The Side Hustle Show - Full Episodes - How to Start a Cleaning Business: From Zero to $60k a Month

A local service business that scales how a little part time cleaning-business">house cleaning business went from zero to $60,000 a month in revenue and how its founder has scaled back to working on it just a minute a day What's up? What's up Nick? Looper here. Welcome to this eye hustle show because you're already an entrepreneur your day job is just your biggest client Hat tip to Julian Gordon for that one in my first conversation with Chris Schwab.

He said well I tell people I work on my cleaning business about an hour a day because five minutes doesn't seem believable. So Chris is the founder of thinkmaids.com a residential house cleaning service in the Washington DC area He started on the side actually well. He was still a university student less than two years later That business is doing 60 grand a month worth of cleaning work all without Chris ever lifting a mop or dusting a shelf Now I wish I could say the same thing for the house painting business. I ran in college.

I did way too much painting So stick around in this episode to hear how Chris came up with this idea How he found his first customers and cleaners and how he manages the entire business remotely He was actually in London when we recorded this It's not just the pace of growth or the savvy marketing or the limited time involvement that makes thinkmaids and Chris's story compelling I think it illustrates a broader opportunity for side hustlers to provide and perhaps disrupt local service businesses in general So if you're thinking yeah, well, I don't want to clean houses. Stay tuned. I promise Chris doesn't disappoint in this episode So notes and links are at side hustle nation.com slash clean and while you're there You'll also be able to download the free PDF highlight reel with all of Chris's top tips from the call You should also be able to grab that in the episode description of your podcast player app side hustle nation.com slash clean for that download I'll be back with my top takeaways from this chat with Chris after the interview ready. Let's do it It's actually really simple business like at its core a clean company is just someone who needs cleaning And you're connecting them with someone who's good at cleaning and then you take a part of the profit, right?

That's fundamentally what it is. There's nothing overly complicated about it After I really thought about that I started really getting into it and I started researching the confidence and such Were you like a clean freak like are you always had to have a super clean apartment or you know Was it something you like loved to doing yourself? That's so funny. No, it's completely opposite actually to be complete Vance that this was just an opportunity I saw on I seized it wasn't you know some innate quality I had that fit me really well.

I am not passionate about cleaning even 1% But I just saw that there are all these older local business owners sort of 30s 40s 50s and even 60s Who'd been running their business for decades, right? But they were just really bad at marketing themselves online I mean they may have a me out profile or a really bad website from the 90s But essentially that was it right no online booking You know no consistency. There's no reliability and so I started really researching competition and finding all the things that were kind of bad with them Right the things that they were doing wrong What I realized was all the one star two star three star reviews they were all business side of things right They may all be good at the actual service of cleaning But they may not be reliable. They may be hard to reach.

They're not very consistent There's just so many bad business practices that they had and they've just been doing that for decades and so These are Yale reviews specifically. Yelp. Yeah, and so I figured out that if I could do the business side of things pretty well And just offer good customer support and ease of booking that I would be miles ahead of them And actually being able to grow and the only hard part that I had to do then was the marketing and finding good cleaners Once I had that sort of second realization That's when I really started to get into it and I you know I made the website I put up an out on Craigslist to find some cleaners I have them clean my home and that's when I had them actually clean that home That's kind of where I was like okay, you know, I can actually do this Okay, interesting. So really kind of applying some more you know modern and strong business admin practices to a business at its surface you're saying is not rocket science like anybody Can do this and it's just a matter of interfacing with the customer as well Yeah, the bearer to entry is very low And so of course there's a lot of cleaning companies But there's just not that many people putting a lot of effort into it as a full business So I just figured I would give that a try as a side hustle I really only put a couple hours a day into it at the time But I practiced my phone voice I practiced the booking and I practiced all that stuff You know how to do with complaints A strange side hustle perhaps I really practiced everything and I really got really into it But it was kind of surprising to me because I turned out being right instead of just Instead of just you know getting cocky and and not actually getting any bookings I started marketing and I started getting a lot of bookings from people and a lot of referrals from our original people who booked Because they liked that consistency and that reliability And if there was a problem we really went out to make it right So I started getting all these referral bookings And new people that I didn't even have to market to who were booking with me And it just started taking off from there and I kind of had to make a decision halfway through that final semester at college If this was going to be a side hustle Or if this was going to be a full-time business that I actually did Tell me about your first customer because there are a few moving parts right you got to you said I'm not going to do the cleaning myself So you'd have some cleaners in place and then you know Then you've got to fill the demand side on the customer side Tell me about those first bookings They were terrifying I'd never really worked a full-time job before I'd never done any of that stuff And so I didn't really know how to deal with people in that sort of service business type of way And I'm quite a headstrong blunt type of guy So I was quite worried that if someone was going to be on the phone I was going to call them out on it and that's probably the worst thing you could do Right?

