More Than A Side Hustle
More Than A Side Hustle
5 Years of CBU: Lessons from a 7-Figure Digital Brand
We reflect on the five-year journey of Cleaning Business University and how we turned a $1,000 idea into a seven-figure education business helping over 2,000 students launch successful remote cleaning businesses.
• Starting with an Instagram Live to pre-sell the course before it was even created
• Testing demand and only building the product after confirming market interest
• Moving beyond perfectionism to focus on delivering valuable information
• Learning the importance of building a community alongside educational content
• Growing from a simple course to a comprehensive business support system
• Navigating pricing decisions to balance accessibility with value perception
• Dealing with criticism, copycats, and the importance of thick skin in business
• Creating a remote cleaning business model connecting customers to cleaners
• Celebrating student success with over $18 million in collective revenue
• Expanding from a digital product to a brand, lifestyle, and community
Want to learn more about starting your own remote cleaning business without cleaning any houses? Visit https://www.cleaningbusinessmasterclass.com/ebook to discover how our step-by-step system can help you build a business.
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Every business loses money. Yes, like there are things that you have to go through within a business. I'm not saying you're losing $40,000, but you may lose a thousand, you may lose two, you may lose some money. Like that is part of the process, and I don't know how to help people to register that, because that's something that we hear a lot.
Speaker 2:You guys should assume, no matter what you start is going to be harder than you think it is Right, because just because we say it's simple doesn't mean it's necessarily easy. So if you go into something saying, oh, this is going to be easy, you will automatically fail. I promise you. I promise you. So don't think about going to something because you think it's easy, going to something because you know there's a level of difficulty that you're willing to accept in order to get to that level. You're like, hey, I want to. I want to go build a six, seven-figure business. This is going to be easy.
Speaker 1:Absolutely not.
Speaker 2:What's going on, guys? Welcome to another episode of the More Than A Side Hustle podcast, and on this episode we've talked about five years since we launched Cleaning Business University and we'll be taking you through behind the curtain and how we went from starting in a $1,000 idea to helping over 1,200 students launch their own remote cleaning businesses, and we're breaking down the journey.
Speaker 1:That number's wrong.
Speaker 2:It's over 2,000 students, Actually over 2,000 students now the late nights, the pivots, the lessons and the massive wins. So if you've been rocking with us from day one or you're a brand new listener, welcome in, and we'll be talking about how we built a seven-figure education business.
Speaker 1:And, to recap, my name is Janoka and you are Anthony. I was like I don't think you introduced yourself, so for those that it's your first time. But before we jumped in we was having a quick conversation on Celsius, the billion dollar company. You may be saying, oh, the billion dollar company, Like what I got to do with anything? Well, Anthony drinks a lot of Celsius and, as of recently, I've been telling him maybe he should cut back on some of it just because of some of the articles and stuff that has come out. And then again recently, I think today, his friends and him an article um from complex, Was it?
Speaker 2:It might've been complex complex.
Speaker 1:Uh, he sent the article, whatever, and his discussion or argument is that on a weekend.
Speaker 2:Can I talk about my discussion argument?
Speaker 1:No, but go ahead and say say your spiel.
Speaker 2:So what the? Let me just go over what the article was.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of conversation in there.
Speaker 2:We're going back and forth for a while and the conversation was around the actual energy drink and I think every couple months I get an article from somebody saying oh look, what they found in Celsius, because they know I drink it a lot. And it said Celsius energy drink could trigger false positive for cocaine, which is absolutely a lot.
Speaker 1:So the other articles that I got. It wasn't just about it being like bad for caffeine or sugar or anything like that. There was, it was more to it. That is not good for you at all. One of the lower ranking energy drinks things like that. It's basically what it was saying and your argument. That's what you wanted to say.
Speaker 2:So my argument was that if you're able to drink on a weekend and go out to clubs and you aren't eating right and you're not getting any sleep, it doesn't make sense to talk about an energy drink I don't know what the sleep.
Speaker 1:Gotta do anything right now?
Speaker 2:but overall health. Right, that's, that's my whole thing. It's like your overall health. So if you're drinking, it's like a person that drinks. Let's say, you have four tequila shots on the weekend, whatever it is, and you're arguing with a person about an energy drink that they use to go and work out every single day.
Speaker 1:And my thought behind that was the amount that you're consuming makes a difference, right? So yeah, somebody's drinking tequila on the weekend, one, generally, not everybody is not drinking that every single weekend. That's one, and let's say they were. That's one day or two hours out of the week, versus drinking seven or more Celsius. So that's why I say the amount that you consume kind of makes a difference in my opinion. I'm not saying that drinking or caffeine or other things that you do aren't bad for you, but the amount makes a difference.
Speaker 1:Same thing with coffee. If you're having one coffee a week, nobody's saying that. Maybe if you're having 10 a week, there's a difference. So that's my biggest thing. There's a difference. So that's my biggest thing. There's a difference. Being mindful of what you're eating and consuming. Now are there things that we eat and eat and drink that aren't good for you absolutely, but how many times are you having? That makes a difference, is what I would say. So to this day, I would still say be mindful of that, of how much you're consuming, because more and more studies are coming out of how bad it is.
Speaker 2:Like I said, not just about the caffeine, not just about the sugar, but just 10 years from now if I'm in one of those lawsuit cases where hopefully you allow it to be in the lawsuit case If I'm allowed to be in one of those lawsuit cases where they're like you get, you see those commercials about oh, if you, if you drank or ate this between the years of 2000 and 2024, in 2024, then you're entitled to a lawsuit, then we can talk about it, then.
