#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/