#1: How Stephanie Pipkin's Side Hustle Grew into a Million-Dollar Cleaning Business

Meet Stephanie Pipkin, your host and owner of Serene Clean. In this first episode, she tells the story of how she started her cleaning business at age 22 with just a flyer and a hope to make some side income. Today, at 28, her company makes $1.4M in revenue, and she runs it from Savannah, Georgia while her team operates in Wisconsin. Stephanie gets real about all the ups and downs - from her first employee ghosting her (and crying about it) to managing hundreds of cleaners at a military base during the Afghan refugee crisis. She talks about what it's really like to run a cleaning business, including dealing with problem employees, building a solid team, and creating a company culture she's proud of.

 

Key Moments:

0:00 - Who's Stephanie and what's Serene Clean?

2:13 - Life before cleaning (waitressing and office work)

6:42 - How a YouTube video changed everything

11:00 - First employees - the good, bad, and ghosted 24:30 -

Making it through COVID

32:59 - The huge Fort McCoy project

39:57 - Why she's starting this podcast

46:04 - What actually works when starting out

52:17 - How the business runs today

 

Mentioned in this Episode:

Profit First

Clean My Space YouTube Channel

ZenMaid Software

QuickBooks

 

Want to make your cleaning business run smoother? Try ZenMaid free for 14 days at https://app.zenmaid.com/sign-up

Rather read than listen? Check out the full episode write-up on our blog at https://www.zenmaid.com/magazine/filthy-rich-cleaners-podcast-episode-1/