Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of Bergen County
Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Ep. # 92 From Humble Beginnings to Bright Diamond Shine: Martha Ramirez's Entrepreneurial Journey
Meet Martha Ramirez, the tenacious entrepreneur behind Bright Diamond Shine Cleaning Service who transformed unfair working conditions into motivation to build her own thriving business. When her daughter was born in 2014, Martha made the bold decision to leave her cleaning job where wages were unjustly low and venture out on her own. What began as a solo operation gradually expanded through word-of-mouth referrals until she had built a loyal base of about 30 clients.
When COVID-19 hit, Martha demonstrated remarkable adaptability by pivoting her business model. While most cleaning services struggled as homeowners barred outsiders from entering their spaces, she repositioned her offerings to emphasize sanitization services. This strategic shift not only helped her survive the pandemic but actually grow her business during an otherwise devastating period for service industries. Martha invested in online marketing through Yelp and Google, expanding her reach beyond personal recommendations.
What truly distinguishes Bright Diamond Shine is their client-centered approach. Instead of charging flat rates regardless of home size, Martha implements a fair hourly rate per cleaner model. Her team offers an impressive range of services beyond regular house cleaning, including move-in/move-out cleaning, post-party cleanup, Airbnb turnovers, garage organization, and appliance cleaning. Martha's passion for her work shines through as she describes the profound satisfaction she feels transforming chaotic spaces and seeing her clients' appreciation. "To be good in life and always positive, you have to like what you do," she shares, revealing the heart behind her successful business philosophy. Serving all of Bergen County, Bright Diamond Shine continues accepting new clients daily, ready to turn your cleaning challenges into sparkling solutions.
Bright Diamond Shine Cleaning Service
Martha Ramirez
917-242-6928
brightdiamondshinecleaning@gmail.com
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Doug Drohan.
Speaker 2:Buddy, welcome to an episode, another episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast, brought to you by the Good Neighbor Podcast, brought to you by Bergen Neighbors Media Group. My name is Doug, I am your host and today I'm joined by Martha Ramirez, the owner of Bright Diamond Shine Cleaning Service. Martha, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Thank you everyone.
Speaker 2:You're kind of breaking up a bit, so we're going to we'll see how this goes, and if we have to do another episode, we will. But anyway. So, martha, tell us a little bit about yourself, like how did you get into this business? When did you start it?
Speaker 3:I started when my daughter was born, 2014. I was working for a company and it was not fair the prices they were paying us, so I decided to do it on my own. When I started doing it on my own, it was more like myself doing the houses, one house to another. Once COVID came, I couldn't just stay at home. Everybody was canceling because nobody wanted their house to be clean and I used to write to my clients like at least their fridge something to clean. They didn't want that, they just wanted no one in their house.
Speaker 3:So I had a friend that had done the website for me and, um, I just said, well, I have to invert and invest and do something. So I started doing the yelp, I started doing the google. Um, I started doing all of this and started recommendations. I had myself about 30 clients by myself. So my clients started helping me helping me word to word and mouth to mouth and recommendations and that's how I started getting better and bigger.
Speaker 2:So, but during COVID, nobody you weren't allowed to go in or people didn't want you in their homes.
Speaker 3:Nobody wanted, no yeah.
Speaker 2:They didn't want us so. Yeah, but doing Yelp and Google ads, I mean yeah, but they still wouldn't let you in their homes. Right, but people still wouldn't let you in their homes.
Speaker 3:Yes, red lines didn't want me to, you know, expose, so they didn't want us there. Once we started with the Yelp and the Google, that we started being more um, cover ourselves and have alcohol like more prevent, more prevention, that's when we started getting more clients, because they sanitizing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I get it.
Speaker 3:So your marketing yes Right.
Speaker 2:You went from being just to let me clean your counters, let me sanitize your house. Got it? That was smart, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:And they were like oh, we had a family member here and we want it to be sanitized and clean. So we used to bring everything to clean and sanitize everything. So that's how it started getting bigger sanitize everything.
Speaker 2:So that's how it started getting bigger. That's that's smart. Yeah, that makes sense. So you know, I think you know there was that moment, obviously, and then, and you know, people came in with masks, and you're okay, or maybe you left the house while the cleaning crew was there. But the whole sanitizing angle is really smart. So it's 2014. So now you've been in business for 11 years, about. So you started because you saw the way that these companies paid wages. You thought that's not fair. Let me do it on my own.
Speaker 2:But, it's one thing for somebody to pay you and tell you where the next job is to, versus owning owning the business and being responsible for bringing in that business. So it's not like you just show up where they tell you to show up. Now you have to find the customers now. You have to make sure that you have enough work to pay your workers right. So it's a different side. Yes, of so it's a different side.
Speaker 3:Yes, of course.
Speaker 2:What has that been like?
Speaker 3:Well, it's been. I'm very. I have a lot of clients. Some of them are not weekly, some of them are monthly. So when I start seeing a week before that it's a week that is very slow, that we don't have much houses I start writing to them. I start writing to all my clients asking them yeah, oh, do you need?
