The systems and processes Roman uses to expand his maid service without sacrificing friends, family, or time
Every maid service owner dreams of a cleaning business that runs itself.
A company with employees that literally don’t miss a beat if the owner doesn’t come in until afternoon.
Hell, how amazing would it be if they didn’t even notice?
What most maid service owners dream about is just the day-to-day reality of one of our customers here at ZenMaid…
And he’s made it happen in just 8 short months.
Roman P. started his maid service, Maid Masters in Minnesota, in late 2015, and has hundreds of appreciative customers and a great relationship with his employees. Best of all, none of this requires a home base or office.
He’s created a cleaning business that allows FREEDOM in his life.
I’ll let him introduce his results:
After seeing this post in the Grow My Cleaning Company group (run by Mike Campion) I reached out to Roman about an interview to share the systems and processes that have gotten him to where he is so quickly.
Question: Amar Ghose (Amar G.): You did a great job introducing yourself in that Facebook post that connected us, but could you tell us a little more about Roman P., the entrepreneur?
Answer: Roman Peysakhovich (Roman P.): Sure, I was in business school prior to starting to Maid Masters and have always been interested in Finance. I ended up interning on Wall Street for 2 years and decided I wanted a business that could help finance my future investments.
Currently I day trade and buy and sell multiple stocks throughout the day, all of which my cleaning company allows me to do.
Q: Amar G.: So your maid service allows you to spend your days doing what you want, in your case investing … you could be on a beach somewhere right now then if you wanted?
Roman P.: For a short period, yes. I probably need to hire one more person at the top of Maid Masters to move to a beach permanently but right now I could take a few weeks off comfortably if I wanted to.
Amar G.: Alright, let’s jump right into how you do that and talk about your website. It sounds like this is a money-making machine for you. Tell us more about it.
Roman P.: Our new website (http://www.homecleaningmn.com/) is getting almost 1000 views monthly and converting well. Our last site maybe got clicked through to 30-40 times each month so this is a massive improvement. The new website is built using www.wix.com which made it really easy to create. It’s been the biggest difference for us between mediocrity and the success we’re currently seeing.
Our business would not be looking very good without our online leads, most of which come from our awesome Instant Booking Form.
Amar G.: Tell us more about the instant book form, it sounds like this handles a lot of your sales for you automatically, right?
Roman P.: That’s exactly correct. The instant booking form turns our website visitors into customers consistently, which allows us to book business without a sales call. There are often times necessary logistics calls after but the instant booking form saves us time on well over half our bookings.
Amar G.: Ok, so now you’re getting new cleaning customers consistently, without taking too many phone calls. You’re not overwhelmed … what’s next?
Roman P.: Everything is designed to be operable without me. I guess there are few things in place next, we can talk about the cleaners, clients, or the office staff.
Amar G.: Let’s start with the clients. What happens once they’ve booked online with you or called in?
Roman P.: Pretty straightforward, we send text messages automatically [using ZenMaid] to all of our cleaning customer confirming their appointments. ZenMaid makes this easy for us:
“All we have to do is finalize our schedule and the texts go out nightly like clockwork”
The texts don’t require any response from our customers so we only hear from them when they have to cancel. It’s a pretty smooth system there, have virtually no issues with no-shows and scheduling.
[Note from Amar: ZenMaid performs the exact same functionality (and more) using email, if you prefer that to text, or want to use both]
Amar G.: Payments can be a nightmare for some maid service owners, how do you deal with those?
Roman P.: At the end of each work week, regular customers who are signed up for ongoing services are charged directly through ZenMaid. Because of ZenMaid’s integration with Stripe (www.Stripe.com), charging a customer for a cleaning is as simple as a click the charge button.
Everything is stored directly in ZenMaid so there is no room for any error. Some of our customers prefer to pay with check. For that ZenMaid has a very easy paid/not paid option. We deposit the customers check into our account and simply click paid in ZenMaid to bring that customers balance to 0. This allows us to easily manage our accounts payable with a few clicks.
Amar G.: That all sounds pretty smooth, what’s your process like with your cleaners?
Roman P.: We notify our cleaners every Sunday of their upcoming schedule for the week. Thanks to ZenMaid, with a click of a button, every staff member gets their weekly schedule emailed to them. In the work order is not only the house address and time of job but a note feature that goes over the basis of the cleaning.
After I speak to the customer to determine all the clients needs, I write in detail the work order and it is attached to the staffs email. That way the cleaners arrive at a customer’s home, already knowing everything they need to do. This also allows for no surprises for our staff as well.
Since most of our clientele are people with very busy work lives, not everyone has time to go over the house with the cleaners, or even be present at the home during the cleaning.
Amar G.: So you finalize your schedule on ZenMaid on Sundays then send out your work orders en masse?
Roman P.: That’s right, takes a few clicks of a button after I’m done with my weekly calendar and all my cleaners know where they have to be, and when.
Amar G.: Ok, what happens after cleanings?
Roman P.: For cleaners? It’s pretty much just payroll if there are no issues reported.
We are currently working on using ZenMaid’s new clock in/out feature for our staff to clock in/out of houses which helps us save time on time tracking. After reviewing the numbers for the corresponding week we know the exact hours for every staff employee and are able to process payroll with Wells Fargo and issue a direct deposit payment. No need for staff to come in and pick up paychecks.
Amar G.: Ah, that sounds like one of those little things that allows you to work without an office or home base
Roman P.: Exactly. If most maid service owners broke down the different reasons they actually need a physical location it’s not actually that difficult to figure out ways around this stuff. For example, Cleaners use company cards to purchase cleaning equipment so no need to check in with us.
Amar G.: Brilliant. So between your client and employee management you’re able to run a fast growing maid service independently from anywhere?
Roman P.: It’s more about the systems in place in the business. I can work from anywhere but I’m usually in town locally working on other businesses. That’s what happens with process in place that doesn’t rely on me to work.
Amar G.: I couldn’t agree more, I think that’s a big shift most entrepreneurs have: realizing that a business that doesn’t rely on them is the best type of business. Any final thoughts to share with our readers?
Roman P.: Just wanted to point out how much of these systems are run or aided by ZenMaid.
Your software saves us times on invoicing, payroll, scheduling, confirmation etc. Instead of spending all day doing these tasks, zenmaid is able to do all this in the matter of minutes with a few simple clicks. This allows me to focus on other ventures during the day, and makes managing the maid service simple and easy, how it should be ran.
Although these days I am spending much less time in the day to day management, thanks to ZenMaid our sales are flying and productivity is at an all time high.
“While many people focus on working harder to be productive as a business and an business owner, I am firm believer that you can achieve even better results by working smarter not necessary harder.”
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I’d like to thank Roman again for taking the time to answer these questions from our team. He is currently working on a new project called OneDesk, give it a look! If you’ve enjoyed this article and want to learn how to automate your own maid service please join us for a trial of ZenMaid.
Have comments or questions for Roman?
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