one. Luckily, that was kind of just a quick. They were just taking pictures. So we just have to kind of like, wipe down and sweep and mop, so.

And we got that client from next door too.

Right. So those were. We've. In our total, we've. We've done about 2700 bookings, and we've cleaned three homes ourselves.

Yeah.

And that was way at the beginning. At this point, if someone can't make it, we would just reschedule the client.

[Chris Schwab]

Okay. Okay. Versus early on, say, like, all right, well, I can't find anybody to get it done, so I'm gonna go and roll up my sleeves and do it myself.

[Janilka Hartzog]

Yeah. We did those three bookings on one weekend. And then we was like.

Because early on, you're very nervous about your reputation and the reviews you're gonna get, so you wanna be mindful of that early on. But now, worse, we've gotten negative reviews. Most of our reviews are five star reviews. We get a one or three star here and there, which we understand. But people like to threaten you with reviews, we realize. So we're at the point where we're not gonna be threatened or bul wanted a specific thing that we weren't able to accommodate. But we try to live by the business model that customers are always right unless they're wrong. And we try to convey that in the nicest way possible. So.

[Chris Schwab]

So thumbtack is kind of a pay to bid type of platform. Right. So somebody will come on, say, I need a cleaner for estate. And then you will say, okay, I can. I want to bid on this job.

[Janilka Hartzog]

Yeah.

And thumbtack, you pay based on the qualifications of the lead. So if they want a larger home and they want it to be a reoccurring booking, thumbtack is going make you pay more. And their mindset is that you're going to pay more for this booking because you're going to make more money if you do book the service. But also now you have their contact information. If they actually do book reoccurring services. It kind of gets pricey pretty quickly, especially with people who just. There's a lot of tire kickers on there. So you can kind of rack up some serious money just trying to get leads on thumbtack. So that's one of the reasons why we left that platform very early on, within like six months. But our oldest client is actually for. Our longest tenured client is actually from thumbtack.

Yeah.

And their home's been cleaned every week for three years now. Every single week.

[Chris Schwab]

Wow.

[Janilka Hartzog]

So it actually worked out very worthwhile.

[Chris Schwab]

To pay for that lead.

[Janilka Hartzog]

Yeah.

[Chris Schwab]

Yeah. Chris kind of mentioned the same thing in our last conversation with him. I want to say last summer, where thumbtack is, maybe that ship has sailed a little bit. It's a little bit more difficult to kind of get a toehold in as they've adjusted their pricing. But next door you mentioned is another channel. What's worked on there?

[Janilka Hartzog]

So nextdoor you get a lot of people who are just in the neighbor. Nextdoor is a neighborhood platform. Nextdoor, it's just a bunch of neighbors just talking about what's happening in their community. So you'll get things from I'm looking for recommendation for a restaurant to I'm looking for a recommendation for a handyman and a cleaner. So normally that happens that people would just be on that platform looking for cleaners. What do you. Who do you recommend? And that's not talking about pricing. If you're just pretty accommodating to answer their questions, they'll book with you. But you got to just be on the platform pretty frequently and available to answer any questions that come up.

And also on there you hear sometimes they say, like, oh, my cleaner is looking for more work. Does anybody have it? And so that is something that we look out for as well.

[Chris Schwab]

Yeah.

[Janilka Hartzog]

Because then we're like, oh, we can make them a contractor. Let's see, let's see. What's their availability. Let's reach out to them so another way that next door can be used.

I actually just recently did that. Someone said that the cleanup wanted more work, so I asked for the contact information. I haven't followed up with them regarding Sidetracked, but I said that's a great place to find cleaners and work. It just requires a little bit more availability.

[Chris Schwab]

Anything else on the marketing front to connect 2,700 bookings. Where are all these people finding you?

[Nick Loper]

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[Anthony Hartzog]

Into business owners instead of business doers. You're always going to run into problems.

[Nick Loper]

And problem solving is a really important skill. But I'm constantly trying to remind myself I don't need to know how to solve everything. I just need to be able to find the people that do know how to solve it. Who, not how and when. You need to hire great talent fast. You need our sponsor, Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites. Indeed's sponsored jobs help you stand out and hire fast. On top of that, Sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed get 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs, all with no monthly subscriptions and no long term contracts. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed side Hustle show listeners get a $75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more visibility@inn Indeed.com Sidehustleshow just go to indeed.com Sidehustleshow right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com Sidehustleshow terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need.

[Janilka Hartzog]

Oh, yeah.

Our biggest one today is Yelp and SEO. And I know that some people are in different with Yelp, but it's helped us tremendously. So that is where it goes.

And then SEO, Yelp, and also to go back to Yelp. It depends on your market too. We got people in Dallas who, you know, who love Yelp. You got people in other places of the country who actually absolutely hate Yelp. And my thing is, I would say just try all marketing platforms, just see what sticks for you. And then we also did Google Ads very early on, which was very. It took up a lot of time and money.

[Chris Schwab]

We weren't ready for that.

[Janilka Hartzog]

So we're going to actually go back to Google Ads probably sometime this year. But SEO, search engine optimization, we've been cranking out leads from people just finding us organically on Google for three years now. It took us three. We actually use a actual company for SEO, but it took us three years to kind of get to where we are with the SEO marketing.

[Chris Schwab]

So now we're ranking on the first.

[Janilka Hartzog]

Page for a lot of keywords, Maids, Dallas, cleaning, Dallas, things like that. So people just find us just by typing in those, those keys.

[Chris Schwab]

I want to talk about that for a second. Because Dallas, it's not a small city. We're talking like 7 billion people, one of the biggest cities, you know, in the country. I imagine there were already a handful of well established cleaning service, number one, like well entrenched competition. And number two, it just seems like that's, I guess why go after cleaning business Dallas or maid service Dallas versus, you know, Arlington or Frisco or like trying to pick off like some of these, like maybe slightly smaller suburbs.