So I was worried about how I would react If I was put under pressure Those first few customers I got from a website called Thumbtack which you know if your listeners live in the US Which I suspect a lot do they'll probably be familiar with Thumbtack I went into Thumbtack with a couple hundred bucks to advertise with And I really chose that as my main marketing source in the beginning Because I saw it was growing really quickly in my area specifically And so I decided to put in some bids on Thumbtack you have to pay Thumbtack in order to reach customers So I paid them to reach some of the customers Customers go on to Thumbtack and they say I need a cleaner And you're the guy so you have to pay a little bit to Respond to that request for proposal Right and the hard part about it is they get at the time it's 20 now But at the time they had a choice of five pros with five different profiles And they could see all the reviews in their hires So I looked at all the best pros in my area even if they weren't cleaning related They were a great painting business or a great exterminator for example I actually studied their profiles. I studied their templates How often they followed up with customers and I made my own templates and my own follow up sequence So most pros on Thumbtack would send it they would pay five or six bucks to send a customer a quote And then if the customer never responded they would just leave it at that But what I did was I really set out to dominate the cleaning section on Thumbtack in DC So I had a five step follow up sequence essentially where I would send them the original quote I'd follow up them an hour later I followed them a day later two days later three days later four days later Right? So I'd be consistent with it to show them that I really wanted that booking I would show them our checklist and our booking process And I would even give them a personalized link on my website So it was a really cool plug and I installed on my website Which would do thinkmates.com forward slash the person's name And when they put that URL in They'd be taken to a pre-filled out booking page where all they had to do was put in their information So I really impressed them by doing little things like that And so I set out to really dominate that Thumbtack section by consistent follow up And just little impressive touches like that That's awesome. What plugin was that?

It's called the launch 27 plugin. It's for a very specific booking platform that I use So it's not something that works with everything I mean it sounds cool though Oh it was really cool. It was a cod send What was the booking software? Launch 27 Okay that's the plugin and the tool that allowed you to accept bookings There's the booking software but this was just an experimental plugin that happened to be released in good time That I used.

It was just lucky I think for that But that and the other thing I kind of figure out was for pros on there Most of them because they've been in business so long they stuck to a strict nine to five schedule And after five p.m. They weren't on Thumbtack. They didn't care I did as a new business owner. I did So I had Thumbtack notifications on my phone And from five p.m.

to eight a.m. I got all those bookings in the DC area because everyone else was closed So just by being attentive and on my phone I actually got so many bookings in the middle of the night. It sucks to be woken up But it's 200 bucks right? So it's worth it Okay so yeah you're the hustling college student saying Hey I can respond at all hours of the day and night versus you know having an office assistant that leaves at five p.m Exactly being very responsive is so important when there's so many other people competing with you I think in anything really Thumbtack has been brought up on the show before and the guy really mentioned that you know you've got to respond quickly If you want to have any hope of getting that bid But then he said that might have been the reason that he Was like hope from his job because he was responding during the day for his side hustle stuff I think people will be happy to hear that look There's still a ton of business that you can book in the off hours You know without having to risk your day job potentially.

Yeah, it's interesting at least in my area There's even more because everyone else is at work during the day too And so they can only book the service the customers can only book the services when they're home too So right right you know it's just win-win at night Did not having any Reviews on that platform hurt you at the beginning or it didn't seem to matter I think things like that do hurt you But I was lucky that people took a chance with me I think they saw how responsive I was Articulate and the promises that I was making the guarantees that I was giving them that I was serious about They decided to take a chance my very first booking ever was a lady named Maria I still remember her name it felt really really real when she booked on my site She took a chance for me and after that it's actually pretty hard to get customers lever reviews I was lucky that she left a review right after the cleaning for me So as soon as I got a few hires and a few cleanings had some authenticity there And people started taking chance on me and it got a lot easier from there But the first I think the first few hires are the hardest on anything Yeah, for sure was the thinkmaids.com site as robust Then as it is now because it's a beautiful looking site Which I think is another point of differentiation between your service and some other local business services Did it start out like that or was it more basic at the beginning? Oh, thank you. It was a lot more basic. It still looked nice in comparison to the competition I would say but nothing special now.