Speaker 1:Okay, Well, that was the conversation we was having in our house, because Celsius is always stacked here. If you're listening to Celsius, we are not.
Speaker 2:we they're not sponsoring us now because we just talked about being linked to drugs potential and Complex had a horrible article on their top list of rappers and that's like I can't listen to what they're saying when it comes to news and I can't take them seriously okay, now they not a credible source?
Speaker 1:all of a sudden, one of those class class action lawsuits in uh 10 years okay, but we are here to talk about cleaning business university.
Speaker 1:If you don't know what cleaning business university is, that is our digital product, if you will, if you will, where we teach people how to run a remote cleaning business without having to clean any homes. What is remote cleaning business? We got a podcast on that, but just quickly, we're not doing the cleaning, we're running the business the same way, the same model, that Airbnb and Uber runs it, and that's what our remote cleaning business is. We connect the customer to the cleaner. Essentially, we're the middleman in the process. So we've had a cleaning business university. We didn't realize that we kind of recorded a cleaning business university in May, which May is just a big month for us. We have Anthony's birthday, our anniversary.
Speaker 2:Mother's.
Speaker 1:Day, memorial Day, one of our close friends' birthday, know. So we have a lot we call may mayhem and to find out, we found out this year that actually the product that kind of changed a lot of you guys lives, changed our lives, was made in may as well. Kind of just very fitting, um, essentially. So how did clean and Business University come about, which at first it wasn't even called that? No, let's be clear, it was called six figure local service business, clean it, whatever it was.
Speaker 2:It was called start, a six figure local service business, and the reason it was called that is because we knew this business model could apply to multiple industries. So it wasn't just cleaning. Even though we had a cleaning business, we knew that lawn care handyman, we had even someone start a tutoring business. So when we started carpet cleaning, so almost every local service business you could think of could run a similar business model. So when we first started teaching and sharing about this information, it was very general to those, to those local service businesses. But we realized that a lot of people just kept coming back to the cleaning business idea, mainly because that was something that we had and we shared our journey along the way. So people just kept coming back to that. So we decided to, you know, lock in more to that niche, if you would say, if you will more to that niche, if you would say, if you will.
Speaker 1:And that's what became a cleaning business university, which at first is funny because, um, you did have anthony did have a digital product on um deleting the debt. He had his own. I don't know why I didn't want to do it with you. I think that's why I didn't do it. But maybe two years or more before we put out this, uh, cleaning business stuff, he had a product on deleting the debt and that process. Because we we did do that as well, that process, what that looked like.
Speaker 1:And again, you were like I think people want to hear now about the cleaning business. I'm like, oh, we started our page to talk about deleting debt. I don't think it's so specific who wants that? And we've told the story sometimes. But we basically tested it on our Instagram live. We were going live talking about deleting the debt, literally, and here and there we would share on social media about us having this cleaning business.
Speaker 1:And so one day we said, okay, we'll do an IG live. And I think you said, if we get 10 sales, we'll record the course. So we did not have the course at all. We just went on, told people about it and we said what the price would be and we sold it. So we sold what we didn't have. And so at that time we knew, okay, we need to sit down in the next few days and make this product. We kind of pre-launched it and said it'll come, I don't know, june, july, whatever the case may be. We sold it like that, um, that you were buying it in advance and you'll get it soon, and we sold over 10 copies. We got off that live like holy crap, like wow, this we have to make this product. Still at that time I don't think we understood where it would go, where it would grow to, um, but it still was like, oh, my god, we have to go ahead and do this. People are depending on us.
Speaker 2:Let's sit down and make this thing yeah, and the crazy thing is that, instead of us trying to over complicateate it and overthink it while we were on the live it wasn't like we sold anyone something that wasn't coming we said, listen, if you guys are interested in this idea, we will go and create it in more detail and give you a full step-by-step walkthrough. And you're taking a chance on us because this is not built and now we have the backing that says okay, now we have to create it. A lot of times we'll sit there and we'll debate for months, weeks, years on if we should do something versus testing the demand for the market. So that would be a huge lesson for anyone thinking about doing something, instead of you trying to sit in the cave and building something for six months to a year and then saying, okay, here you go and no one buys it. We said before we do all that, let's find out if people even wanted this. Now we knew we had some market fit because people kept asking questions about it.
Speaker 2:But people vote with their pockets. I don't care what people say. We say it all the time Like oh, if you guys like. Even in our community we say, oh, you guys want more coaching calls or this or that. And we added and it's like, yeah, nobody shows up or nobody buys it or whatever. It's like, instead of trying to devote all of that time and attention to doing something that nobody wants, just test out the market and see if people want it. So we used the pre-launch strategy to see if there was even any interest in this. And people voted with their wallets. So now we were under the clock.
Speaker 1:we said we got to do this thing and, at the time, the the course is way. What year was this? 2019, 2020 this is 2020.
Speaker 1:This is during during the vid. Well, texas was kind of open by then, but it was still a lot going on within the world at the time. We had priced it way, way lower too. Um, just kind of testing it out, getting getting it out there, and once we had a few people purchase, we sat down one day for like six hours straight and just recorded it. Now, if you have our course, you can see it like the way that our lighting is now our mics, maybe our sound is completely different from the video. Now we've added updated videos, but the core video that has the information, I would say, is a bit darker. Um, but the information is still the information. This information is still giving our students success, so that that doesn't change, which is another kind of lesson.