[Janilka Hartzog]

Oh yeah. So we started with the suburbs early on. So that's kind of how we got our footing in some traffic. Because when we first started with SEO, there's like, there's no way you're going to be able to dominate Dallas, which we still aren't. We're on the first page with keywords, but just, it just depends on the keyword. But we started with some of the smaller areas. Richardson Plano is actually a huge market and we didn't know that until we started doing SEO.

[Chris Schwab]

And it's like, yeah, you might want.

[Janilka Hartzog]

To just focus on Plano instead of trying to focus on Dallas. So we kind of went to Garland, Richardson, Plano, Arlington, Grand Prairie. So we went around the suburbs of Dallas before we started focusing more on Dallas.

But now like 90% of our jobs are in Dallas though.

[Chris Schwab]

Yeah, that's interesting. We had a guy who was doing web development out of Phoenix or actually a suburb of Phoenix. And so that was his. Like, don't try and go for like, you know, the whole metro. Like try and find this little sub neighborhood that you're, you're a part of and because people might be looking for that local stuff. Is that a factor of being on Google my business? Like, what else is working local, SEO wise?

[Janilka Hartzog]

The thing about our physical location is, is that we are located in Dallas, so area that we're in is pretty centralized to Dallas. So being on Google, my business. When you're in a Google map, you type in cleaning service near me. Guess who pops up? Because we're in Dallas as well. So that helps us a ton. And we try to keep those pictures updated. That's another one that brings us free marketing. We try to keep our pictures updated, our hours updated, so before and afters. And it helps us in our rankings because they'll see last updated, you know, this week or last week, so they know we're alive cleaning business as well. So that, that helps a ton.

[Chris Schwab]

Oh, okay, interesting. So there is some element that's less set it and forget it, but just, you know, kind of keep it clean, so to speak. Keep it up to date.

[Janilka Hartzog]

Yeah. So anytime there's a new blog that goes up, anyone who search for our pictures, they may get a little alert or something like that. So it does help.

[Chris Schwab]

Where do you prioritize sending customers for reviews? Because Thumbtack has a review platform. Yelp is obviously a huge review platform. Google has their own review platform. Facebook has their own review platform. Where do you, where do you prioritize that?

[Janilka Hartzog]

So we don't send anyone to Thumbtack anymore because we're not on it anymore. So.

And we got a good 70. I think it's like 60, 70 reviews.

Yeah, we had a good amount there. So we don't send anybody there now. So our priority is Googling Yelp. And we did do. We haven't pumped Facebook as much, but we have done that as well because we've booked clients from Facebook. But Googling Yelp. But it really depends. With Yelp, I say definitely Google because anyone that has a Gmail can leave the review with Yelp, you have to basically be a Yelper for it to stick.

A Yelper, Yeah.

You can leave the review but it would not show up basically for everyone to see. Like we can see if you left it, but if it's the first time you made an account and you don't have any friends or pictures and this is your first review, it's not going to stick. So instead of having to know for a fact who has Yelp and who doesn't, we really push Google more than anything else. Because there's no question there that it's definitely going to go up regardless.

So when you're asking for reviews on especially Yelp, they got to have a few things. So they got to have a picture.

[Chris Schwab]

They got to have a profile, they.

[Janilka Hartzog]

Have to have friends and they also.

[Chris Schwab]

Have to have left reviews before.

[Janilka Hartzog]

So those are four key criteria for a person to kind of leave reviews on Yelp. Because we have over 80 reviews and only 50 of them are showing.

Yeah.

So we can see the other 30. But they don't. You can't.

Clients can't. So it doesn't.

And they say non verified reviews or something like that. So when you're looking for reviews, I would say stick to Google. But if you think people are going to leave them on Yelp and they're a Yelper, then go for it. Sometimes we just ask for both.

[Chris Schwab]

Gotcha. That makes sense. Yeah. I didn't realize all that stuff about Yelp that's. I mean they're trying to protect their.

[Anthony Hartzog]

Platform and if it's your first review.

[Chris Schwab]

You come here five stars. Well, yeah, clearly you have some connection to these people who you know. But that's interesting. Yeah. Focus on the Google stuff because that will be visible and helps dominate those local near me types of searches. Anything else on the marketing front, this is all great.

[Janilka Hartzog]

I would say with the Google reviews to go back to that, that's important too because when you do search for the review, when you search for the cleaning business, they got this thing called the local service pack where local services can be featured on the top of Google. If you have a certain amount of reviews and you apply for it, that's a paid platform as well. But that gets you to the top of the Google Ads.

[Chris Schwab]

People can say, all right, well my.

[Janilka Hartzog]

Three choices are these three businesses. Who has the most reviews. So that, that goes a long way too.

[Chris Schwab]

Yeah. There's some social proof in there for sure.

[Janilka Hartzog]

Oh yeah, tell me.

[Chris Schwab]

And this is a Cool. So I'm on maidstomatch.com, there's like these cool sliders that say, well, how many bedrooms do you have? Where are you located? How do you want to sign up for? You know, weekly, every two weeks. That's very cool. Like what happens after somebody goes through this kind of online booking process? Let's just say I fill this in and I want to sign up. What happens next?

[Janilka Hartzog]

So once they book, we get an email saying that a client booked. They get an email saying that they booked the service. And we basically see the time and day. And we would reach out to our contractors saying, hey, we have a two bedroom, two bathroom in Frisco on Friday with arrival 8 to 10am do you want it? That's basically how it goes. Depending on their availability, they say yes or no. We assign it to the contractor. Then the client gets an email saying that like this confirms your cleaning. Because when you. It doesn't really confirm that we're going to come out, but it just says like, okay, we got it, we received it, we received it. So then they get an email saying that it's confirmed.

