AUSTIN GRAY: We did about $992,000 in revenue my first full year. The second full year, we did $242,000 in revenue. We added $150,000 in revenue and spent only $11,000 in marketing.

Welcome back to the OWNR OPS podcast. I'm your host, Austin Gray, and in this episode, I'm hosting Logan Robison. Logan owns a cleaning business in Arkansas that formerly specialized in Airbnb cleanings, but at the end of 2024, he changed his strategy completely.

Why? He grabbed dinner with Johnny Robinson. Johnny is the Squeegee God on Twitter and hosts the Home Services Academy.

When Logan told Johnny his business plan, Johnny said, "Why? You've got to change this." You're going to have to stick around and listen to the whole episode to see what Johnny recommended Logan change within his business so that he could hit $1 million in 2025.

I'm going to go over it real quick for the listeners; this is like the best thing as a podcast host—high-level topics. We went all in on Airbnb cleaning. Was it a good idea? We're going to cover that in the episode. Hired a full-time office manager, but lost her to burnout in nine months. Shiny object syndrome—something we all struggle with as entrepreneurs.

How distraction over the summer cost me not one dollar sign but three dollar signs? Yeah, we're going to go over the full financial breakdown, sales plus profit, and a memorable dinner with Squeegee God. By the way, I would love to have Johnny on. He's reached out on the website before, or his team has. So, Johnny, if you're listening to this, I actually just sent you a message yesterday or the day before. Let’s get you on the podcast! I'd be excited to hear how the dinner went.

Then the marketing strategy. Why don't we start with the full financial breakdown for the listeners so we have some context here?

LOGAN: Yeah, absolutely! And I'm an open book. Look, my philosophy, the way that I've approached Twitter and these podcasts is I'm not an expert. I am learning every single day. I wish that there were somebody—there had been somebody when I was quitting my job that was giving an update like, "Hey, I’m quitting my job; here’s what the numbers look like; here’s how I'm thinking about this.” I have so many friends that talk to me every day about like, “Man, I'd love to quit my job and do what you're doing.”

I'm trying to show them the good and the bad. I'm trying to give an honest take on full-time entrepreneurship, and so this is my first full-time year in the business.

Right? So last year, I started the cleaning business pretty much last year, and I was doing that part-time while I was still working at my corporate job. We did about $992,000 in revenue my first full year.

The second full year, we did $242,000 in revenue—just under 20% in profit. A lot of that profit got eaten up by the ops manager, which I'm happy to talk about in depth as well. So that's kind of what the picture looked like this year.

So in 2024, we did $242,000 in revenue, and yes, I think it was like 17% in net profit. That growth, though...we added $150,000 in revenue and spent only $1,000 in marketing. So we were able to grow quite a bit and not do pretty much any marketing. I think that was a mistake, but we’ll talk about that a little bit later on. So yeah, that’s kind of the full financial breakdown right there, at least the top and bottom.

AUSTIN GRAY: Fantastic! I think all of these are going to intertwine together—your decision to go all in on Airbnb cleaning and hiring an ops manager. Where do you want to start here?

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LOGAN: Let’s start with going all in on Airbnb cleaning because in the last podcast episode I was on—this will weave into the Johnny Robinson dinner as well. So the last podcast we recorded, I told you, “Hey, I've made a decision; I'm drawing a line in the sand; we're only going to do Airbnb, and here's why.” The market needs it, and I've got cleaners that are great at Airbnb. We are just going to put our foot down and go full-on Airbnb.

So we did that for the full year. I was actively—we’d still get calls for residential; we’d still get calls for stuff like that, and I would just refer them out to other residential cleaners because I just really wanted to say, "Hey, you know what? We only do Airbnb.”

There are a lot of reasons why we did that. I think I had some bad experiences in residential cleaning and was just not wanting to go back to that.

But I also saw the value in niching down—focusing solely on Airbnb—so that $242,000 is 99% from Airbnb. It’s pretty much exclusively Airbnb. We still have two residential customers, but they’ve been with us for two years and they don’t cause any headaches, so we just kept them anyway.

So we made that decision. The whole year, I kept feeling like, “Man, I wish we were bigger; I wish we were doing something bigger and better.” It's tough because when you only do Airbnb, how do you market to that? How do you set up ads that are only targeted to Airbnb hosts?