Speaker 2:cleaning. Do you need a couple hours? And right away I started getting the help for them, okay, okay, yeah, I mean usually and this is based on my own experience if you have a good cleaning service, you're not switching, you know, unless something goes wrong with them?
Speaker 1:You're not.
Speaker 3:Something goes wrong, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you have pretty loyal clients.
Speaker 3:That's what I tell, yes, that's what I tell my girl is everything about, if you guys, we have many clients that have canceled and they still call us back because they try the companies and it didn't work out. So, like I tell my girls, if you guys, everything good and and it's about the trust they're gonna call back always yeah, they're always gonna just come back, and that's what happens. Yeah, that's true two, three, four months and they call back yeah yeah, yeah yeah, and they're like we try another company, but can you come?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, one thing from my own experience is that we you know we had tried somebody else, but then they weren't reliable All of a sudden they and especially during COVID you know, we had all of a sudden, you know, a lot of people quit.
Speaker 2:It was hard and they didn't have. They didn't have any more staff. A lot of people chose to go on unemployment or whatever. But the other thing that we had, the real reason we switched initially, was because we had a cleaning company that came at 730 in the morning, while you're getting ready for work, your kids getting ready for school, and it was one person who would be there for like four hours. So like, and nowadays a know when you work from home.
Speaker 3:You don't want cleaners in there.
Speaker 2:You know for sure how does it work with right time and shine. How does it work with bright time and?
Speaker 3:shine like no, so us. Depending the size of the houses. We have houses that is only two of us, um, but when the houses are like the one we just did, right now, that one is a thousand square feet for that one, yes, we need about it's four of us there how many thousand square feet like?
Speaker 2:you said yes ten thousand square feet um, it's four of us, yeah okay it's four, four of us and um we divide.
Speaker 3:So we divide and um once start. You know when? Once we divide, we we do it like in three hours, four hours. Yeah, like you said, they, they, they work, for they work from home, so they don't want us to be all day there.
Speaker 2:Right, right yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we try to do the most important things, the offices and things like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so now there's the recurring house cleaning that you get a lot of, but what other kinds of cleanings do you do?
Speaker 3:So we had sometimes do like special occasions cleaning. Okay, so I had a big party. My place is destroyed yes, yes, exactly we do that. We do air Airbnbs. Okay, they call us or they need to be in. It's the next people to come. So we do that many times with the washing for them, the sheets, sheets, all of that. We also do, for example, if garage cleaning we also do that. So basically anything that has to do with the cleaning.
Speaker 2:Yes, so garage cleaning man, if you took a look at my garage right now, you'd be like you know, you couldn't find a body. Well, you know what it is right now we just have so many recycling boxes. I missed the garbage collection last week, so we have just. But I mean, when you say you clean a garage, are you organizing?
Speaker 1:the garage.
Speaker 2:Or you're just like what kind of cleaning do you do in?
Speaker 3:a garage. Yeah, organizing, we take like we just take everything out, we organize it, we um vacuum it everything walls or everything and we just put everything back in place. Wow okay, we have a lot of people that don't have the time, so they just tell us can you guys do the garage for us? I know it's going to be hard work.
Speaker 2:We just tell you what we don't need and what we don't want, or what donation is, and we just put on the side everything, for that we divide everything yeah, and you uh, you charge by the hour for that or you have a flat fee um, no, so what we do is different than other companies.
Speaker 3:We charge per hour per girl. So, um, I designed it to be fair, you know, because sometimes I have clients that their house is fast and that they're unfair to charge the same price. What we do is to be fair. We charge per hour per girl. Say, for example, if it's regular, it's 33, if it's something like more deep cleaning is 37. So we do like a rate like that, yeah yeah, yeah, okay, and I guess they could choose.
Speaker 2:If you say, all right, you've got a 3,000 square foot house, we recommend two or three people, but then they say, well, I only want to pay for two. I guess they could do that, but then you'd be the longer, so it's probably the same price anyway.
Speaker 3:They could do that Longer Exactly. That's what I tell them.
Speaker 2:Sometimes they tell me I'm like, okay, no problem, but it's going to be the same time yeah, now you also have something that, uh, I think is really smart, which is called move-in cleaning and move-out cleaning. And I think a lot of people think of the move-in cleaning. Okay, I just moved into a new place, everything's in boxes, I'm unloading all the boxes, uh, I'd love to have my brand new place cleaned. But the move out cleaning is something when you own an apartment like I owned a condo and and, uh, when my tenants moved out, you know I had to clean that place up, you know, and you know when you're selling a house you know, unless you know, I guess if you own it, somebody's already bought it.
Speaker 2:you want it. You want it to be clean for the next owners? Yeah, but especially if it's a rental yeah, I could see that being a good service offer.
Speaker 3:Of course.