Speaker 1:A lot of times we like need to make it. I think you were talking about perfect, but visually, especially in this day and age, there's so many mics there, so many videos, there's so many light and so many gadgets that they say that you need to put things out. And sometimes people like put your iPhone up. You spent all this money, just put your iPhone up, which is kind of in that context. We use the computer. We use Zoom to record it and just get it done. That was the biggest thing making sure that we got it done. Biggest thing making sure that we got it done and the way that we think in. I can tell you for ourselves the way that we think about it now is completely different from then, because then we're like we're going to use what we got. Let's make sure we get it out. The information is what people need now. I can tell you right now we second guess it is my lighting good is my angle, good is the mic. Can you hear me well, instead of just kind of putting it out there?
Speaker 2:so that is another lesson like put it out there, people want to put it out there and but, and that will keep you from even if so, I'll give you guys a live example. We were trying to record this. The more deeper you go into something, the more you put yourself out there, the more you start seeing the imperfections in what you're building versus when you first start. You don't notice your imperfections because everything's going to be imperfect.
Speaker 1:But I think there's pros and cons to that, because the longer you do something, the thought is that you would get better at it. Right, absolutely. So I get that. But it can also hold you back Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So even when we were just recording this episode if you go look at some of the previous episodes we've done we were in a podcast studio into the house. It was like our goal was just to get the information out there. Let's stop trying to be perfect now. We still got three cameras or we took one down, but we also got our lighting and we got our mics and all that stuff. And if it was just our iphone or you know this dgi thing here, then you could still do the same thing, get the same same information out there. So, like you said, it doesn't have to be perfect from day one, just get out there and help somebody make a move.
Speaker 1:So we put it out there and then you know, I think after a while, people were, you know, interested, people were purchasing. We're like, oh, wow, people. So like just shocked that people still, you know, want this information and we, we it's funny because we kind of struggled with figuring out if we should make the delete the debt course, that you had a big program, a bigger program. So like re-recorded, have me involved if we should do that or we should do the cleaning business, because I felt like the cleaning business was so niched and no one would really care about it. And we had spoke to Daniel Leslie at a wedding, shout out to her and she was like, if you don't know, daniel Leslie, she's one of the one of the big people that kind of speak about how to build a course, um, and she was like I think you should do the cleaning business, like I think that's very specific, I think that that's where you kind of need to be.
Speaker 2:And we're like all right, so we went all in in that, and one of her reasons was that if you're helping people pay down debt, then the challenge is going to be getting people who are in debt Think about your marketing strategy is going to be you're already in debt, you're going to buy something else that hopefully can help you improve, versus you buying something with the attempt to get make more money. Make more money right. So it's like one is helping you delete money and one is helping you make more money. Even in our strategy on us paying off debt, we didn't just say we want to pay off debt. We said how can we raise our income? So those were actually what is what drew us to putting this information out there? Because, like this is the cleaning business actually helped us make more money. So we said, if we're helping, if we are making more money by doing this, while we not share that information with other people versus trying to help them pay down debt. So right.
Speaker 1:So, um, and then came along. So a few minutes, a few months later, we recorded it. People were purchasing it, interested in it. We were started to get um testimonials about it, which was great. Just, you know how they felt. The course was digestible, how they felt like it was kind of funny we're going to be ourselves when we're recording that and that was great.
Speaker 1:And then, eventually, we decided to start a community too, because we, when we first launched, we did not have a community. We just was like, ok, this is it, and people had some other questions, people wanted to be a bit more connected. And we're like, okay, let's, let's start a community. So all of this was 2020, which I think was around the time where a lot of people were putting out digital products.
Speaker 1:Um, like I said, anthony had his own by himself, but we didn't have a. You did have a community with that actually, excuse me in a different way um, but we didn't have it in this way, this structure, and so this was something new for us going into. I think we launched, we launched cleaning business university, I want to say, in july. And then I don't think we started the community until maybe october, november around there, when we just started hearing feedback from from our students, which can be another lesson listening to the feedback from your customers. What do they want, what do they need, how can you provide more help to them? And that's essentially what we did, and we still have the community to this day.
Speaker 2:And that's the power of communities as well, because they were now around each other, versus them having to come to us. And if you think about where we are today, everyone has a community right. That's like the community, community, community. Everyone's building it. But back in 2020, we was like, oh, this is just a side thing that we could give people and we didn't see the. I don't want to say we didn't see the value in it, because they saw the value in it, but it was like it wasn't like our main intention or focus, like, okay, we're gonna put you guys in an area that's not on facebook too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was like.
Speaker 2:Facebook, where we can't control it. But we had everybody in the Slack group, everybody who joined it. We're in Slack, we're communicating, we're having a conversation, and that was just the beginnings of where our community is today and we just had our first in-person event and stuff like that. But in 2020, there was no mention of building communities. It was just us trying to figure it out as he went along. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So we built the community.
Speaker 1:We pioneered some of this stuff actually, and then eventually we were like oh, we have to have calls in the community. And so we eventually moved from Slack, because now we're recording the videos where we're putting it and people are putting information. So it became, you know, we had different tons of channels in Slack. If you know Slack it could get kind of chaotic. So we end eventually moved it to a different platform to make it a bit user-friendly for our customers coming in. You can find old videos, you know. Then it became bringing people in to speak. It's not just us speaking, can we have our students speak, can we have people that we're around coaches and stuff come in and speak? So it's really transformed into a hub of information.
Speaker 1:How would I describe like I always tell people when people talk about oh, do I need the community? I'm like I don't think you need it, but you're going to want it. I absolutely think you're going to want it because 90% of our customers are first time business owners Not everyone, but about, I would say, first time business owners, and one it can be lonely Two, you just have additional questions about some things and the course is kind of is go at your own pace, you're on your own, but the community, you're able to interact with people, which to me I'm someone that's social. I think that makes a difference. I like to just ask my questions if I don't have to search too long. I like to just ask the question, um, to get it done so I think the community was necessary.