It’s really tough to just market just to Airbnb hosts—like, that’s a really small segment. Yeah, I can run Facebook ads, but Facebook can’t exactly identify who the hosts are. They don’t know—it's not like you have a host in your profile on Facebook, right? So it's really tough, and I didn't want to spend a lot of marketing dollars to get a bunch of residential leads when we weren’t doing residential.

So we only did Airbnb. I had a full-time manager. She was working 40 hours a week, probably sometimes more. Airbnb cleaning is really intense, and anybody that’s done Airbnb cleaning will tell you it’s so much more intricate than a residential clean or a commercial clean.

Because you've got supplies, right? You have to make sure there’s enough shampoo and conditioner, body wash, and laundry detergent. If there’s not laundry detergent on site, you can’t do the job because you’ve got to wash laundry before the next guests come in. Then you also have to worry about trash. Are the trash bins empty for the next guest? You have to manage tight turnaround windows where you only have from 10 to 4, and if your cleaner doesn’t show up, that clean still has to get done because somebody’s checking in in a couple hours.

So super intense. I'm near the University of Arkansas, about 45 minutes away from Fayetteville, Arkansas. When we had home football games, we would have 38 cleans in one day.

So we'd go from—Airbnb cleaning, you kind of follow the travel schedule of a normal person. Right? A normal person is going to check in on a Friday and check out on a Sunday. Well, nobody really checks out on a Tuesday or a Wednesday or a Thursday. So we’d go from having pretty much no cleans in the middle of the week to now we ramp up and we’ve got 38 cleans in one day.

How do I staff that? How do I get all those cleaners there at the right time and in the right spot for 38 cleans and then turn around and say, "Oh, we don’t have any jobs on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday?" Right?

So it’s just kind of weird because the bulk of our revenue—60% of our revenue—came within two days: Sunday and Monday. The rest of the week was pretty slow.

So in Airbnb cleaning, you have a lot of different challenges. Like I said, you've got supplies, trash, laundry, and tight turnaround windows. Those cleans always have to be perfect, which I think is a great opportunity actually because you can really excel in something like that, but it’s really lumpy.

It's really lumpy with how you’re going to do it—seasonality as well. There are a couple of different instances where I went out to lunch with somebody in Arkansas who had just sold a pest control company for tens of millions of dollars.

We went out to lunch, and I was getting his opinion on what I was doing, and he was like, "I don't understand. My whole life this whole first year,"—and I'm just rambling at this point, Austin, so you can cut me off whenever—"My whole first year of entrepreneurship has just been like Humble Pie. Just been like eating Humble Pie day after day after day.”

So I'm out to lunch with this guy, and he's super successful, and he’s like, "I just don’t understand your business model. I just don’t get it. Why would you only do Airbnb cleaning? You have all these cleaners. Why don’t you put them to work the rest of the week? Like they’re just sitting at home waiting for jobs until Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Why don’t you put them to work, do residential cleaning, and do commercial cleaning? You have all these assets, but you’re not using them. You’re just kind of sitting on the sidelines."

Talked to me about that, and I was like, "Man, I hated residential cleaning. I really didn’t like it at all." And so I just kind of sat on that.

Now we’ll get to the Johnny Robinson story, which I think is a hilarious story. Any questions on that first before I jump into the Johnny Robinson thing? Because that's a story and all in of itself.

AUSTIN GRAY: Well, my initial questions are—and you may be about to answer this—but like after he shares feedback on that, where's your head go? Do you consider jumping back into it? I know you said that you hated it.

LOGAN: I thought about it for a hot second, and I was like, "No, we’re going to make it work just Airbnb." Like, we're just going to do Airbnb. I'm going to totally ignore this advice. So I thought about it for maybe half a day, talked to my wife about it, and my wife was like, "Oh, well you could make it work by doing this," and have somebody else run the residential side since you hated it so much. But no, I didn’t really think much of it at that point.

It was in the back of my head, but I never really brought it up again.

AUSTIN GRAY: Why did you hate residential so much?

LOGAN: Everything comes back to my fault, right? It’s extreme ownership; whatever, it’s always my fault. I was really bad—and I’m learning this—I was really bad at setting proper expectations with customers and cleaners.

When I’m on a sales call, my natural tendency is to just say whatever I need to say to get the job, to get the deal done, and get it closed. A customer would say over the phone, "It's in really bad shape; it’s a hoarder situation," or, "I've been in the hospital for 10 weeks, and I've come home and it’s just a complete disaster." All of these situations, right?