Speaker 2:So where are you from originally, like where did you get we?
Speaker 3:do move in, move out.
Speaker 2:Okay, oh, and you also do things like you'll clean refrigerators and ovens and things like that.
Speaker 3:Yes, that's more like when they do the move-in, move-out thing. A lot of clients ask for that when they do move-out, move-in yes, in psychics, because they want it to be clean for the next person.
Speaker 2:Well, what about if it's somebody you do their house every week and then one day they say hey, next cleaning, can you do my refrigerator? Yeah, they could do that. Yeah, okay, okay, um, so what? So? You, you know, 2014, you're a mother, you decide to start your own business. Where did that, that drive, come from? Or, you know, did you have parents that were entrepreneurs? Did you have, uh, role models of people that you know told you or encouraged you to go off on your own? Like, where did that come from?
Speaker 3:so my mom used to always tell me she cleans houses herself and she always used to come and help me clean and used to say, no, I don't want to. But once I moved to New Jersey and I started liking it, you know, I started like, seeing how I like it. I started seeing difference, you know, like, oh, something you could do yourself and something that you like to do. So in order for you to be good in life and to be always positive, you have to like what you do.
Speaker 3:So that's what I do Like I feel so happy. Yes, I feel so happy when I go to houses that are destroyed and bad.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 3:I feel so good when the clients hug me and they write to me and they so appreciate it to see how we change their lives. Yeah so that's why it's something that I really, I really like, like it's a sad, the satisfaction that you feel like like you did it, you did it well oh okay, um, yeah.
Speaker 2:No, that's great because it is the satisfaction of of uh, you know, just being able to leave somebody's house. I mean, you have to have that personality where you love the way a place looks when it's cleaned you love yeah.
Speaker 2:The only thing I put on Facebook a year ago was I cleaned our pots and pans like the pans that we cook in and they had gotten so dirty. Even though you clean them, they were getting black, and I used to work in a restaurant, so I took out the Brillo pad and I took out bartender's friend or whatever it's called, and I made these things shine like it was in a restaurant. And I felt so proud of that, I put it up on Facebook.
Speaker 1:I was like look at this, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I can see why you feel the satisfaction.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah yeah is that like? Even my house?
Speaker 2:listen, even my house like yeah, yeah it happened, yeah, and martha, where are you from? Like you said, when you moved to new jersey, where'd you live before new jersey?
Speaker 3:I used to live in the Bronx.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's where you grew up, yeah.
Speaker 3:That's where I grew up, but when I got pregnant I decided to give a different environment to my daughter. And I started everything for the best. I left everything in New York, everything when I need my clothes, my bed, everything to start from zero in New Jersey. Wow, wow, yeah you. Zero in New.
Speaker 2:Jersey.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, you moved to New Jersey. I'm from New York too, and I moved to New Jersey. So there's, you know it's-.
Speaker 3:Really, oh, yes, yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's different, yeah.
Speaker 2:But listen, I mean, I grew up in Long Island, so it was just. You know, Bergen County is just like Long Island in a lot of ways, except we have beaches in Long Island. You don't have any beaches in Bergen County. But aside from that, somewhat similar. But I did live in the city as well. I lived in Queens, I lived in Manhattan, so it is nice to move out of the city.
Speaker 2:It is nice to get out of the city and get into the suburbs. So it is nice to get out of the city and get into the suburbs.
Speaker 3:So how would people find you More quiet?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And what areas do you service and how do people contact you? So we are in Old Bergen County, we do in the Old Bergen. County and we are located in the US, and you can find us in yelp, you can find us in google, you can find us in facebook.
Speaker 2:Tiktok, everything okay, so it's bright diamond shine. com bright diamond shine. Yes, and uh. Is there a phone number they could contact you on?
Speaker 3:Yes, 917-242-6928.
Speaker 2:And are you currently taking on new clients?
Speaker 3:Yes, of course, every day you are Okay, okay, every day they call us. They say please come today.
Speaker 2:And you hire more people, the busier you get and you hire more people.
Speaker 3:The busier you get, just hire more people. Of course I have to hire more people. Or I tell my girls you guys want more hours, you got to work till late.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah Listen. I mean, if you hustle, they can make more money, so that's a good thing.
Speaker 3:They can make it yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, Martha, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your story you know bright diamond.
Speaker 2:Yeah, bright diamond shine. It's a cleaning company based out of New Jersey, servicing mostly Bergen County, and I'm just going to go over a few things that recurring services, the occasional cleaning If you're one of those people Move out, move in cleaning. There's also special occasions. You have a big party and your family and friends kind of wreck the place. They'll come in and help clean up that event. So that's a really good thing to think about. When you're having a party, the aftermath is usually the worst part. If you have an apartment, they will clean that as well. And then additional services refrigerator cleaning, oven cleaning, windows and more so. Martha, thank you so much for joining, and you and I will be right back.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpbergen. com. That's gnpbergen. com, or call 201-298-8325.