Speaker 1:We didn't know it at the time, but it is necessary, not necessarily for you to get the business up and running, but I think, just as a business owner, entrepreneur, it's good to be around people doing the thing that you're doing. There's no negative in that. It can't hurt you.
Speaker 2:And if we were starting this, if we were starting Cleaning Business University from scratch five years ago, I think community probably would have been a bigger focus if we would have known how impactful and important it was. Because now we're seeing, like, if I just log into our program today, it's like you get people who are like, oh, I just want the program, I just want the course by itself. And the reason that the community is so vital is because it's not just you by yourself trying to figure it out, it's you guys together trying to figure this out. You guys are going along the same path. So I think if we had to start over from day one, that would be probably something I'd say that we probably would put more focus into, versus it being an afterthought, right.
Speaker 2:I agree what would be some other things that you think you would have done differently from day one If you were starting from scratch.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I'm. I don't really have anything that I would do differently besides the community. Maybe starting it early and making that more of an importance and it's the way that it was is kind of like it's a choice, because you know people have to pay for it, so it it's like we don't want to force you to, um, but kind of letting people know the importance of that, I think. But I don't have anything else that I would change per se. Yeah, no, I don't have anything else that I would that I would change honestly.
Speaker 2:So how will we? When we first start us on marketing for a little bit, because that, to me, that's the fun part of of building, because you're marketing something and most most of the time we're just part of a platform where we are at a job. Unless you do marketing and sales at your job, you have no idea how to actually market something. So when we first started, it was just us talking about the idea, just like we're sitting here and talking to you guys. Five years ago, when we built Cleaning Busy Universe, we were just talking about the idea, what we were thinking about building, and then it became okay, we've built this thing. How do we continue to keep engagement? How do we keep people excited? How do we keep people focused? How do we show them that there is another way outside their jobs, where they can build a business outside their nine to fives? And one of the things we were doing back in 2020 was Instagram lives. We did a lot of Instagram lives back then 2020 to like maybe 22, 23.
Speaker 1:It was a lot of organic, so people think a lot about ads.
Speaker 2:I don't want to get too deep into ads and stuff like that, but we were just marketing, just talking about what we were doing in real time. I think that's the biggest thing. You get people who are like, oh, I built this or I paid off this or I made this money and it's like that's great, but how did you do it? Share the journey along the way. I was just talking to another entrepreneur and he's done great things with what he's built. But I'm like man, I hope you have that documentation of what you have been building along the way, because once you've built it, the excitement for it is kind of a little I would probably say a little watered down versus us being in the journey of our cleaning business. Share the days. Back then we were talking about the name, we were talking about the people, we were talking about the customers Now we don't talk about as involved in a day to day in that way, exactly.
Speaker 2:So we don't talk about those things as much as we used to, but we still share the lessons. We still share the journey. We still share the journey. We still share. It's more about what our students are doing versus what we're doing, and you're like I may not have any testimonials at the time. So just share what you are doing along the way and that will help you get the name. Get the name of what you're doing out there and also helping people accomplish.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we used to speaking of my name, we used to put our business name out there. But then, you know, we thought about it, we, you know we thought about it. We're like what's the value in putting our name out out there? It is in our course, if you have our course and you're aware, because we're showing our students. But then we're like what's the value of just saying it on instagram live? There really is none. And people like I want to make sure it's real. If you don't trust me, that's okay, then maybe you shouldn't buy from me. I'm fine with that. I told you you don't if you hold on I want to stay on that for a second.
Speaker 2:If you find somebody online and you don't trust what they are saying, you can do trust but verify. Totally believe in trust but verify. There are other ways to verify that they are legit. You could go to their page, you could go to their students' pages, you could check them out. Yeah, I was saying testimonials would be, but if you feel like there is such a level of distrust there then you probably shouldn't buy from that person.
Speaker 2:I don't think there's anybody that I've purchased something from that. I was like I completely distrust this person, Right? Or you think that they're a scam that doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1:It doesn't make sense. If you think it's a scam, then don't do it. Yeah, so we were just like there's no value in me telling you our business name, because even if I didn't have the business anymore which we do, but if I didn't, I still have the same information. I've done it before. I still, you know, I've made the millions in my business. I can do that.
Speaker 1:So that was one part of it and we had to grow and learn that Just also, people just calling our business, saying different things, negative questions, asking questions to our team, and it's like this is a business. We're not here to like confirm that Janoka and Anthony are real, like we're not here, we, we're not here, we're not here for that. Like, uh, you might get me if you call actually at this time. So, um, that that was a lesson I think that we had to learn, um, and which, eventually we're like maybe we take it out the course too, like it doesn't, we can show you still, show you the stuff. But that's something that we had to learn throughout, throughout the process, as we kind of continue to speak about it. And then I think also something that I think we've learned in the course or just speaking to people.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like there's no way and I don't know how people understand this or take this, but it's like there's no way that we could put every single thing that happens in the cleaning business in the course.
Speaker 1:It's kind of not possible. The course is to guide you, to help you, you, to get you up and running, but there's sometimes, I'm like there's there's a lack of common sense for some people. Sometimes it's like some things that you're getting stuck on, you could try differently, you could do differently, and this day and age, you could do the googles or the chat gbt to kind of adjust or ask the community to adjust. And sometimes people feel like, well, this little point wasn't in there and I'm like, yeah, in the moment I was recording the course, I did not think of that and I'm giving you the things that you need to get it up and running and to scale. This little thing is a little tweak that you personally need, not that you need to get the business up and running or grow it, and that's one thing that I think that we've seen over time of like, um, just, I was just saying there's no way we can put every single thing into this course.