These are typically just one-time cleans. A recurring residential clean doesn’t really have these problems, but a one-time deep clean or a move-out clean, you sometimes get really bad situations.

I was so eager to close the deal. I’m like, "Yeah, whatever! We'll get it done! Hoarder situation? Not a problem! We’ll get it done! We’ll take care of it!" It’s not an issue. Then I’d send my cleaners out there, and my cleaners would be pretty upset because they didn’t know going into it that it was this situation.

So they wouldn’t do a good job because I didn’t give them the right information. I didn’t give them the right pay, so they would be pretty upset. The job would not be fully done, and then the customer would be upset because the job's not fully done because I didn’t set expectations.

So I just had a couple bad experiences where I let both cleaners and customers down, and I said, “You know what? I'm just going to be done. I don’t like this anyway. I think there’s an opportunity in the Airbnb market to be really good in this space, and I think we've accomplished that here in Bentonville. I think we’ve got a really good reputation.

But we’re capped. We can only grow so much just doing Airbnb in a small town of 100,000 people when, you know, Airbnb is such a small percentage. But think about all the personal residences that need to be cleaned. Why am I limiting my growth so much by just focusing on that?

Okay, let’s go to Johnny’s dinner. What came of that conversation, Johnny? I hope you're listening to this. This dinner was crazy to me.

So this is what happened: My wife is from Las Vegas; she was born and raised in Las Vegas. Her parents have lived there their whole lives. So we are in Las Vegas for Christmas—this is just last month in December—and I'm walking down the street just on a walk, and I'm listening to another podcast with Johnny Robinson as the guest. I’m listening to Johnny, and I’m hearing him talk about cleaning business.

Then I’m like, “Wait! Johnny lives here in Las Vegas. I should reach out to Johnny and just get dinner!” It was Johnny’s first tweet that initially got me excited about the cleaning business. If you remember back, I started the cleaning business from a competition with some friends, and I learned about it from a tweet from Johnny.

So, I reached out to Johnny on Twitter. He follows me, so I reached out and said, “Hey, I’m sure you don’t normally do this, but I’m actually here in Vegas. I would love to take you out to dinner just to say thank you for the content.” Right? You've inspired me to start a cleaning business; I just want to say thanks.

So I messaged him that; he responded within like—it was like 30 minutes, it felt like—it was super fast, and he was like, “Absolutely, let’s do it! When are you free?"

I said, “Okay.” So we decided on a date, and I told him, “You pick the restaurant because you live here in Las Vegas; you know better than me.”

He sends me this restaurant, and I look it up. I'm a really frugal guy. Fine dining is not my thing. I don't like to spend money; I’m happy with like a Five Guys burger. I'm not a fancy guy when it comes to eating.

He sends me this restaurant; it’s right on the strip, and I looked at the website, and there’s a dress code at the restaurant. I’m like, “Oh gosh! What did I get myself into? What is this?” So I’m messaging. Anyway, so he tells me to show up at this time.

I show up at this time, and the wait staff there—the hostesses—are like, “I’m here to meet with Johnny; I have a reservation with Johnny Robinson.” They were like, “Oh Johnny? We know Johnny! We love Johnny! He’s here all the time!” I was like, “Alright, this is going to be really interesting.” It’s a really fancy restaurant.

So Johnny walks in, and we have a great conversation. He asks me, “Look, tell me about your business.” I'm like, “Oh, well we’re going to do like $250k this year. Yeah, all Airbnb. Got a full-time manager.” Just like, really kind of bragging on myself; I feel pretty proud about my business.

He just looks at me—in like the nicest way possible, because he’s a nice guy, a really, really nice guy—he just looks at me and says, “Dude, you screwed this all up.”

He was like, “This is bad. I don’t know what you did, but this is not good.” Johnny Robinson is like the Godfather of cleaning Twitter. He knows a lot about the space, and he’s like, “I would have never gotten into Airbnb. Airbnb is the hardest business because of all those things I mentioned earlier. He has the Home Service Academy, and he says, 'We teach our students that Airbnb is the last business you want to go into because of all those things.'"

Then he's like, “And why the heck did you hire a full-time manager? That’s where all your profit went—you paid her! What the heck were you doing all year? Like you had this full-time manager; what were you doing? Were you just sitting on your butt, just not doing anything?”

So he just, like, in the nicest way possible—right, Johnny, if you’re listening, I thought you handled this really well—just ripped me a new one. He was like, “Alright, you screwed this all up; we need to restart this entire thing.”