It's beautiful. I'm proud to say Yeah, for sure So Maria books with you and she and you say okay, well now I gotta fulfill this Did you have cleaners lined up? You mentioned the Craigslist ad and and trying to try them out on your apartment What was that part of the process like? I always recommend people have cleaners first now because it's a lot of pressure when You have a booking but no cleaners that is It's like oh crap.

I gotta go over here tomorrow exactly. Yeah, you you get worried and then you're thinking oh no Maybe I'll have to do the playing but I don't have a clean So a lot of thoughts to go through your head. I have a different way to do it now Which is really cool. I can talk a little bit about but at first I went on to Craigslist and I put up an ad I basically said hey, we're winding down for the summer.

We're a new cleaning company that's getting all the bookings Love you'd have come at work with us. Here's our rates and our rates were significantly higher Because I wasn't looking to make a profit at the start So they were significantly higher than the competition we're giving that brought some really good cleaners We had a couple those first couple cleaners for a long time actually until you know One of them went off to do a painting business on his own We got lucky with the first two teams. We had they basically responded to the ad I set it up. I invited them to my apartment and they did a test clean And I didn't really know what to look for because I wasn't a cleaner But I looked around for about five seconds and I went okay.

It looks clean. Great. Thank you Then I decided to trust them I had nothing to lose at that point So I decided to trust them and they did they did a great job But I do hiring a little bit differently now because sites like Craigslist and indeed they're so full of people looking for jobs all the time and it's just not a good environment for finding really good teams So what I've done now is I kind of reverse engineered sites like thumbtack where instead of going to Job sites where I would ask people to send it their resume to me and I'd look at it and then invite them I would actually go where they were looking for their own customers Which is the same place I was looking for my customers in thumbtack and yelp and I would Just pretend to be a customer and send a request for a quote and in my message I would really say hey, I'm not actually a customer But I do have a lot of cleans for you. We're a new clean company And we would love to talk to you.

We've seen your profile and your reviews and you look fantastic So we just kind of Did that a little bit differently than I think most people find their job candidates? Okay, interesting so you would put up your bed. I need so I need a cleaner They would respond and you would look at the best responses and say hey gotcha a little bit I'm actually a company too But I like your attitude. I like your responsiveness.

I think you'd be a good fit to actually work with us Would you like some more business exactly exactly and you're you get a lot of preventing Because those sites have profiles and you can see how they've interacted with people before It's like taking away half of your hiring process immediately. They do it for you. They prevent them for you So if you if you have a profile of someone who responds in five minutes and they've been on there for three years And they've got 200 hires and they're all good reviews The chances are they're going to be really good at what they do right and so you're going to want to talk to them It's just a great way to cut down on all this unnecessary time that you'd otherwise spend looking for people Okay, so you send your your first Craigslist cleaners over to Maria's house. Do you go there too?

Or do you trust hey there here's the address knock yourself out? I did not go. I was very nervous though. I was very nervous So one of the things that I implemented early on was a very sort of strict follow-up policy Where I would follow up with people the day after they're cleaning So the cleaning happened and I was thinking about the whole night I was thinking she'd be angry did they screw out?

I know they showed up because at the beginning the first few months I would have my cleaners text me when they're arriving just so I would know that they're alive, you know Which is nice And so I knew they came and I was really just waiting for tomorrow morning at that point to call her and check that everything went okay And so I called her I didn't get her I got her voicemail But she texted me later saying it was fantastic. I'll leave you a review And I just got really happy because I didn't realize how much nerves was involved the past two days What I got the booking and when she they went to the cleaning there was I was excited But I didn't realize how much house stress I was back because I've never done this before I just felt so ecstatic after she said that it really meant a lot Yeah, when you're opening the doors of your house to somebody to come in and there's a lot of things that can go wrong And so yeah, there's there's a bit high level of trust for sure Yeah, especially when it's someone's house because your own house is so intimate, you know So there's something about bringing in someone else outside to clean your house It's something I never thought about because I'm happy that they take the stress away from you when cleaner comes But a lot of people their house is a very intimate place as I've learned unfortunately And so you have to really do everything right Otherwise the smallest things can really set people off We've not cleaned the top of someone's fridge by accident We've had people shouting at us before because of stuff like that So there's really something intimate about being in someone's home Yeah, that's kind of funny. It's like I can see up there and my wife is like short enough where she can't see it She's like oh, I would never think that dust up there Okay, tell me about the pricing because you mentioned okay We're gonna pay higher at the beginning to find good people I don't care about making a margin at the onset I imagine eventually you do care about that So did you have to lower you know the rates that you're paying or just charge more to customers? How does the pricing work on this?