Speaker 2:It's just not possible for us Um and we think we're accepting that, and you wouldn't want that level of information into something that is overkill trying to grow because you're going to get stuck and we're seeing that now. It's like we want to get you, we want to help our students. Today goes faster, but it's like the more information more is not more, if you think about it that more is not always better more is not always better, more is not always more, and I think um less might be more.
Speaker 2:So our curriculum is structured in a way is for you to go through step a, through step z, and then everything else is just. It's just more that you may need, or, if you want to go, look right you got some down time, or if you want to just see this and learn something about this, right. So our goal was always to make it very digestible, because that's how we learn. But we know people. People learn differently, they go through structures differently.
Speaker 1:And our students?
Speaker 2:yeah, and our students have been absolutely amazing to to have that level of success. Now I do want to talk about that too. Um, because we didn't think that we would build something that at least I didn't think no, absolutely not we didn't go into this having a long, a long-term game plan at all I don't think we do that with anything with the cleaning business like, hey, let's just try to build it. Yeah, it was like clean with university. Oh, let's just see how this goes. Even the podcast in a podcast.
Speaker 1:Like let's just see maybe the podcast. You had a long-term goal, but that's about it with a podcast.
Speaker 2:You're just going. There's no. Hey guys, we want to take a brief commercial break. Ever been interested to learn how we were able to build a seven-figure cleaning business without cleaning any houses? You could tap in to learn more at cleaningbusinessmasterclasscom or click any of the links you see below.
Speaker 1:See you on the inside, peace that's just crazy, like how well, how's there no end goal? Every business? They say this was the end goal, right?
Speaker 2:no, the game is to keep going, that's the game is to keep going.
Speaker 1:That's the name of life.
Speaker 2:Keep happening so you can have a mic and talk yeah, that's, that's the name of the game is just to keep going and also create that impact. So let's talk about students for a little bit, because they've done over 18 million dollars in their own businesses and you and people always ask us about how do you verify this information? Well, there's a few ways. That number one we can't verify it to a T, so we get round numbers from some of the providers that they work with.
Speaker 1:We're also yeah, we're missing out on a lot of revenue because everyone's not still on the platform.
Speaker 2:That's why I say at least 18. So we get the round numbers from some of the platforms that they use, because you know we've worked with them personally.
Speaker 2:Partnerships and they're like all right, everybody who came into our platform under your name or your guidance or they know something about you guys, we put them under. You know, under this category Some people may not even fill that form out when they sign up for a platform, right? So just the verifiable numbers are at 18 million now. The people who don't use the platform or move platforms or decide to do something else. That could be another two, three, four or five, but we know at least 18 million dollars within five years within five years.
Speaker 2:Our students have succeeded and they've opened up businesses and 40 plus things. I say 40 plus because, again, that's just the verifiable information. There are people who didn't fill that, those forms out, that we don't even know they exist. They've done over 50,000 cleanings and counting. Again, that's verifiable, based on the sheets and the data, and there are people who don't fill those things out 18, so $18 million in total revenue over the last five years. They've done 50,000 plus cleanings and they've opened up businesses in 42 plus states, which is a huge testimonial testament to our students and them. Because it's not easy, right? One of the things we say is not easy to build a business. Everybody can say I want to do this, but some people don't want to take the action. We literally got an email from somebody that today that said oh, this is too hard for me, and it's like did you think building a six or seven figure business was going to be easy?
Speaker 1:Yes, that's the answer. The answer is yes, people do think like that. People think I try to remind people, even if we say that you know this is a business, that you don't have to do the cleaning, you still have to do the work. Right, you're still running a business and I think, because it's virtual or remote, people kind of look at it as being easier than others, which, ok, may be easier than a brick and mortar. I'm not saying it's not, but it's still a business and I try to register that to people. I'm like you still have to do the work. You still have to put hours and sweat equity into it. You still have to build it up, the marketing. Are you going to lose money? Yes, every business loses money. Yes, like there's things that you have to go through within a business. I'm not saying you're losing $40,000, but you may lose a thousand, you may lose some money. Like that is part of the process and I don't know how to help people to register that, because that's something that we hear a lot Now. Does that mean that maybe your students aren't doing as well now? Absolutely not. Now.
Speaker 1:One part of it was back then there wasn't a community, so you just kind of had to DM us and let us know, like, what's happening. Now we do have a community where we can see testimonials every single day, so it's a little different in that way. But I also think that we've heard people say this that the bigger our page grew, the like scarier people got to kind of let us know their numbers. Now I don't know if it's a um ego thing for some people. For some I probably would say yes, um, but for others they're just like oh, I just don't want to put my name out there, or oh, I just don't want to say anything, and we're like why like, why not? We want to hear that, we want to celebrate you, we want to do all those things. So that's one thing that I would say kind of shifted a little bit like our.
Speaker 2:The way that people tell us their testimonials is a little different now versus back then oh, yeah, yeah, and I, yes, that is something that we've we've talked about and they talk about in our community. They share all the time, which is great, but it's the people who are not in the community, or they're they're doing their own thing or they don't.
Speaker 2:They. They get the program. They just don't have that connection to us, as as the earlier people did, and that's and that's going to be the nature of everything you do. When you first start you're going to have a small, intimate group of people and the more you grow, the more people that's around you, the less people are going to be. You know, feel comfortable sharing certain things and it kind of sucks. But I understand, like one student had their businesses called, like literally somebody called their businesses and said we want to know if you're students of the heart dogs and we want to know if this is a real business, so you're not even calling us, you're calling them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we ask the students before we share if we can put their, if they want their business name out there, actually not if we can put it out there. So like if we interview them, we don't, um, we don't say their name unless they do so that was something that we've noticed and we always let them know.