Anyway, that’s not the exciting part though.

The exciting part though is we sit down, and the waitress comes up, and he’s like, “We want two salmon tacos for the appetizer.” I’m the kind of guy that I just get the entree. I get the cheapest thing on the menu—no appetizers, we’re done. No drinks, just water, we’re done.

So he’s like, “Two salmon tacos.” Then the lady comes back after we have our appetizers. I’m jumping around, but she comes back and he’s like, “We’re going to get the tomahawk steak.” I was like, “Uh, okay! Yeah, go for it, Johnny. Like, whatever! It’s on me!”

So the waitress goes back, and he leans over and says, “That’s a $350 steak. You’re good with that, right?” I was like, “Oh my gosh!” Trying not to embarrass myself because I'm super frugal, but I was like, “Yep, whatever, Johnny! It’s all good.”

And anyway, the dinner keeps going. He gets shots. I don’t drink, but he orders some shots. The managing director of the restaurant comes over and takes shots with him—like Johnny’s a local celebrity at this restaurant because he posted some TikTok that got like seven million views about how this is the best restaurant in Las Vegas.

Anyway, he says he pretty much goes there once a week, and so everybody at the restaurant knows him. Anyway, the total bill came out to be like $500 for the restaurant bill, and I'm like, “$500 is my monthly grocery budget! My whole grocery budget for the whole month is like $500!”

Then the bill comes, and anyway, he was like, “I got this! I ordered a $350 steak!” By like we shared it, and he said I got this.

Anyway, I felt bad because obviously, I had invited him like, I invited him; it's on me. So I offered to pay for it. We ended up splitting it, which I think we were both happy with. But anyway, through that dinner—first of all, a crazy dinner with the restaurant and everything was awesome—they lit the steak on fire in front of us, which I didn’t know what that was about. Super cool!

Anyway, so from that dinner, more business-related stuff. Johnny was like, “Look, you put yourself in a tough spot because Airbnb is really complicated, and it’s no wonder you’re stressed out and that your manager just quit because of burnout—it’s extremely stressful. Here’s what you need to do: go back into residential. Go do post-construction. Do commercial! Get rid of the operations band. Hire two VAs. Keep your Airbnb business, obviously, but you have to branch out into other stuff.”

And his challenge to me was, “Look, you need to be at a million dollar run rate by the end of the year!” That was like his nose to the grindstone. He was like, “Stop screwing around! Million dollar run rate by the end of the year or you're just wasting time.”

So, really impactful dinner. I ended up, you know, keeping in touch with Johnny. I'm working with him through Home Service Academy. I'm one of their students now in the accelerator course, which has been great, but really just Humble Pie, right? Like I said earlier, the first year of entrepreneurship is just Humble Pie day after day after day.

So it was an incredible dinner; I’ll remember that forever, probably because I think it was really impactful for me just for somebody to tell me, “Man, you've really screwed this up.”

So anyway, that’s kind of the story—but so that future, 2025, looks a lot different than 2024 did. We’re going to be going into all types of different cleans, so we've already picked up lots of residential accounts just in January. We’re already starting to do some commercial outreach, post-construction outreach.

So it’s going to look very different in 2025.

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AUSTIN GRAY: Fantastic! This is awesome! So why don't we break down a little bit further the numbers that were associated with that—let's call it $242k in revenue—and you’re paying an ops manager? Like that triggered Johnny, so let’s dive into the numbers. Right? About like how much were you paying that ops manager?

And then I believe that you had a section in your prep document where you wanted to dive into this. So how much were you paying her?

LOGAN: Yeah, that position really...this is the story. I quit my job, and I did this full-time for a week. So when I was working full-time at this corporation, I had a VA that was running it, so I was not really involved in the day-to-day. He was running it while I was at work.

Then when I quit, I was the only person running it for a week. I was answering calls, doing all the coordination, and I was like, “Man, this kind of sucks! I can’t believe I quit my job for this! I don’t really want to do this.” So I hired an office manager. I was like, “Okay, I gotta hire somebody who knows what they’re doing full-time here in person.”

A VA is great, but I need somebody that’s going to like really take this by the reins and just run with it. So I brought her on. Originally, she was part-time, but I just kept giving her stuff to do, and pretty soon she was full-time.

It was $20 an hour; she ended up being $22 an hour, which I think comes out to be like $3,500 or $3,600 a month, something like that. So she was full-time.