Yeah, this is kind of a classic pricing tactic in in hindsight But I really wasn't thinking about it at the time. I was a psychology major for reference So you'll see where this comes in what I did was to actually get my initial prices I looked around when I looked at all around my competition I wrote down what their average prices were for you know one bedroom one bathroom deep clean a two bedroom one bathroom deep clean Etc. Because I was determined to be a quality premium service I basically tacked on an extra 20% to the price and called that my price and what I did in the start for new customers Because I had no reputation I had you know nothing to show them and I was presenting a really high price There's no incentive for them to book when they can go for a lower price with someone who's been in business 20 years So what I did was I presented that really high price and I said this is what the price would normally be However because we're relatively new I actually want to offer you 35% off at this price and that actually got a lot of people to book So I basically scaled it the more I got hired the more the discount decreased So I started off at 35% discount and I paid my independent contractors 65% So I basically I didn't make money but I didn't lose money either because I was just reputation building So I did 35% discount the first few hires and then 30% the next 20 or 30 bookings Then 25 20 etc all the way down to zero and we do still do if discounts But it's for very specific things You know if you're a new mother for example will give you 20% off You don't need that extra stress But in general people abide by our prices now But certainly at the beginning it's it's huge to give those discounts as an incentive for them to book Because you need to give them some reason to actually book with you Okay, I was gonna say that was a very gutsy move to come in with no portfolio to speak of and say I'm gonna tack out at 20% premium But then he position it as a higher value service and say hey for For new customers. It's you know, we have this one one time discount.

Okay. That makes sense What else worked on the marketing front was thumbtack the main driver or to do start Doing SEO or I'm just curious what else was driving business? So at the beginning I did a little bit of SEO myself, but I'll be honest. I was absolutely terrible at it So I just didn't work out.

I prefer to also under cleaning company in in Madison And so he started helping me with SEO as well Which was which was great But the very beginning those very first few months I really just concentrated on dominating thumbtack I actually kind of knew that if I went on 12 different platforms and tried to do really well on all 12 different platforms And do the sales and do the calls and everything else that there was just no way I was actually going to make any progress at all So I just Decided to double down on the thing that the one thing that's been working for me and really make it work and squeeze as much out of it as I could So those first few months it was really thumbtack and then I started migrating to yelp and Craigslist and SEO and you know google adwords But at the beginning I pretty much credit all my success at the very start to thumbtack You think it would work Similarly today for somebody somebody else starting up in this space. I would love to say yes There's really two things about that right so with local businesses a certain platform or tactic might work really Well in one city and then the next city over it might not work at all or across the country it might not work at all right So in some cities thumbtack is the best in others It's yelp and in others home advisors the best place to get business for your cleaning company It's so local that anyone who tells you that this is the best thing They don't know what they're talking about or they're they're not telling the truth There's no one thing that's the best across the whole country for a local service That's the first thing second thing was just really with thumbtack I joined it a very good time I think I joined it a very lucky time where it was Experiencing a big amount of growth, but it wasn't mainstream yet So I was able to get in and sort of ride that wave up as people discovered it and I was building my profile up to be one of the top pros in the area So I was able to really ride that wave but thumbtack unfortunately has had a lot of changes recently Where they changed it from having five pros that would bid on one customer now you can have 20 or 25 sometimes So you're competing with you know five times as many people as you were before and if your prices are high Which mine are your conversion rate goes down because they will find people who've been hired six thousand times And they're all five star reviews and they're only going to charge you two cents right they will find those people And they'll always go with them So thumbtack was good But the demographic the way you market everything changed for the worst I still get a lot of business from there because I have such a built-out profile But new people I don't hear as many good things about it for so Personally, I would look for something else in 2018 appreciate your honesty on that Anything else as driving customers you got I mean probably a good referral engine I could repeat business engine going at this point but curious if you were starting today You know, how would you market this thing? A huge part of it is how you take care of people you've already cleaned for and so There's a cost of acquisition in any type of business for new customers, right? But the thing is it's always more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to Get an existing or past customer book with you again because it could be basically free to get those people to book with you again So many local business owners that I talked to they don't have any follow-up system in place They're not touching base with people months later So they they get a new client in they claim for them one time and if they don't become a regular customer on the spot Then they forget about them and they never think about them again And that's really unfortunate What we did pretty much from day one was develop a really robust follow-up system And we hit them in a few different ways So I'd do the phone call the day after to make sure the service is good We'd also tell them about our discounts for regular service We probably convert maybe one out of five on good months during the summer one out of four maybe to a regular customer Just from those follow-up calls because people are looking for regular service But they don't think about it unless you ask and when you ask they go, oh, yeah, that's probably a good idea Let me sign up regular service meaning okay, we'll come back Next month or you know every two weeks or whatever exactly you don't push your boundaries You just given those discounts and you kind of present the option Uh, and a lot of people actually take that so the phones is important But the other two things that are really powerful for me have been text marketing So everyone's always always talking about email marketing and how powerful it is But you have to have a lot of numbers in your email list often to make it matter You might have success with an email list 600, but I think that's quite rare And when you're a new local business It takes a long time to have an email list in the thousands it really does And email response rate is really low if you get a 5% response rate You're probably a pretty happy guy But texting has a 98% open rate And it has a huge reply rate as well.