[Chris Schwab]

Was that invite to the contractor, was that a one on one, like you sent that to them or was that some like automated system that's through the platform?

[Janilka Hartzog]

That's through the platform. In the beginning we were having to manually just text everyone individually.

So we only had one person, two people.

So yeah, so we were just texting in a group chat like, hey, this is what we have. But now throughout through the platform, we just kind of send a blast and kind of whoever answers first would get.

The job and they could say if they. Yes, if they want it or no. And it will get an email saying this person wants this job.

Yeah. And then make a decision there.

So you're having about eight to 10 contractors. It makes that process a lot easier. Early on we didn't mind sending a text here and there, but now that we got so many, we're still growing. We try to automate as much as we can.

[Chris Schwab]

Yeah, that makes sense. What platform is that?

[Janilka Hartzog]

That's launch 27.

And the, like I said, sorry, the when the client gets a reminder three days before we come and a day before we come so that they just so, you know, let them know we're coming, make sure everything is correct with address and everything like that. And we show up and do the.

[Chris Schwab]

Cleaning and you show up. So they pay through the website and you guys take your 40% and pass on 60% to the cleaner and then everybody Walks away happy.

[Janilka Hartzog]

They paid through the website, and I think the backend is actually Stripe, so it's a platform they're familiar with. So it's not like we're collecting any money. We don't collect money, number one. So everything goes through the website, everything goes through Stripe. And then we pay our cleaners every Friday via direct deposit. And it's no cash transactions.

Right. The only cash is if a client gives our cleaner a tip. And that's all there is to keep. And. But they can even put the tip on the website as well. So.

[Chris Schwab]

Okay, are you guys. I noticed there's a phone number on here, too. Are you answering the phones yourself and trying to balance the day jobs and everything else that goes on?

[Janilka Hartzog]

So we were. We. Currently we're not, thankfully, we have virtual assistants to do that. But we were answering the phones for a good while before we had to, like, pass it off. Before we were running out of meetings and we're like, okay, this is becoming too much. Then we got virtual assistance.

Yeah. Earlier we weren't getting that many calls where it was impacting us, but now we get enough calls where it'd be a nuisance trying to run out between meetings and picking up the phone.

So we were losing business. So, yeah, we want to make sure we answer all those calls because, you know, if someone calls you and you don't answer, they go right on to the next person. And so you could have lost them there. So.

And they answer our phones Monday through Saturday.

[Chris Schwab]

Was that an individual contractor that you found for that answering service or was it a company that, you know, that was just on their menu of service offerings?

[Janilka Hartzog]

It's a company that answers for different cleaning businesses, which we recently actually just bought. We now have a virtual assistant company less than a month in.

So, yeah, we just started with that. And, yeah, pretty much they help cleaning business owners run and manage their business.

[Chris Schwab]

Like, they helped us.

[Janilka Hartzog]

So opportunity came up and we purchased the business from the previous owners. So now we have a virtual assistant company.

[Anthony Hartzog]

Oh, my gosh.

[Chris Schwab]

This is like the. This is like the Rockefeller habit. Like, you know, why am I going.

[Nick Loper]

To pay a profit to somebody else?

[Chris Schwab]

I'll just bring this in house. And you're like, now we got side hustles on side hustles.

[Janilka Hartzog]

Yeah, this is going to be a fun one. Because we knew.

[Chris Schwab]

We knew the value that they were bringing.

[Janilka Hartzog]

And we were like, we can't let this company just, you know, because they were going to close it. We said, we can't let this company close. So I kind of did my diligence and started hitting up the owners and.

[Chris Schwab]

Texting them and calling them because we.

[Janilka Hartzog]

Also had a relationship with the owners as well. He's like, we don't want you guys to close this business.

[Chris Schwab]

We wouldn't mind taking it over.

[Janilka Hartzog]

What can we work out? We worked it out and now we're running this business as well.

[Chris Schwab]

With the automations and assistance that you have in place.

[Nick Loper]

What kind of time does it take.

[Chris Schwab]

On a daily or weekly basis to run this thing?

[Janilka Hartzog]

Early on it was a lot early. Yeah.

Earlier it was way more. Now if I had to put it all together, just the amount of time I may speak to a contractor just for the week. I don't know, I'd probably say an hour, hour and a half. I'm not sure if it is even that much, but one time we measured it like we were literally doing it by the second each time we spoke to someone that said yes or no. And like on a Saturday, I think we had like five or six bookings and it came out to be like 12 minutes. It really doesn't take that much out of our day at this point at least that's.

And that's also. That's just the labor you do. But you think about the business and you talk about it so much, but in terms of just physically being in the business, less than an hour a week. But we're always talking about it, we're always thinking about something. So it feels like it's a lot more than that. But like labor, it's literally just an hour a week. If that.

[Chris Schwab]

That's awesome. I'm excited for what you guys have built. Any surprises along the way or things you wish you'd known starting out?

[Janilka Hartzog]

What would we have done earlier? We say we would have done SEO.

Earlier, especially because we had the revenue, not even from this business, but we also was saving up money, so we had the ability to do it right, but we just didn't do it early on.

So yeah, we didn't start SEO until like six, seven months in. We would have done that. A big surprise that we had, which I guess it depends on the state, is we weren't charging sale taxes. And so the government made it very clear that they wanted their money right away. And we started charging sales tax. We didn't know that we had to, so we did did see other businesses have it, but we're like, oh, we'll just do a flat rate so that we can stand out. And then we got an accountant and she was like, oh, no, it's not an option for you where you live. You have to charge it. We're like, oh, okay. So a year and a half into the business and we had to pay, like, all of that, so.

Yeah, but again, we weren't taking out a profit from the. From the business.

We didn't take any profit.