And then I really wanted to incentivize her to grow the business well—keep the business healthy and keep our customers and cleaners happy—so I was giving her—she had the opportunity to make an extra $1,500 a quarter based on our customer NPS, our cleaner NPS, and our gross profit margin.

I wanted our gross profit margin to remain above 25%. That was always the goal. I wanted our cleaner NPS to be above a five and our customer NPS to be above a five, which basically says we're positive.

Our customers and cleaners would recommend us. So I gave her the opportunity to earn an extra $1,500 every quarter to do these certain things to make sure we were still tracking.

So it ended up being really expensive to have a full-time manager. Obviously, I should have known that I was not prepared for that at all. I think that was very premature for me to do that—to hire a full-time manager—just because it was so expensive.

That's where all the profit went, right? I don’t know what my profit...I guess I could do the math right now, but my profit margin without her probably would have been like 30%.

So I think there was a… I think it was a mistake. She was great; she did a really good job, and I can talk about how we kind of separated at the end there, but I think when I look back on it, could I have figured out a different solution that would have kept my profit margin from being 17%? Yeah, absolutely, for sure.

So that’s what we’re doing in 2025. This is a new year. Let’s talk about those changes. You mentioned bringing on two VAs.

1. Where are you finding those two?
2. What is the pay rate going to be?
3. What roles and responsibilities are they going to handle?

LOGAN: I’m thinking about it this way. I need two VAs because, like I said, Airbnb cleaning is really intense. If I had a full-time manager quit because of burnout, that's probably gonna happen again if I just have one person running it. So I needed two VAs.

One, I just found from doing online jobs—onlinejobs.ph. So one is from the Philippines at $5 an hour, and then I’ve got a friend who actually is starting a staffing agency in Peru, but it’s a very different model—there’s no upfront fee.

I think I’m paying $6 an hour for the VA that I hired out of Peru. I interviewed her last week; her English is incredible! So good!

I think, obviously, people in the Philippines have good English, but she doesn’t have any accent at all! She literally sounds American, so I’m very excited about potentially doing some cold calling there and getting her on the phone and everything like that.

So at the end of the month, that's still going to be half of what I was paying that operations manager.

So I was paying that operations manager about $3,500 a month. This is going to be like $1,700 a month, right? So it's going to be half of that. The roles that I’m kind of splitting this up—and I was talking to my wife about it last night because I don’t think I have a good feel on it. I really want one of them to just be focused on managing the business.

Like, “Hey! You are managing the cleaners; you’re managing the schedules; you are talking to existing customers, and you’re managing—you’re running the business; you’re running the playbook.” The other VA, I want you focused 100% on sales and on growing the business.

Like, you and I are going to work together to grow this business, so you’re going to be in charge of our marketing. You’re going to be in charge of our cold calling because we’re probably going to start doing cold calling for some commercial accounts, and your whole job is to grow this business.

You should do nothing else but grow the business. We’re also open seven days a week, so they’ll take some responsibilities when the other person has an off day.

But two VAs: one person focused on running the playbook, and one person focused on growing the business. That’s going to be my focus too—is how do I land these bigger accounts because, yeah, I really do want to be at a million dollar run rate by the end of the year or I feel like I’ve kind of wasted my time!

So that’s the goal. That’s kind of how we’re setting it up.

AUSTIN GRAY: Sweet! Is that how Johnny recommends it in his Home Service Academy?

LOGAN: Yeah, so I think I’m tweaking it just a little bit but at the dinner, he was like, “You need two VAs.”

He said, “I would have one do customer service and one do operations.” So one customer-facing and one cleaner-facing.

I thought about that a lot. I don’t know that it’s going to work necessarily for my business because, like Airbnb is so intricate that we have hosts texting us every day of like, “Hey, I just ordered new supplies,” or “Hey, this guest has a late checkout,” or “Hey, this guest said that this thing was wrong.”

If I had it like that, those VAs would be playing telephone. We’d just be playing a lot of telephone for the person to tell the cleaner what the host said.

So I didn’t want to do it like that. So I’m thinking one person, your main job is to grow the business, and your main job is to just run the existing business that we have. That’s kind of how I’m thinking about it.

AUSTIN GRAY: And how are you thinking about directing your sales, marketing, and outreach strategy?