I think it's 70% or something I forget the exact percent, but it's huge So I took all the email marketing that I was gonna do and I just did it over text instead And so I would text them You know once a month if they wanted another cleaning if they wanted a deep clean with a slight discount Let me know if it was a spring cleaning time I'd off them a spring cleaning discount or I would do So one year I talked to a home organizer and we did a little deal Where she would come in and organize someone's home and we would come in and clean it And people loved that deal together So we texted all our past customers that dropped off that deal And a fair amount of people who wouldn't have booked with us again Actually booked with us because of that deal And then we clinched a lot of those people and we brought them back in for regular service So text marketing has also been really powerful way to follow up with people Even six months, even a year later Wow, okay, I like this idea of partnering with other local service providers that are Kind of in a similar or complimentary space Was there a specific software tool that you're using or you like texting Your existing customer base like individually, you know, one by one I wish at the time I wasn't I was just doing things manually which sucked I didn't have a VA yet or anything So it was just me sitting in my room the office was really just my bedroom Texting away for hours So I was just manually texting everyone by hand Is there a different way to do it now? There's a platform really cool platform called simply texting Where you can set up automated text for reviews And for discounts and such as well So that's a way better way to do it than I was doing it Yeah, well I 98% open rate This sounds like a really cool kind of innovative way to To communicate with customers and it is probably preferable in a lot of cases I don't need more email or it's it it breaks through the clutter a little bit So I like that the logistics of this this was I mean So first of all the regular business This is one reason that house cleaning is better than painting is it's like well Get me my house clean, you know every month it's gonna get it's gonna keep getting dirty House painting it's like well, I might not paint this thing again for another 10 or 15 years With the other thing that I struggled with in the painting business was Just the the logistics of managing all the bookings and the crews And you know where to send people when and it's like oh, we got to go pressure wash this thing beforehand And there's a similar I mean I was like well you got multiple crews you have multiple customers multiple like time slots that you've promised you're gonna show up You know tell me about the logistics side of this and managing it from your bedroom while going to the school in during the day I'll be completely honest with you. It was truly awful. It was really stressful I was learning Japanese at the same time my Japanese girlfriend so I was learning it for her I was learning at the same time when I'd have to leave Japanese class or or IT class at the same time Two or three times during the class to respond to a phone call There was just so many phone calls coming in and my teachers they kind of understood But not really because they still viewed me as they viewed me as a student not a business owner Right, and so they were like why are you leaving class?

You can't be leaving class all the time And I was like well, you know If my team is locked out and they can't get into a customer's house I can't be like sorry. I'm in class. You got to leave and deal with it You know you can't leave them out there Especially during winter that would have been awful So the way the logistics kind of worked at first my marketing was kind of working too well And I was growing too quickly and I did have enough teams to keep up with the demand And so I was doing everything manually at first I didn't really have systems built out yet And so I didn't have a set schedule I was just dealing with things as they came in And so I didn't batch things at all which is which is a great thing to do when you're able to And so I was just dealing with things every two to five minutes And it was really exhausting to deal with phone calls and then text and scheduling and booking To answer your questions you don't need a physical office because if your teams are already out there You don't need to be sitting in an office to do that you can sit anywhere and text them Or call the customer if there's a problem right you just need a phone to do any of that stuff So there there wasn't any any logistical magic at the beginning that was happening It was really just a case of being on the ball and being really responsive But the problem with that was it wears you out over time And it's exhausting if you're just one person handling six or seven cleaning teams all day And so I kind of reached this point halfway through the semester A Halloween was coming up and I was just excited to get so many bookings that I actually Accidentally overbooked myself a lot I would go from getting four bookings a day and suddenly I got 16 bookings in a day And I was a happy man. I was like this is amazing.

