Filthy Rich Cleaners: The Cleaning Business Podcast

Free cleanings sound insane... until you use them strategically 👀 In this episode, Stephanie breaks down one of Serene Clean’s “secret weapons”: Giving away free cleanings with guardrails, and how it’s driven real results across the business. She walks through four specific buckets where free cleanings create leverage: 1) Learning your production rates 2) Generating reviews and visibility 3) Buil...

What happens when a homeschool mom starts cleaning “on the side”… and her corporate-leader husband realizes the numbers actually make sense? 👀 You get Grand Junction Cleaning Services!   In this episode, Stephanie sits down with Anna and Stephen Rodriguez to unpack how a single referral turned into a rapidly scaling cleaning company — complete with W2 employees, multiple revenue streams, five-sta...

In this episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners, Stephanie talks about her business by the numbers in 2025 and how, unfortunately, Serene Clean shrunk by $120,000 in revenue. It wasn’t random. There were system problems, including staffing instability, fragmented availability, and a time-off policy that unknowingly crushed onboarding capacity.   She walks through the exact reports she pulled (ZenMaid, Qui...

Starting a cleaning business sounds simple — until pricing mistakes, unreliable cleaners, scope creep, and money stress hit you all at once 🥴 In this episode, Stephanie sits down with Sidi, a 25-year-old cleaning business owner out of Philadelphia, to unpack what it really looks like to start and grow a cleaning company from scratch. He shares the wins, mistakes, and mindset shifts that shaped hi...

What happens when a college grad with zero cleaning experience decides to launch a residential cleaning company in one of the most competitive markets in the USA? You get Mighty Maids — now one of the highest-rated cleaning companies in San Diego!   In this episode, Stephanie sits down with owner Victor Migos, who built his business from the ground up after being inspired by watching his mom clean...

It's our 100th episode! 🥳 Oh, and it's also the holidays! So, we thought there'd be no better way to celebrate both things than by ringing in Episode 100 with a full breakdown of Serene Clean’s 2025 Naughty and Nice List 🎅   Lawsuits, staffing meltdowns, wild client situations, turnover chaos, and more — 2025 was a chaotic year for Serene Clean, and Stephanie gives a full rundown based on the ye...

What if we told you that the easiest way to improve your marketing...is to stop trying to market to everyone 🤔 In this episode, Stephanie sits down with Katie Pearse of Glisten Academy, a nearly 20-year cleaning industry veteran who’s built multiple commercial and residential operations across Canada and the US.   Katie shares how her company exploded from a weekend side hustle into a multi-city...

Fear of growth is one of the most universal problems for business owners — and it shows up everywhere. "If I hire, everything will fall apart!" "I want more clients, but it might make things more chaotic." Sound familiar?   In this episode, Stephanie breaks down the patterns she saw in four consulting calls last week — owners stuck because of fear, lack of systems, burnout, people-pleasing, and a...

Most new cleaning business owners think they need years of experience and a spotless (hah, get it?) strategy before they can grow. But Chelsea Withers, Owner of Mindful Methods Cleaning, proves all of that wrong. A stay-at-home mom battling postpartum depression, she started cleaning out of necessity. With no industry background, she still built a fast-growing company by focusing on deeply systemi...

Lots of service-based businesses skip team meetings because they feel “unnecessary” or like wasted labor hours. Stephanie did too until she realized the silent damage it was causing, including teams that didn't mesh well together, inconsistent quality, scattered communication, and a culture that never fully gelled 😬 In this episode, she breaks down the exact system Serene Clean has used for years...

Despite what you might assume, cleaning business owners aren’t held back by pricing, marketing, hiring, or retention. They’re actually held back by their mindset. Survival mode. Chaos mode. “I’ll do it myself” mode. And for many, it never stops, even years into their business.   In this episode, Stephanie sits down with Amar Ghose, CEO of ZenMaid software and former maid service owner, to break do...

Solo or team cleaning? Should you have a company car or should cleaners use their own? Is it better to look for experienced cleaners instead of people with no cleaning background? Decisions, decisions In this episode, Stephanie digs into three of the biggest operational decisions cleaning business owners have to make — and why there’s no single “right” answer. She shares why she runs Serene Clean...