LOGAN: We turned on Google LSA, which we did not do at all last year. We didn’t have Google LSA running at all. So we’ve turned on Google LSA; that’s going to be mainly driving people from the residential side.

From there, we've already closed—I mean, just in the month of January, we've probably already closed five or six jobs just off of that—just off of Google LSA.

So that’s going to drive our residential business and get that on autopilot. For commercial and post-construction, that’s not going to work as well to run ads, so that’s going to be a lot of cold and warm outreach.

So I think my job as the business owner now is to start to talk to other business owners—right? Start to get referral partners. Start to say, "Hey, you own a plumbing company; how can I help you? Oh, by the way, if you know anybody that needs cleaning, let us know."

I think that's going to be my role—establish those relationships with other business owners.

And I want to call them “whales,” but like other people that can be good referral partners for us. So like today, I’m going to do a walkthrough at a bank, right?

So we’re doing a walkthrough at a bank that I got from cold calling to say, “Hey, we’d love to give you a quote for cleaning.”

So I’m going to go do a walkthrough and give a quote for cleaning at a bank, right? So it’s going to be much more warm and cold outreach, but those are bigger accounts.

Right? So they don’t come as easily through ads. So that one person that I’m going to—her job is growing the business—is going to do a lot of warm and cold outreach for us.

AUSTIN GRAY: That’s awesome! I hosted Brandon Dixon. Have you met Brandon yet?

LOGAN: I don’t think so.

AUSTIN GRAY: Street sweeping! He bought a street sweeping business. The reason I bring this up is besides just let me see if I can pull up the episode number here.

We talked all about cold outreach, and he's growing that street sweeping business specifically targeting the same types of customers you are—like commercial customers, property management customers, basically like construction cleans, just street sweeping, right?

So, he's targeting all of these different groups of people, and he's getting the data from several different software. Then he’s putting it into a couple different cold email software.

Then he’s having a VA reach out with cold email, and then when he gets a lead, he kind of jumps in on the warm lead. I found it to be really interesting.

Yeah, because Jake, who owns Colorado Power Wash down in Denver, he’s really good at sales, but he was kind of interested in how do I need to do more cold outreach? We did a three-part excuse me—a three-person podcast on that one.

I’ll send you that episode, but let me see if I can just pull it up real quick.

LOGAN: I’m going to listen to that for sure. I’m going to listen to that for sure because that’s kind of how I grew the Airbnb cleaning business—is our marketing last year.

Like I said, we only spent $1,000 in marketing, so it was all organic or cold outreach! So it was split evenly: a third found us through Facebook because I would post a lot on Facebook and in our Northwest Arkansas hosts Airbnb hosts Facebook group. I’d post a lot in there! And then Google.

So a third Facebook, a third Google, and then a third just word-of-mouth referrals—that’s really how we grew all last year. And so I did a lot of cold outreach—just cold DMs on Facebook—and I think that built a lot of relationships. I don’t think that necessarily translated to sales, but yeah, send me that. I would love to listen to that because we’re gonna be doing that a lot this year.

AUSTIN GRAY: It was episode number 50. I’m going to text it over to you right now in the chat, and then we’ll post the link in the description for anybody else who’s listening to this.

But that was just a master class on cold outreach. He goes over all the different software that he uses; he goes over how he's finding the data.

I mean, he’s pulling like a complete list of property management companies, a complete list of builders in specific areas that he can just have his VA send emails like, "Hey, we’re a street sweeping business; would love to throw you a quote.”

Right? And then he has the scripts in there, and I found it to be very helpful. We did that for the snow shoveling side this year whenever we launched that, and that worked out well for you guys.

LOGAN: Yes, yes! Property management companies are a gold mine! It's like selling one and getting access to hundreds!

AUSTIN GRAY: But don’t you think property managers are also pretty cheap? Like they’re always just looking for the cheapest labor? I mean that’s a broad generalization, but do you think that’s an issue with property managers?

LOGAN: Maybe! I can't speak for other markets. I know how it is in mountain towns. We just deal with a kind of like labor shortages here.

AUSTIN GRAY: Yeah, you’re constrained.

LOGAN: But I can't speak for other markets. I think it’s worth a shot because—yeah! Because if you can get... I’m pumped for this new VA to start on Monday. I mean, I interviewed her last week, and her English—I mean, we did a mock call together!

One thing that I really like about Johnny's program with the accelerator—so it’s HSA, which is for new business owners—and he has the accelerator program, which is for people that are already running cleaning businesses that just want to grow.