I'm so happy You know like I was riding this wave of growth But actually I wasn't riding a wave of growth I was just being stupid because I overbooked on my teams And I didn't think to ask my teams if they wanted to work the day before Halloween and Halloween I didn't think about their families and the fact that they would want to be with their families too Yeah, I just threw the bookings on their schedule and The night before and the morning of they all texted me. Oh, we're not cleaning today. Sorry by Basically and half my teams called off on Halloween day And so I had like a dozen bookings that were not covered and the problem with that is Everyone every independent cleaner every other cleaning company in the city They were booked at weeks ago And so I had the situation where I was overbooked and I didn't have the teams to clean And I had exams at the same time. It was really stressful I had angry people calling me and texting me and rightly so I kind of screwed them over Because they didn't have anyone to clean and so I got so stressed out by everything that was happening the same day Basically, I just had this sort of epiphany where it was like I have to decide now that I'm at this point of growth If I'm going to continue, I need to get someone else to help me because I can't do it all myself.

I'm at this point now where it's just too much for one person to handle without screwing up a lot And there's this thing that cleaning business owners talk to there's a guy I know called Derek Christian He talks about the cleaning business Valley of despair and it's Between two to five hundred thousand dollars in revenue a year Which is where I was right in the middle of there at them at that time He basically was saying to me and this really stuck with me that Your business is growing a lot and it's growing fast But you can't afford a full-time office manager. You can't afford help You can't afford to outsource things and you can't afford all this office space But you need the help and so you're stuck in the middle where you need it But you can't actually get access to it And I was really feeling that at that time and I was stressed and I kept thinking and thinking How can I get an office manager to help me with this even part time? There's just no way I can keep doing this and so I kind of I'm a big Tim Ferriss fan Because I love traveling the world and all that stuff And so of course I've read Tim Ferriss's books and he talks a lot about virtual assistance, right? And so I kind of started thinking How is that anyway I could have a virtual assistant do this for me At the time I quickly discounted the Philippines and I thought no no They have to be a native English speaker There's got to be some way that I can have a VA handle this for me at a price that I can afford And so I found two wonderful ladies in New Jersey and New Hampshire Who had VA experience and they had office experience which is more important And I basically talked them into running my office for me remotely And training them on my scheduling Introducing them to my teams and telling them all the quirks of each team Teach them how to handle the phone I really taught them everything about a week of how to run my cleaning business Because the very next week I took off the Tokyo for 10 days to see my girlfriend There's a trial by fire it's like I'm going to be on the opposite side of the world You know crazy different time zone Here you go hand over the keys It was nerve-racking every day And there was a lot of problems those first couple days But they really caught on quickly.

I was very fortunate So it wasn't too bad. It was more mental than anything It was more more in my head than it was in reality But the really cool thing about this was the way that it could be affordable and you can still get quality So with a normal office manager you're paying them eight hours a day, 40 hours a week Even if they're not working And the thing is with a cleaning business You're not sitting down for eight hours solidly working nonstop It's really two minutes here, 15 minutes there, seven minutes there It's really chunked throughout the day And so the way I agreed to pay them Which is what quite normal with VAs is you pay them basically by the minutes that they work So they're available the whole day for things that come in But you pay them the cumulative amount of time they actually worked And so this hit the sweet spot Where I was able to afford them to cover things full time And actually still be able to pay myself a little bit on the side So that was kind of how that worked out And then all my other local business friends Saw how I was running things and they started coming to me They were all that failure to spare too It's a common point where you start thinking about it in many local businesses I think I'm sure you had this in your painting company too And so they started talking to me about training virtual managers for them And so that's kind of how my second side hustle was grown organically Out of a real need that I had That other people that I knew had as well So I started training virtual managers for their local businesses too All right and this has turned into inovalocal.com A virtual assistant service Soally dedicated to local service businesses And doing exactly what you said kind of helping people Who are in this valley of despair and need a way out Yeah Is that the main focus today? So you see is you kind of like have these Is it still the same two women who are primarily running the the painting show? It actually is two different ladies right now That was through no fault of the original ones Just as I grow and as this VA company grew I learned how to do things very differently And I had my way of training and my way of doing things And so I actually have two different VAs in there now They're really wonderful as well So there was a change in leadership at ThinkMaze Yeah out of curiosity Where did you find those original two VAs?