We were just putting it all in an account for taxes or whatever. And so we had to cut the check. It was like, okay, that's fine. Yeah, we just won't do it again.

That was a big surprise. And that was one of our biggest surprises. Other than that, I don't know if there was anything else. Yeah, that stuck with us.

Hire someone early.

[Chris Schwab]

Yeah, those surprises are the worst. I got a note from the city of Livermore and it was like, you owe us three years of back taxes for home use of your business. It was like some ridiculous made up thing. And I was like, what? You know, what is this for? And it was a time when the business wasn't doing so well. It's just, you know, I never. You never want to get those. I'm always nervous when I get a letter that says, like, you know, return address, IRS or something like, oh, this is not. This is not good.

[Janilka Hartzog]

They did the same thing for us. The amount that they said, I don't even remember. It was something outrageous. And it's like, we need it in like a week. And we're like, well, when we finally spoke to them, like, how did you get this number? They're like, oh, well, we estimate what other people around you are usually making with the business. So we're not really sure.

We was like, we're only a year in. So how did you get this number?

And we're like, no, that we made. They're like, oh, okay. It can be adjusted. Like, oh, thanks.

We would just send them a huge check. Yeah, they would have kept it.

That was. That was like, oh.

So we got that squared away. So I guess another thing would have been hiring an accountant earlier or at least someone to look at the books. It doesn't have to be an accountant or a cpa, just someone overlooked the books for you. Probably something we would have done earlier.

[Chris Schwab]

Yeah, all of that, you know, legal, back office stuff, it's so time consuming. It's so frustrating because you're like, this has nothing to do with the operations. But on the other hand, it's. It kind of does because that's what separates the people that you're hiring to do the cleaning from you guys is that existing infrastructure. And Everything in place, but what else is coming down the road? What are you guys excited about for this year?

[Janilka Hartzog]

We're really trying to scale the business. So we've said that usually, but now we're at a point we recognize, okay, we put more money into marketing, we get more clients. It's just simple math. And so we're really trying to bring on more contractors to continue to grow. Like last month we did our highest month ever.

And then.

[Chris Schwab]

Congrats.

[Janilka Hartzog]

Thank you. So we're looking.

And then this month would have been higher than last month.

February would have been higher than the month than January. Sorry. January was the highest month ever. And then February would have been high. But we had to close down for a week because of the storm.

So that show does.

But then like last week we did our highest week ever. It just keeps growing. So we're like, we really need to get more contractors in here to Canadian grow our business. We want to do like 40k a month. Right now we are between like 20 to 25k a month with sales. So we want to continue to scale that and that. And that's our big focus.

And then also bringing in maybe hiring people to kind of help us scale or people that help us run the business. Because I know right now we can both do it and have our, you know, nine to fives and things and all these other businesses, but we need help.

Yeah.

So that's going to be our big thing for 2021, to elevate it and bring help in as well.

And you know, another part of our business is that we, as we mentioned, we sell courses on how to get your business up and running and then we have a community where we help people to do it as well. So that's another. That it's not necessarily the cleaning business, but it's still part of and it's an extension of it, basically.

That's a huge part of it too.

Yeah. So growing that is. That's some of the stuff that we're looking forward to this year.

[Chris Schwab]

Yeah, you guys have a lot going on and there's no question about that. I mean, do you see, like, we're just going to dominate Dallas or do you see this like mates to match brand going national at some point?

[Janilka Hartzog]

No, I'm saying we toyed with that. But we think that we need to excel at the Dallas one first before we even think about franchising anywhere else. Like, at least get it to a point where we want it to be and then we can consider anything other places.

Yeah, our SEO guy He's like, you guys are bringing enough traffic where you can start thinking about other locations, because, like, Dallas may take a long time to get to 1, 2, or 3.

[Chris Schwab]

So you guys are dominating those suburbs.

[Janilka Hartzog]

We're like, we can still focus on Dallas or maybe start moving to other cities where you guys could start focusing on. So. So it's an option. You never know. People ask us all the time, do you want to do a franchise? I'm like, we have no idea what that looks like. Let us focus on what we're doing right now, and we'll figure that apart out later if it does come up.

[Chris Schwab]

Yeah. Well, it's a really cool example of one of these really fragmented businesses where there's no dominant regional, it's definitely national, but there's no dominant player. They're the go to brand for that. And so there's opportunity for you guys to come in, present a well thought out, easy to use interface, you know, for the customer side of things, and really perform well in a pretty short period of time. So I think it's one that's replicable, repeatable, not just in cleaning, but in any number of local services. So I'm really excited for what you guys have built at theheartrimony, which is a play on the last name. You find them over on Instagram there. Anthony and Janilka, thanks so much for taking the time to share the ins and outs of this thing. Let's wrap this up with a couple.

[Nick Loper]

Number one tips for side hustle nation here.

[Janilka Hartzog]

So number one tip for me would be, it may sound cliche, but keep going, because you never know what's on the other side of that quitting factor. Early on, you know, we were about seven months in, we had a dry summer. We was like, it's not worth it, the time commitment.

[Chris Schwab]

And we were like, we were right on the edge of quitting.

[Janilka Hartzog]

And that that August, we boosted up. Our numbers, doubled out of nowhere. No new marketing, nothing. It just doubled and we just kept going from there. So if we would have quit, we.

[Chris Schwab]

Would have never known where we would have been today, and we wouldn't have.

[Janilka Hartzog]

Been able to help as many people as we have so far. So keep going.

My tip would be, at least with side hustling, pick something that I think is flexible and maybe something that you're good at as well. So I know, like, one of the side hustles that I've done, you know, I'm a mental health therapist. I started to do therapy online. Like, I know sometimes people think this is an extension of their career. It's not a side side hustle, but it is, you know, it's not, it's not necessarily your 9 to 5. So if there's something that you enjoy doing and if there's something that's flexible and doesn't cause, you know, stress, then go for it.