Speaker 2:Like, hey, you know, if we don't feel, you don't feel comfortable sharing this stuff. So, like janoka was saying, when you're building something, it is like when we started building this, we didn't think it was going to be easy. We didn't go with the mindset that we were. We were make money every single month or it's just. This is more than what I, what I went in for. You guys should assume, no matter what start, it's going to be harder than you think it is, because just because we say it's simple doesn't mean it's necessarily easy. So if you go into something and say, oh, this is going to be easy, you will automatically fail. I promise you. I promise you. So don't think about going to something because you think it's easy. Go into something because you know there's a level of difficulty that you're willing to accept in order to get to that level. You're like, hey, I want to go build a six, seven-figure business. This is going to be easy, absolutely not. Like we literally got a DM from somebody saying how bad do you want it?
Speaker 2:Like, oh, this business is too much for me. Right now I can't take on the business. It's like you shouldn't be willing to take on. If you know, one time is not going to be better than any other. So just because you feel like that, this way today, tomorrow you might say, oh, I'm in a better mood, I feel like doing this. No, if you feel like that's going to be your mindset, this is not a good time for me. I promise you, life is never going to say oh, here's a good time. We first started. We didn't have any kids, we didn't have a podcast, we didn't have any YouTube, we didn't have a huge community, we didn't have to do coaching calls, we didn't have to to show up I didn't. We didn't have deaths in the family, we didn't have all these things and we still showed up and all we did. From then, we'll just add more things into our life.
Speaker 2:Now, today, we got to the point where it's like, wow, what were we doing back then? Was life easier? Or are we just fitting things in at this point?
Speaker 1:It is never going to be a time that's better than the other. We also have multiple jobs. Yeah, multiple jobs. There's other things happening. You shift your life around.
Speaker 2:We had multiple 9 to 5s at the time we were trying to pay off debt. We were walking dogs, we were trying to roll, you were working at the therapy you you were a mental health counselor during that time and we had to figure it out. So that's one thing for everyone no matter what you're building, you got to find the time and space to figure it out.
Speaker 1:Along the pivoting a bit along the ways of, you know, cleaning business university, as we just talked through it, we eventually got a coach for a cleaning business university right For our digital side of things.
Speaker 2:We were investing in ourselves, not even just a coach, I would say, investing in our business.
Speaker 1:Investing in our business because we we look to people that are doing the thing that we want to do and are doing it better than us Right, or doing or no more information than us. That's essentially doing it differently or just doing it differently. That's essentially what it was. So we eventually got a coach, I think in under a year. Yeah, so we started this in July. I want to say by February, I'm sorry, yeah, we launched it in July. I want to say by February of the following year is when we got a coach and that helped us to say like, okay, you need to change platforms, like this platform is going to be easier for your customers. Make the customer experience better. You probably can add some of these videos in here that you speak about would be helpful for the students. And so, pricing wise, this is where you need to be. You have the testimonials, you have the people telling you what it's done.
Speaker 1:The thing about I think this the cleaning business university that we tuggle, that we tug at war with we being Anthony and myself is like you pay a one time price for something that can potentially make you thousands, slash millions of dollars. Make you thousands, slash, millions of dollars. And so when you think of it like that, when we talk about, like you know, 1500, 2000, 3000, whatever the case may be, I think that we keep it affordable. Not, I think let me rephrase for those that are listening and we may cut here is the price is very affordable for a business that you can get up and running and it changed your life and why. You may say, oh, that's a pretty bold statement. We have students and ourselves that the business has changed our life. So I can say that. So that's something that we kind of go back and forth with. Like, how does it make sense for us? How do we make people pay attention? When you pay, you pay attention.
Speaker 1:I tell you right now, something you pay twenty dollars for, you don't care about, something you pay two thousand dollars for. You may tap in a bit closer, a bit closer depending on who. You are right. It's just a mindset thing, unfortunately. It's just how it is.
Speaker 1:But just the value that the course has and that we have proven I, that we've proven from our students and our testimonials is what makes us say, okay, this should be priced at this, or this should be priced higher, or we can, and also just us being available as well, right, like our access. If you're in our community, you can 100 say that you've heard from anthony genoka or somebody in our team and more than likely anthony genoka to this day we still are hosting our own you know, uh, community calls. To this day you can still are hosting our own you know community calls. To this day you can still access us in the community and sometimes on IG Live and sometimes in other places, right? So all of those things kind of play into us justifying or tweaking or knowing like this is a big value add to someone, but just being sure that it kind of makes sense as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that pricing conversation comes up so often so often because our first million dollar student, he paid a couple, he paid a couple hundred I don't know why he paid something low, it was it was a couple hundred, it was under 500, and it's like we get people who come back from that time to today like, oh, I'm finally ready to go, I'm finally ready to take it seriously can I still get the information?
Speaker 2:it's like you have the information but you just list out of millions of dollars but the problem is you don't value it at the price you had it because you just thought, oh yeah, I'm just gonna sit on this. You see another student make six figures. It's like, oh, every time we share a student, we love our testimonies, no matter what level. At right, we want to be able to share the people at the very beginning, but then also the people that hit that six figure milestone, because that's when you know, all right, I got something real. But even that first, that first client, that first testimony, that first lead, that first good review, that first bad review, whatever it is in your business, we want you to take that and strive because that's going to be the first of many good, bad or indifferent. So that pricing struggle has no matter. You know, even in your businesses as you're building you can have a struggle with the pricing you're gonna be.