I think it was Upwork I really can't remember to be honest Upwork is a huge freelance marketplace And so it's kind of the first place that came to mind I was just curious if you had some other secret resource that you wanted to share Sure I'm happy to share where I find all So inovalocal is about we have about 40 full-time virtual office managers now And most of the ones that we find we find them from a couple different sources Upwork is one but it's not as common Most of the time we find them through old VA-specific forums People who've got a lot of office and VA management experience tend to congregate there And Facebook groups as well So there's different office manager niches on Facebook and those groups So I really join those groups and I talk with those communities And I reject promising candidates So Facebook groups and forums I'd say are the main two that we use now Okay I think it's an example of Opportunities become visible once you're in motion So there's a personal pain point of yours Turns out other people dealing with the same thing Hey there's an opportunity to serve a different client base You know with this VA service Yeah exactly it's I know remember I talked about you with it before I kind of call it side hustle stacking where you have an original side hustle And then a need comes out of that side hustle you have to solve And then the need comes out of the next side hustle that you have to solve It's this really cool concept that I'm seeing in real time in my own life As I go on to my third project So you've effectively delegated the management of thinkmaids And now you have the inover local Or do you have you delegated the management of that service too Like you just kind of onto the next thing That's actually what I did So I delegated all thinkmaids and I built inover local up this past year And I've really been building out the management team So I have a salesperson who does most of our sales I have a bookkeeper and account manager She deals with all the billing and other stuff And then I have a VA manager who helps handle client issues and VA issues as well So she's kind of the she's kind of the mama bear of all those All the people involved all the clients in the VA's So I've kind of outsourced maybe 90% of the management But I'm still involved a couple hours a day with it I haven't systematized and delegated it to the extent I have with thinkmaids yet Because I'm still very involved with it Okay, fair enough Just curious, like just onto the next thing A serial side hustle or serial entrepreneur It's really cool to hear But what's the new project? What's the latest thing that you got cooking? Yeah, so I'm starting I'm literally just launching right now A real community for local business owners That's not a part of social media It's on its own platform And this kind of came out of the need I've been in the Facebook groups for a while now And one thing I'm genuinely sick of Is being in all these free Facebook groups And being sold things all the time Even paid groups, you're being sold stuff all the time The thing is if a business owner is putting 20 to 30 hours a week into their free group It's really not free They're treating it like an email list And so they may drop an interesting nugget here or there But for the most part, there's always an ulterior motive behind that They're always trying to sell you something And after being in that environment for years, I'm really tired of it And I want a genuine place to actually connect on a meaningful level With other local business owners And so I've been starting this community For local business owners Where we're going to be doing challenges together We're going to be doing monthly book clubs Where we read business books And actually dissect them And apply them in real life to our businesses There's going to be a lot of really interesting community building things That we're going to be doing together So it's just sort of born out of the need to connect on a deeper level With other business owners And not just on a business Or what can you do for me level A way that we can actually grow together I wouldn't call it a mastermind exactly But it's kind of between a community and a mastermind Okay, because you found There's some of the tactics or some of the marketing strategies Hiring strategies for a service business Is going to have parallels on other sides of the country And different sides or different markets And you don't have to worry about Well, I'm not competing with you Because I don't clean in Denver or wherever Yeah, that's exactly right So I'm fortunate in over local We work with about 40, 42 Now different local businesses All in different niches And so I've had a very interesting opportunity Where I'm in everyone's businesses and my own And I'm able to see what different tactics and strategies are working From hiring to marketing to sales to operations So I'm seeing it at all different levels From people doing 100,000 a year To $3.5 million a year in revenue So I'm getting to see all these really interesting tactics and strategies That work all over the country And I'm able to apply them to my own business And to each other's businesses as well And so I want to start sharing everything I've learned From my own clients as well They want to share it as well It's not me just taking it and you know throwing it out I always ask them first Give credit where credit is due And so I want to start sharing these things With other people who can really be You know get value out of it There's always enough to go around for everyone And so I even share all my tactics With my competitors in DC And they become some good friends with me as well So you think people are competing with you But most of the time they're actually not And it's far better for you to always share I think Did you ever consider or are you considering Going nationwide, expanding the cleaning business geographically I thought about it And I don't sound like it So you have to trust me on this one But I'm quite a lazy I'm quite a lazy guy And expanding nationwide is a big task I don't believe that's not going to happen So I've