[Chris Schwab]

I like it. Guys, thanks again for joining me. Awesome story. I'm excited to see what you guys will continue to build over there and hopefully we'll be able to, to keep in touch. So thanks so much and we'll catch up soon.

[Janilka Hartzog]

Thank you.

Thank you.

Enjoy.

[Nick Loper]

I think this is a really cool business model. It's almost like dropshipping for physical products where you don't buy the inventory until you've gotten paid by the customer. Or Anthony and Janilka. The way they have it set up, they don't pay for the labor until they've got a booked job. And that makes for a very flexible.

[Chris Schwab]

Low risk type of setup.

[Nick Loper]

All right, takeaways from this episode. A couple things stood out. The first was building relationships with existing cleaners or cleaning crews who might be interested in picking up more jobs. If you're a service provider and someone comes and offers you more work that you didn't have to go out and market for yourself, you didn't have to sell it, and the compensation is in line with what you'd like to earn, I think that's going to be compelling. That was number one for me. The bigger challenge here is on the.

[Chris Schwab]

Customer marketing side of things, especially trying.

[Nick Loper]

To gain a toehold in a market that already has established players, which is probably going to be just about any market. Right? But if Anthony and Janilka can make it work in Dallas, which obviously had a ton of cleaning services already, it's something that can probably be replicated where you are. From the sounds of it, there were a couple things going on at once. There was this listening aspect, trying to be where customers are. They mentioned thumbtack, nextdoor Google Ads early on, trying to build up some positive feedback and reviews, enough social proof and credibility where it becomes easier for customers to give you a chance. You're no longer this unknown quantity. The second thing was reinvesting in organic SEO, local SEO. This is something that they mentioned they'd been doing for a couple years but are really only recently starting to see the full impact of. And I wanted to call attention to that because it can be a very long game, especially in a big metro market like this smaller town. You're going to have a much shorter road to getting on that first page, but it's a slog to climb the ranks and then all of a sudden you hit that first page and the floodgates are open. I thought the comparison between Google reviews and Yelp reviews was really interesting and I'm kind of in the same camp like prioritize those Google My Business reviews.

[Chris Schwab]

For maximum visibility because oftentimes that person's.

[Nick Loper]

Search is going to begin on Google.

[Chris Schwab]

And not Yelp and Google's going to.

[Nick Loper]

Prioritize those inside your company dashboard. In Google My Business there should be a direct link can send people to ask them to leave a review, which.

[Chris Schwab]

Was a tip Matt Ralph shared as.

[Nick Loper]

Something that really helped his knife sharpening business gain over 100 reviews in, I.

[Chris Schwab]

Want to say less than a year.

[Nick Loper]

So if you can bake some sort of feedback loop like that into your.

[Chris Schwab]

Process for a local business, I think.

[Nick Loper]

You'Ll start to see some real positive.

[Chris Schwab]

Results in Google which becomes self perpetuating.

[Nick Loper]

In a way as long as the.

[Chris Schwab]

Service remains good and customer stay happy, right?

[Nick Loper]

But once again, you'll find the full text summary of this episode along with all the links to the resources mentioned@side hustlenation.com Cleanto While you're there, I put together a free Bonus download of 101 Service Business ideas that you might be able to apply Anthony and Janilka's strategy to. Once again, that'[e-mail] Cleanto or through the link in the episode description of your podcast player app. Now let's fast forward, jump in the time machine and catch up with present day Anthony after a quick word from our sponsors. Remember data from the Goonies?

[Chris Schwab]

The guy with all the gadgets?

[Nick Loper]

Or data from Star Trek? I think that's why I say data instead. And one thing I love about our sponsor Mint Mobile is I can get all the data I need for one low monthly price. That's right down here.

[Chris Schwab]

It's our time.

[Nick Loper]

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[Anthony Hartzog]

It'S been four years. A lot has happened in the maids to match business closing in on $3 million in lifetime revenue. Catch us up. What have been some of the biggest shifts since we last recorded?

[Chris Schwab]

Yeah, last time we spoke our cleaning business was around 20, 25,000 and that was a couple years ago now. We normally close out between about 45, 50, 60,000. So it's been a lot of adjustments and in a lot of life during that time. We had two daughters since then, which means that we had to take our foot off the gas on certain businesses. But the good thing is that right when we had our first daughter, Alani, we hired an operations manager to run our business and she has ran it successfully since then, which gave us a lot more time back to do and have conversations like these.

[Anthony Hartzog]

Yeah, that's fantastic. Congrats on the new additions to the family and congrats on sounds like removing yourself from a lot of the day to day and inserting a manager in your place. What do you look for in an ops manager, there's a certain revenue milestone or someplace you gotta be at. You gotta have some margin available to hire somebody, to be able to pay somebody to do this role. Talk me through that. Because it's always like, well, if I hire somebody to do it, then there's not that much left over. But, you know, there's trade offs.

[Chris Schwab]

I had the same mindset when we first started. And I think a lot of the trade off is, what do you value more in that season that you're in? As entrepreneurs, we always say we want more money, but we don't start businesses to get more money. We start businesses to give our time back. But as entrepreneurs, you realize that you trade in a 40 hour work week for 80 hour work week. As an entrepreneur, I'm leaving a 9 to 5. So when we first had this conversation, we knew we were about to have a kid, so our time was going to be extremely limited. So one of the first things we did was we go where a lot of people go overseas, right? You could find very qualified candidates on Upwork.com, online jobs. Ph. Fortunately enough for us, our operations manager came as a referral from a previous business venture that we had with virtual assistants. So she worked out of Jamaica, and I think her first salary was about, maybe about $8 an hour. So we said, you know, if we pay ourselves 20, 30, 40, $50 an hour, if we gave somebody, you know, $9, $10, we should have plenty of cushion for us to at least get a couple hours back.