Speaker 2:Am I too high, am I too low? And then you see people go on vacation and they dm you like, oh, I can't get a discount and you kind of take some. That's the person like. You want to discount the from the valuable information that I'm giving you but you just came from a $2,000, $3,000, $4,000 vacation that absolutely did not add any more long-term value to your life, aside from the Instagram pictures and trust me, I see it all the time.
Speaker 2:You get those people like yeah, I got the money, I'm doing this and that. And then they hit you on the DMs like, yeah, can I get that, can I get that, I get that.
Speaker 1:well speaking, I mean I think you brought up a point there about like bad reviews. So if you're doing a digital product or any product I mean any product, any business in this world, not digital, just any product you're gonna get bad reviews, right, um, how do you take that feedback? How do you change it? How do you utilize it? But also knowing some people are just people and you can't, you can't please everyone. I say that all time. Like we are not everyone's cup of tea, that's okay. Our product is not for everyone, that's okay.
Speaker 1:However, you know, sometimes people say things and we're like that's just simply not true. There's a difference with you having a feeling, an opinion about how you feel about something, versus saying like this doesn't provide value or this doesn't and it like it actually does. Like I understand that's your opinion, but it actually does. And how we kind of deal with those bad reviews is different for each of us. I would say, um, someone writing on our ads we speak about, that people call us scammers every day, or that it's liars, and I'm like, okay, block them, move on. Um, and Anthony is like well, they're talking about our personal business, our brand. I'm like I get it, but I'm not fix it. I'm not here to have a discussion with everyone that thinks that jumps to the conclusion of scammer Like if you're like, oh, let me, I don't. I've never heard of this before. How is this true? I think it's a different statement.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so I live life very like OK, move on. Like I, it's different. So that's another thing that we kind of go through with having this digital product and having cleaning business, university of you know, not pleasing everyone, and how do you manage that? Uh, I think the other side of it is, if there's 15 people that aren't pleased, within two to three thousand yeah that's okay I would say another thing to that is the lesson is don't do something.
Speaker 2:Anything that is worth doing is don't do something. Anything that is worth doing is worth being criticized. Anything is that is worth doing is worth being criticized. So if you are going to build something, no matter what it is, expect to be criticized. And if you don't want to be criticized and don't build anything like don't do anything, great, just do what you do and just go about your life, because you will be criticized no matter what you do. Yeah, and don't put yourself out there if you're not willing to be criticized.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and this is everything we do is putting ourselves our entire story at at Instagram or social media or YouTube, is us putting ourselves out there and you have to expect a level of criticism?
Speaker 2:Now, what you're saying about ads, oh, that's a whole nother beast, because your information is now reaching people who have never seen you or heard you or anything a day in their lives and the first thing they see is a ad talking about how you are traveling, how you built a cleaning business to seven figures without cleaning outside your nine to five, and they're like ain't no way it's possible to do that. This is an absolute lie. Stop falling for these scams. And one of the quotes that I heard is that and I believe it is that the word scam can stand for still confused about money. Still confused about money. If I heard that somebody made a million dollars in a day, I would absolutely believe it's a scam. If I haven't seen it happen before A million dollars in a day Coming from a poverty mindset, a poverty background, you're going to assume that, oh, they have to. And if you think about just growing up, only people we sold with money at least me, was drug dealers.
Speaker 2:They drove the cars, they had the chains and it's like, oh, that's the lifestyle you got to live in order to see that type of money, which is actually not a lot of money nowadays, but to see someone make a million dollars in a day, or a million dollars in a month, or a million, even a million dollars in a year you assume that they got to be doing some shady stuff in order to do that.
Speaker 2:So your mindset is going to be anybody that's doing better than me or something that I can't comprehend. It has to be a scam, it has to be not true. It has to be some catch. We are showing inside of cbu. We're showing people how to build a business like that's if you break it down to the nuts and bolts. That's all we're doing, and if you think building a business is a scam, then that's truly on you. So dealing with those, those criticisms and those critiques is totally warranted sometimes, but other times it's like there, like you said, there are people out there that you're never going to be pleased, that are never going to be pleased, and that's just part of doing business.
Speaker 1:Why are you doing business? What can we say? Along the ways of Cleanly Business University, we also went ahead and we got Cleanly, Don't show it.
Speaker 2:I was going to say let's not show the, what's the?
Speaker 1:or a number, yeah, the trademark. Okay, well, we got a trademark. There's, that's it. Clean and Business University is trademarked. It is ours. Why do we trademark it? We trademarked it as a way to kind of, I guess, like feel like our stuff. You know, if we want to go on and we've done really big things with Clean and Business University, it felt like the right thing to do. It felt like the right thing to do as at the time, I would say, when we started, when we started cleaning business university, there was if there was, there weren't known any other people kind of talking about growing a remote cleaning business. Now, I'm not going to say there wasn't people talking about what's that lady's name that has that big thing in Dallas I think she's been around for a little bit in regards to cleaning business but at the time there wasn't anybody really talking about growing a remote cleaning business, and so that was another way to kind of like protect our community and our uh, what do they call it?
Speaker 2:intellectual, intellectual property, excuse me, yeah, now do you have to get everything trademarked that you do?
Speaker 2:no, but if you do want to if you do want to take it seriously. I think at some point you decide to the trademark it, you decide to own it. Um, you want to make sure it's yours, and we understood the value in it, and I think it was more of a a value proposition for us. It's like all right, this is our intellectual property. We've created this from scratch. Um, we have tons of testimonials. We got our own, so that's one thing we did. Now, does that make or break the business? Absolutely not, um, which goes to the next point. Now, once you create something, there's going to be, there's going to be people who come into the market and duplicate exactly what you're doing yeah like we never said we made this up.