entertained the thought And I've had maybe a dozen people Or so talk to me about franchising it But the franchising process I looked into it a little bit It's very extensive And it's just not something that I want to do at the stage of my life I'm quite happy with where it is And I'm not looking for this huge, you know, Boom and growth I'm just really happy with where it is right now So maybe in the future I might But it's not something that's really on the horizon right now Okay So localbusinesshustlers.com Is where you can find the membership community for local business owners This is primarily for people who are Just getting started or already have something That's up and right It's a bit of both The initial round that we're doing right now Is more experienced business owners But after that over the next month or so So by the time this episode airs It'll be much more welcoming to new business owners as well It's something that I really want to see Help new business owners That they can actually use as a complete resource So yeah It's something that new ones can use as well All right, check it out localbusinesshustlers.com Obviously I love the name I think maids.com If you want to check out the Cleaning service work Chris has got going on on that website Again really well designed As a point of differentiation And in over local If you happen to be In the position of running one of these Local businesses, local service businesses And you're if you find yourself in the valley of despair Check out In over local It's INOVA local.com Chris, let's wrap this thing up with your number one tip For side hustle nation Clarity is probably the most important thing You can have not just in life been a business So every time I sit down to think and reflect On what I want to do and where I am Or anytime that I'm feeling overwhelmed And I have hundreds of tasks to do Which sometime I really do have hundreds of tasks It's a horrible feeling to not know what you need to do next Or what priority you need to do things in So every time you can really sit down They reflect and think deeply And make a plan of action And have that clarity is so important to you And you'll always feel better And perform better as well So every time I do that Even if I think I can't afford to do that Because I'm already too busy I naturally get happier I naturally perform better And I take more action So anytime you can prioritize And clarify what you need to do You should always do that Okay, take the time to prioritize and get some clarity on What your actual next steps are Because that 100 item to do list Is just going to stress you out I believe that 100% Chris, man, thank you so much for taking the time This has been great I've learned a ton And I'm looking for local opportunities now You that's the mark of a good call Every time it's like, well, I could totally hold that too Chris, again, thank you so much We'll catch up with you soon Thanks so much, Nick I really enjoyed this By my top three takeaways From this call with Chris Number one is to play matchmaker Chris's business is an interesting one Because he skipped a step What I mean by that is A lot of us start businesses In an area of expertise Something we know how to do And we offer that up as a freelance service The trap is there's a natural ceiling To your earning potential there I mean, you only have so many hours A week that you can work And it can be tough to Break through to the next level of hiring help Because oftentimes the clients Are after your specific expertise And to avoid that trap, Chris, skip that stage All together It reminds me of Russ Perry from Design Pickle in episode 248 And the line that I remember was I sucked at design Not what I expected to hear From the founder of a multi-million dollar Graphic design company So takeaway number one is to play Matchmaker and playing Matchmaker is really powerful Because if you can do the business functions well Like Chris has If frees you up to tackle Pretty much any niche you like Or any niche you think there's an opportunity takeaway number two is Don't hire recruit The best service providers in any field Probably aren't trolling the hell-bawanted ads They're probably out practicing their craft Whatever that might be I thought Chris's hiring strategy Was really smart going after professional cleaners And offering them a chance to fill more of their calendar You think you could apply the same tactic in your field I really like that one And I'm thinking of ways How I'm made people to borrow that one So that's takeaway number two Don't hire recruit And takeaway number three is to keep stacking Remember the best opportunities aren't visible Until you're already in motion That was a number one tip from Ryan Finley In episode 72 And perfectly illustrated by Chris here I know this one can be hard to believe If you're watching from the entrepreneurial sidelines But it's 100% true choosing What's next Doesn't mean choosing What's forever I've had a dozen different projects And they all stemmed from starting the first In my case it was house painting Which led me to real estate Which led me to building affiliate websites Which led to this show Which has led to more ideas Then I can count It's not that some people are just Magically more creative Or have more business ideas It's that they're the ones putting themselves In situations where the new ideas present themselves So be one of those people Get started Stay started And keep stacking Let's take away number three Be sure to hit up side hustle nation Dot com slash clean To download the free PDF highlight reel With all of Chris's top tips from the call And on that show notes page You'll find links to all the resources mentioned as well That's it for me Thank you so much for tuning in Until next time Let's go out there And make something happen And I'll catch you in the next edition of The SideHussell Show Where you'll meet a friend of mine Who's turned his side hustle career blog Into a full-time business With several diverse income streams I'll see you then Hustle on Thanks for listening to The SideHussell Show at www.sidehussellnation.com