[Nick Loper]

Got it.

[Chris Schwab]

And you don't have to jump in and hire someone with 40 hours straight. You could just do part time. And we just knew we needed someone since we had the baby.

[Anthony Hartzog]

Is she answering the phones for you? Is she, you know, playing puppet master and saying, okay, this crew needs to go over here, like, there's a lot of moving parts to this business, plus customer support and all that.

[Chris Schwab]

Absolutely. Well, when we first started, she handled everything. So we knew the biggest thing we wanted to get off our plate was the customer service. Because that took most of the time, especially since we had nine to five jobs. We handed her over the customer service. So that could be new inquiries, that could be client complaints, that could be challenges, and then also the hiring aspect as well. So what crew is going to show up, what time she became essentially the person that's moving all the pieces into the right places. As long as she needed us, we were there in the background for her to support her.

[Anthony Hartzog]

Any tools and tech that you like to Use or have her use to manage all those pieces.

[Chris Schwab]

Yeah, so one of the things that we used from the very beginning was Slack. We created communication channels in Slack and then also WhatsApp for our cleaners. So we maintain communication there, but then also we use a platform called Basecamp, which is a project management tool. So Basecamp allowed us to have all of our documentation, all of our SOPs, all of our. Our conversations inside of one place. So whenever she needed to pull it, she would go use that. And also a big platform that we use was launch 27 when we first started, which is a booking platform for essentially local service businesses where clients can book you online, pay you online, and also find you online. And you can also manage your cleaners pay and things like that in there.

[Anthony Hartzog]

Oh, okay. I didn't know that.

[Nick Loper]

One jobber has come up from time.

[Anthony Hartzog]

To time as like a, like a dispatch.

[Janilka Hartzog]

All in one jobber is another big one.

[Chris Schwab]

Booking Koala, Zenmate. Yep, all of them are pretty much the same thing. Now we actually create our own, which is called Tidytrack, which we decided to bring everything in house and just now we just use that platform.

[Nick Loper]

Oh, okay. Dang.

[Anthony Hartzog]

Scratch your own itch, develop your own tool.

[Chris Schwab]

Yep, that was exactly what it was. We had all these different platforms, email, text, phone numbers, and we just said, you know, we could use this, create our own CRM. We have everything inside of it.

[Anthony Hartzog]

Now you're operating in a pretty big metro and I'm curious about the level of competition or the next generation of Anthony and Janilkas that are coming in trying to steal market share or the drop servicing model or this remote cleaning model has become really popular. So curious your take on that from somebody who maybe had a little bit of a head start on it.

[Chris Schwab]

We definitely had a head start on it, but we have students coming in now, and one of our top students, he did a million dollars in, in two and a half years, and he only operated out of, you know, one city. So there's still room for people to come in and do it at a high level. Our advantage was an early start, but now we have AI. We're talking about creating emails, we're talking about creating flyers, we're talking about creating social media. There's so many tools that we didn't have when we started that people coming in, like Anthony, you're a little bit outdated on this. Now we're using AI. We had a virtual assistant company which is now no longer needed because AI can pick up the phone for you and answer it and book the client and we've tested this out. So I think the new competitive advantage advantage is using these AI automation tools which is going to put you ahead in the competition from day one.

[Anthony Hartzog]

Okay, for somebody starting today, what are one or two of the effective marketing tactics to try and get new clients, new cleaning customers?

[Chris Schwab]

The old handy one I would say focus on is Google Local Services. I would still say that because those are people who are more intent based. They are actually looking for the services versus like we also do Facebook ads but most of the time that's more interruption based services. Right? You'll see a ad come up, it's like, oh, I might need a cleaning service. I would always say start with Google Local services is the easiest to manage. Now based on your area it's going to be a little bit more expensive because it is so user friendly, easy to manage. I will also say Google Ads would be another one. It's more controllable and managed by the user. But again since it is more controlled and managed by you, it's going to be a little bit harder to use, not as user friendly. So those would be the first ones I'd say to start with Google Local Services and then probably Google Ads and then obviously if you do have a network, it doesn't hurt to tell people in your area who you are and.

[Janilka Hartzog]

What you do always do.

[Anthony Hartzog]

You see for people with, you know, that profile but zero reviews, there's like a, well I gotta discount my rates because I'm just trying to get a critical mass of social proof here.

[Chris Schwab]

If you want to try to undercut the competition, you absolutely can. But still since you have no social proof, it's gonna be really hard to do that. We got one of our first reviews from someone calling us accidentally because she said five other companies didn't pick up. We just happened to be the sixth person that picked up the phone and, and she left us a five star review without even using our services. She said this is the only company that picked up the phone. They were nice, they were courteous and they allowed me to book online even though I didn't use them. You know, I'm here to just sing their praises and those are things that you can control in your business that you don't have to worry about. You know we talk about beating a compensation just picking up the phone, right? So those are things you can do in the very beginning.

[Anthony Hartzog]

What's your take on this? This was a, an early response to four hour workweek and even the fire movement of, of well, everybody wants to have this remote cleaning business at a certain point do we run out of boots on the ground cleaners doing the actual work and you had our time recruiting or finding talent. And it's like, you know, nobody wants to do the dirty work anymore.

[Chris Schwab]

Yeah, recruitment in any business is the hardest thing you're gonna do. When I worked my 9 to 5 job, it was we, that was something that we had a recruitment department that I was a part of. That's all we did every single day. Right. But when you're talking about this four hour work week, it's a lot more challenging to find people if you're not willing to put that work in at the very begin. One of the things we we have in mindset around now is always be hiring. That's one of our quotes. That's one of our mantras. That's what we tell our operations manager. I don't care how many people we have, always be hiring. We also tell our students that because I just had a conversation with someone and she's like, I had five cleaners at one point. Now I'm down to one. I was like, what happened during that time? She's like, I got comfortable. I had five. I thought I was good. So always be hiring.