Speaker 2:Like I talk about all the time that before we built this, I talked to someone who showed us the business model and I was like yo, we could build this together. If you want to create a digital product, we're sharing our story, that you're a part of our story. It'd be great. And they said no, we're not, I'm not interested in doing at the time um but I went to that person that showed me like let's build this thing together.
Speaker 2:Now we talk about this all the time. It's like I would love to be able to to to work with, work with people who have built the thing, versus you just doing the same exact thing we're doing and just saying that, uh, there's a gap in the market. My friend, andre, talks about the gap.
Speaker 1:Well, you're being politically politically correct. He's saying I would love for you to work with me versus copying and taking my stuff. That is exactly what he's saying. So if he's saying so, if we can work together students, if we can work together people that maybe have seen us. All right, take it easy, Take it easy, Okay.
Speaker 2:So my friend Andre calls it the gap in the marketplace, and if you don't know what gap in the market is, it's like normally someone says, oh, I saw a gap in the market, so I'm going to build this Gap in the market.
Speaker 1:You just decided that you created your own. He called it the gap in the marketplace.
Speaker 2:And more often than not, you saw somebody doing something and you wanted what they were doing. You said let me do the same exact thing to build the same exact lifestyle. And more often than not, you really don't know what goes into building that thing that they built.
Speaker 2:So you know to me, it's painful for me sometimes when I see people who have gone through our program and start doing the same exact thing we've done, where it's like we could have built this thing together, but instead you just want to do the same exact thing we're doing now. We're splitting not even a competition, but we're splitting the market. Because they're like, oh, I could go to you or I could go to the hard dogs, and it's like, oh, the hard dogs are too big now, so I'm going to go to you versus we could have done this thing together, yeah, Like my like.
Speaker 2:I talk about when Dave Ramsey, when he's built his media company, he was like, yes, you know, my daughter could do, her husband could do it, all these other people could do these things. But it it's like, why not just build one media brand where we already have the brand, we already have the recognition, we already have the testimonials, you already have your own success and we could build something together, versus you trying to do your own thing now, if you get to the point where it's like, hey, I want to do my own thing, absolutely fine. But I think from the very beginning it would be a lot more impactful if we were building together. Now we got our students who come in, they lock in and they're hosting community calls, they are hosting meetups, they're hosting lives, they're doing all these things. But it just took a while for us to get there and for us it was like we were trying to do this from day one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so collaboration, collaboration over competition, collaboration would be good. But, you know everybody's different, but listen, it does suck.
Speaker 2:I ain't gonna hold you. It does. It does suck, but at the end of the day, you gotta keep going. We'll be doing this now for five years and every single time somebody comes, it was like what's the difference between this information and this? I'm like information the same. Information is actually the same. The teachings are different, the style is different, the people are different, so what are you paying for?
Speaker 1:we look different too. A lot of times, absolutely a lot of times, we definitely look different. But cleaning business university has been a journey, but I think, a journey we never expected, but in a in a great way. Like you know, our previous episode, we spoke up, we spoke about that in-person event, um, we spoke about the feeling of just being in the room and what that felt like, what that looked like right, and so cleaning business university has turned into so much more than what we could have imagined, more than just us in this household, right.
Speaker 2:More than just a course.
Speaker 1:More than just a course. It's a community, it's a lifestyle, it's a brand. It's all of the above, which we need some shirts and stuff for that. It's all of the above, you know, being part of Clean and Business University, and the last part of it is really just thanking our students, all of you that have trusted us, um, paid with us, showed up, uh, told us hello, let us know your success story, let us know what wasn't going well, been on the phone, been on the calls. Thank you, thank you, thank you, because cleaning business isn't cleaning business. University is not that without you guys. So, everybody, straight from 2020 straight to now, and those students we will have in the future, some of you that may be listening, that we'll have in the future just thank you for trusting us, taking in the information and changing your own life path, changing your family's life, changing your generational wealth, because this business can do that for you. So we do appreciate all of that, those that listen to us, however you show up for us, paid or free, we really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:And so we do want to thank you for that. We give a lot of information on a podcast, on a YouTube, on an Instagram, on a TikTok, whatever it may be. So, even if you aren't a student and you are learning from afar, and we appreciate it we had somebody. We went to a restaurant recently and somebody came up to us and, like yo, we love you guys.
Speaker 1:You guys have been changing our lives.
Speaker 2:This is something we definitely want to do and we just appreciate your transparency along the way, along the journey. So those things matter. Like you know, we may not mention it online all the time. We do mention it in our community. It is greatly appreciated, yeah say hello. Here is to five years and here is to five more.
Speaker 1:Oh, I need some champagne, some real champagne.
Speaker 2:Listen, it should have been bigger but listen, life be life for y'all.
Speaker 1:Show up and put it out.
Speaker 2:Shout out to our students Shout out to our community. If you want to learn more on how you can start a remote cleaning business without cleaning any houses, you can click the link below. It will be cleaningbusinessmasterclasscom. If you want to learn you want to, you don't want to wait for the next masterclass you can go click the other link. We have an ebook link in there. We can learn more about it there. If you want the digestible chunks to get started today, you've got options now. So we went from the product we got the ebook, we got the masterclass. We got the IG labs, we got the community.
Speaker 1:We got IG lives, we've got the community podcast, youtube we're everywhere.
Speaker 2:So our journey has become much more than a cleaning business. So this is why you get all facets of life from us, cause we don't want to just build entrepreneurs, we don't want to just build cleaning business on us. We want to build entrepreneurs who have cleaning businesses. So that's what we become and that's what we want our students to be.
Speaker 1:All right, thank you.
Speaker 2:Peace.