Most people want to grow their business, but few are willing to become the person required to do it. In this episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners, Misael Avalos talks about how he built his company, TimeMaid Cleaning in Arizona, from nothing after a rock-bottom moment changed everything.   They talk about the identity shifts, habits, and core values required to scale a cleaning business, and how Misael...

Cleaning business owners who choose their pricing model and pay structure on gut instinct tend to pay for it later 😬 That's why in this episode, Stephanie breaks down all the major decisions you must make as a cleaning business owner in terms of how to charge clients and pay cleaners. She talks about the pros and cons of charging hourly, flat rate, by square foot, or using a hybrid model, as well...

Even the grittiest, hardest-working owners get burned by fuzzy pricing, weak boundaries, bad hires, and saying “I’ll figure it out later" 😅 In this follow-up episode with Cheryl Hajjar, Founder of Sisters Who Scale, Stephanie and Cheryl talk through the most common (and expensive) mistakes cleaning business owners make. In fact, these mistakes are ones both of them learned the hard way and now co...

Even the best-run service companies face constant problems, and that’s normal! Every problem in your business falls into one of three buckets — Supply (staffing), Demand (leads/sales), or Operations (everything else) — and in this episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners, Stephanie talks about how she's learned to quickly diagnose issues and move forward without the overwhelm.   📌 What You’ll Learn: — The...

In this episode, Stephanie is joined by Paige Collins, founder of All Spruced Up Cleaning Co., who went from being a dental hygienist during COVID to running a thriving residential and commercial cleaning business with 15 employees.   Paige shares all about her rapid growth, how she balances business and motherhood, her top tips for employee retention, and why flexibility and compassion have becom...

Every cleaning business owner hits this breaking point — when you’re juggling every email, call, quote, and cleaning, wondering how much longer you can keep your sh*t together. In this episode, Stephanie breaks down how she transitioned from doing everything herself at Serene Clean to building a reliable, well-trained admin team that keeps operations running smoothly (even when things go wrong).  ...

Jamie Runco prayed for a new direction in life, and four years later, she’s running a thriving residential and commercial cleaning business in rural California. In this episode, FRC Host Stephanie Pipkin sits with Jamie to talk about how she went from cleaning church floors to leading a full team, hiring her first coach, and scaling to six figures (and beyond). They share what it’s like to build a...

BOO! 👻 Did we scare you? Maybe not, but hopefully these hot takes will 🌶️ In this special Halloween edition of Filthy Rich Cleaners, Stephanie is serving up her spiciest opinions about the cleaning industry. She talks about controversial opinions around business policies, walkthroughs, pricing transparency, team cleans, the habits that make or break a company, and more! This episode isn’t for the...

In this episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners, Stephanie sits down with marketing expert Sean Parry, aka “the king of automation,” to talk about what actually brings clients to your cleaning business. Sean talks about methods to dominate your local market through Google reviews, SEO, and Local Service Ads (LSAs), and why most owners are wasting time chasing leads that were never going to convert 😢   📌...

Not every successful cleaning company starts with Facebook ads or a huge budget. In Lucy Spencer's case, it started with $10 and a stack of handwritten letters 💌   In this episode, Stephanie sits down with Lucy, who owns River Girl Cleaning in Boston, Massachusetts. Lucy shares how she built her business from the ground up, starting with nothing but grit, family, community, and the belief that “t...

If money talks, raises scream! Raises cannot be based on “vibes” and gut feelings, or else you'll watch cleaner performance plateau. However, when you give your team full control of their own raises and make clarity and accountability the standard, you'll see quality skyrocket. In this solo episode, Stephanie shares how Serene Clean completely transformed their culture by putting the responsibilit...

 We get it — it's hard to stand out online, especially when cheap competition is flooding your market. In this Filthy Rich Cleaners episode, Stephanie breaks down how to make your cleaning business shine on social media without burning yourself out or wasting time on platforms that don’t actually convert.   Facebook, TikTok, Google My Business, and more! You’ll learn exactly where to focus your en...

Even the best-run cleaning businesses have those weeks when it seems like the bad news does. not. stop. As Murphy's Law says, "anything that can go wrong will go wrong."   In this FRC episode, Stephanie gets brutally honest about one of her toughest recent weeks: losing her biggest government contract overnight due to the federal government shutdown, multiple employee resignations, and new hires n...