[Janilka Hartzog]

Now.

[Chris Schwab]

Will there ever be people too that stops cleaning? I don't think so. Unless. Unless someone creates a cleaning robot like in the Jetsons back in the day. There's always going to be a home that needs to be clean. There's always going to need to be a person to do it. And I don't see us moving over to robots anytime soon.

[Anthony Hartzog]

Yeah, it's one of these, you'd imagine, at least in the near term, semi AI proof businesses where stuff is going to keep getting dirty and the robots aren't yet that sophisticated. Although we love our little robot vacuum goes around every night.

[Chris Schwab]

Yeah, we got the Roombas and stuff like that. But for actually someone to come in and lift things up, put them down, clean under it, there's always going to be a need for at least people, at least in our generation after that. We'll figure it out, but we won't be here then.

[Anthony Hartzog]

Do you see this model of essentially matchmaker, where I'm going to be the marketing and administrative arm of this business, build the digital presence, go out and find customers and then find people qualified to do the work. Have you played around with it in any other niches? You kind of alluded to the virtual assistant service. Do you see it working or do you see students, students applying it in other Areas.

[Chris Schwab]

Absolutely, man. The matchmaking market is essentially, I would say around 2008, when Airbnb said, we're going to put you in a stranger's home, and you don't know who they are, what they do, and you're just going to be okay with it. And during that time, I was like, okay, we could try this. And then Uber said, we're going to put you in a stranger's car and you're going to be okay with it. And then obviously, there's going to be levels of protection. You want to make sure they got reviews. You want to make sure you do background checks. You want to make sure you do all of those things that make people feel comfortable. But we have seen this and other business models. For us, we had a virtual assistant business. It was the same exact thing. Right. Another business model we've seen was mobile massages. That was another one we've seen. What was pretty interesting. Another one we saw was it was another version of a daycare where assisted home living is another one we're seeing people doing. I've seen it go as far as medical assistance, which not as far as. But I've seen it go as high as medical assistance, where people are finding people who are qualified, trained, and they have medical backgrounds and the person just managing the business. I've seen that actually, as a new demographic of people getting into the medical assistant business as well. So those are a few business models where they're exactly the same thing as what we do, just on different levels.

[Anthony Hartzog]

Yeah, I guess that's care.com or papa pal, you know, the caregiving type of marketplaces. We've used Zeel, like the massage matchmaker service. You punch it what time you want it, and they send it out to their network of licensed massage people and they come to your house.

[Chris Schwab]

Another example of that, we just hired an au pair, and essentially all the agency does is find people who are qualified to take care of kids and they match us with them. It's the same exact process. And we have her living in our house right now, and this is our second one. So, I mean, we pay a lot more money for that.

[Anthony Hartzog]

What was the name of the au pair service?

[Chris Schwab]

So that was a cultural care.

[Anthony Hartzog]

Okay. Because we had a woman on the show and that was her business. She was, like, franchising out this, like, nanny matchmaking service. It was like, hey, you know, it's hard to find the right people, but, you know, our proven system. And it was like, okay, this is cool.

[Chris Schwab]

It is a na. I've Met someone who does the nanny service and I was like, how do you do it? She's like, oh, I don't go out at nanny. I have a roster of nannies that I've interviewed that I've background checked and I refer them out to people and that's exactly how she runs her business. So it's more common than we realize. But I think just because we talk about it so much, people just can't comprehend the, oh, I don't have to go out and clean aspects of, of it, but it happens all around us.

[Anthony Hartzog]

Yeah. In the online world, we call it like the freelance trap of getting stuck, selling your skills, selling time for money. It's like, well, if you start with the intention of being the owner, operator and hiring other people to do the work from the very beginning, you kind of avoid that freelance trap. This is the matchmaker model, the agency model. You know, lower margins but more scalable because you're not tied to your direct time. Yeah, sounds like this is, you know, the full time income at this point plus the influencer business, which we'll get to in a second. Was there a revenue target? Like, where, at what point do you feel comfortable saying goodbye to the career?

[Chris Schwab]

So I don't think you ever feel comfortable. And even when I handed in my resignation letter and I had the whole goodbye speech ready, we were never ready. We just had a kid, we just bought a house, it was the end of the year, but I just had the blessing of my wife that we were able to do it. And we said, worst case scenario, I could go back to work and go back to my same job if I wanted to, or get another one. But I think the level of comfort we had was when we had six months of emergency savings in our bank account liquid, just in case we didn't have that consumer debt anymore. We had enough savings for our new baby on the way and we was like, it's not going to be a better time. And, you know, we just took the leap.

[Anthony Hartzog]

Yeah, I'm glad you said that. Like, it's never comfortable. Right. It's still like, oh, what am I, what am I doing? I've got this, you know, track record. I got this business that's doing well, but can I really cut my own paycheck? Is this, you know, how sustainable is it scary?

[Chris Schwab]

All of these things could disappear any. And my wife keeps telling me, like Genoa keeps telling me that how likely is it that everything disappears at the same time? It's not very likely. But, you know, as an entrepreneur, you're always thinking, like, what if this happens? Like, obviously you got more upside, but you never know. So that was my fear. Like, what if, what if she's like, what if this works?

Yeah.

And now, four years later, you know, I'm a full time entrepreneur. And then, funny enough, Janoka, she actually got laid off a month into her maternity leave.

[Nick Loper]

Okay.

[Chris Schwab]

Yeah.

[Anthony Hartzog]

Is that even legal?

[Janilka Hartzog]

That's a whole nother story.

[Chris Schwab]

But she got laid up a month to her maternity leave and we were like, like, well, okay, here we. Here we are.

[Anthony Hartzog]

Yeah.

[Nick Loper]

Sometimes it's almost.

[Anthony Hartzog]

It's never fun to get laid off. It's almost easier if somebody else forces your hand and you're like, okay, well.

[Nick Loper]

Now or never, I guess now we've.

[Chris Schwab]

Been talking about it for years. Who would leave first and when we're going to leave. And it was kind of like jumping into a rope. And we never did it. I didn't then her job, you know, forced her to do it.

[Janilka Hartzog]

So.

[Chris Schwab]

Yeah, that was, that was a funny one. Not funny, but, you know.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah.

[Anthony Hartzog]

Talk to me about the education side. People started to take notice of your success with the cleaning business. You've got cleaning businessmasterclass.com I see the two, club, you know, cook funnels, plaque on the wall behind you. There's been a lot of interest in other people learning to do what you do.

[Chris Schwab]

Yeah, it started right at the height of the pandemic. And coincidentally enough, people think that the cleaning business was doing bad. And they say, oh, well, why do you sell courses? And actually the cleaning business hit its highest months during the pandemic, which proved that the business model was efficient. And then all we did was we just started sharing. I mean, we've been sharing our journey since 2017 online, but we never really thought people cared about the cleaning business because it was unsexy. And we got a little bit of interest in it. And what it turned into was a full blown, you know, multiple seven figure business. Where now we had about 2,000 students inside of Cleaning Business University. They've done over $18 million in their own cleaning businesses. They've cleaned over 50,000 homes and opened up businesses in 40 plus. Took on a whole life of its own.

[Anthony Hartzog]

How crazy is that? Think about like the cumulative dust removed from. From America. I like, it's some cool metrics to think about, like the influence that you had.

[Chris Schwab]

Yes. And we never thought people cared about it, but we realized the more we shared, the more people we impact. And then also, you know, as long as we're helping students Get a result, whether it's to help them pay off extra bill like when we started or travel a little bit more, pay down some debt or some people have, you know, left their nine to fives and gone full time into this. And that's where we realized that there was true impact in sharing our story outside of the debt freedom story.

[Anthony Hartzog]

Yeah. As a typical funnel to speak social media, YouTube podcast to, you know, to email, opt in straight to a sales page. What does the journey look like for a typical student?

[Chris Schwab]

We tried a few different things. So when we first started, we went completely low tech, no tech. It was an Instagram live of us sharing, sharing everything we know in one video. And we had people like, if you want us to turn this into a program where you digestible for you, you could go through your own pace, you know, and send us a DM. And that was it. And we got I think 10 sales at $99. And we said, okay, now we got validation.

[Anthony Hartzog]

Yeah, quick validation. Lowish price point.

[Chris Schwab]

Yep. So we was like, okay, now we have to go and do this thing. So we spent a weekend building out the curriculum, recording it on zoom just like this. And fast forward four years later. Now we have a whole community inside of Mighty Networks. We have a full time staff admin assistant. We got a full time customer service agent in it. We got full time, well, part time coaches in it also.

[Anthony Hartzog]

Yeah.

[Chris Schwab]

And it's developed and become its own thing at this point, but it was.

[Janilka Hartzog]

Really just a dm.

[Chris Schwab]

And then now we have cleaning business masterclass where we got so many questions on a weekly basis and it's like every single week I go and perform the same exact masterclass class for a full year, Russell Brunson style. Do it once for a year, see how it goes. And so that's what we've been doing.

[Anthony Hartzog]

Yeah, it seems like it's working really well and your students are getting great results. So you are the hartrimony on Instagram cleaning businessmasterclass.com we mentioned that you've also.

[Nick Loper]

Got the More Than a side Hustle podcast.

[Anthony Hartzog]

Love it. Lots of episodes out over there.

[Nick Loper]

What's next for you?

[Anthony Hartzog]

Where are you guys taking this thing?

[Chris Schwab]

That's a great, that's a great question. The way I see Cleaning Business university is I want it to be a all in one platform for entrepreneurs who happen to own cleaning businesses. I think that's one of the biggest differences between us and you know, cleaning business owners is like this is just one way we were able to achieve an outcome. So even inside of our platform. We talk about taxes, we talk about strategy, we talk about investing for your kids. So we had kids. People want to know, how are you investing for Alani and Amaya? So we brought in our strategists who are helping us invest so that, you know, by Alani's 18th birthday, she'll have like, close to a million dollars saved and invested. So we're bringing everything that's in our entire world, our all pair, how we found them, how you guys could use them as well. So everything that we've learned over the course of, you know, these eight years, you know, as we've been sharing this journey, we bring that back to our community so that they could use resources as they see fit. And the cleaning business just might be one stopping point along their entire journey. They might learn from us about the cleaning business. They might say, I want to go start a car rental business, or I might want to start a micro influencer business, or I might want to just share my story online. So we see it as an all in one platform and curriculum for anyone who wants to learn about entrepreneurship by the vehicle of having a cleaning business and then also obviously raising our two kids.

[Anthony Hartzog]

Yeah, people learn right alongside you as you've grown and the family has grown and, you know, different seasons, different stages come up all the time. So I'm happy to hear that.

[Chris Schwab]

Absolutely.

[Nick Loper]

Again, cleaning businessmasterclass.com check it out over there. Big thanks to Anthony for sharing his insight.

[Anthony Hartzog]

Thanks to our sponsors for helping make.

[Nick Loper]

This content free for everybody, everyone.

[Anthony Hartzog]

As always, you can hit upsidehustlenation.comdeals for.

[Nick Loper]

All the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. That is it for me.

[Anthony Hartzog]

Thank you so much for tuning in.

[Nick Loper]

Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen and I'll catch.

[Anthony Hartzog]

You in the next edition of the side Hustle show.

[Nick Loper]

Hustle on the.