So I’m in the accelerator program. So I guess free plug for Johnny—send me a referral link, I guess!

I really like that because, you know, I have a coach. They sign you with a coach, and that coach was on VA calls with me—on VA interviews with me! Like he interviewed like four or five VAs with me!

Wow! He would ask them questions, and he would do like a mock sales call with that VA. At the end of the interview, he’d be like, “Yep, no, like not great. Yes, they’re good.”

Wow!

So that was really cool! I had this new person do a mock sales call with me last week, and her English was just amazing! I was just like, “Man!”

So I know that I’ve worked with people in the Philippines before, and their English is really good, but you don’t have any accent at all. Like you literally sound American! So I’m very excited about potentially doing some cold calling there. Get her on the phone and everything like that!

AUSTIN GRAY: Wow! That's incredible that they assign you with a coach, and they'll do interviews with you!

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LOGAN: How much does that program cost?

AUSTIN GRAY: Oh, I don’t want to talk about that. You could ask Johnny!

LOGAN: Alright, fair enough!

AUSTIN GRAY: It was not cheap. Not cheap, okay? It's a big investment! It’s a big investment, right? Just like any coaching program, it’s a really big investment. But like, look!

I don’t want to say this is my one shot because I think it's stupid to put limiters on it, but like I really want to hit it big this year. Like I really want to go all in and just go hit it as hard as I can.

So look, I’m willing to invest—the money and the time—to give me the best opportunity possible to get me there. I think for sure they're going to provide because it’s a year-long program.

Right? I meet with my coach weekly for a year, right? So they’re not just like, “Here’s a couple of recorded videos; go watch these.” It’s, “I meet with this coach once a week for a full year.”

I think that, you know, is that worth the amount of money I paid? I pretty sure it will be! So yeah, I’m a big fan of coaches.

It's like, I don’t know—did you play sports growing up?

AUSTIN GRAY: Yeah!

LOGAN: So like I don’t know. I just always, like, when I was considering hiring a coach last year, I’m like, “Man, there was always this element whenever I was playing. It was like I just wanted to impress my coach.”

And so I’m like, “Man, how can I tap into that in business as well?” So I did the same thing. And it’s not cheap; it’s been like $15,000 hiring less, but the learning lessons that I got from working with him, I'm like, I mean, it’s just gonna be like 10x over like the rest of my career! You know what I mean?

Now that I’m, you know, in his program, I definitely should not have paid for that steak; he 100% should have paid for that steak.

AUSTIN GRAY: Just kidding!

LOGAN: Oh, that's awesome! But I have a couple book recommendations just talking about that. So I’ve been down this rabbit hole of Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy. So the couple of books they've written together—"Who Not How," "10x is Easier Than 2x," and "The Gap and the Gain."

Three really, really good books about entrepreneurship and about why the common way of doing entrepreneurship, like just grinding it out and just being miserable, is just a really terrible approach. So I’d recommend those books to anybody.

I got them on Audible because they have this interview format, and it’s just really, really incredible, especially the "Who Not How." Right?

Like, why you could—I could spend the whole year trying to learn how to price my business, trying to learn how to do quotes for commercial, trying to learn how to do quotes for post-construction, trying to learn how to hire a VA, trying to learn how to hire more cleaners of these types of spaces with these type of skills.

And I could spend all year doing it, or I could take a shortcut, right? I could pay, you know, X amount of dollars to get coached on how to do this and kind of have my hand held while doing this.

And at the end of the year, in December, I better be way further ahead because I paid this money, right? So I look at it as building a shortcut, and yeah, there’s for sure a lot of grifters out there—like people that don’t actually know what they’re talking about.

My earlier days on Twitter when I was like, “I made like $5,000; let me tell you everything I know about the cleaning business!” And now I know that I know nothing.

My the way that I post on Twitter has changed a lot, and now it’s, “Hey, I don’t know the right answer. This is how I’m thinking about it, and this is how I'm doing it. I hope this is beneficial for somebody else.”

So yeah, I really appreciate that approach, and it aligns. I mean, I think this is why this is the third time we've had you on, right? Third or fourth?

AUSTIN GRAY: Yeah, this is the third.

LOGAN: Yeah, and this is why I continue to have you on because it's like when we started this. I mean, there's all the podcasts like My First Million. It’s like everybody is always talking about the exits, like I’ve already done this, and this is how, you know, like the quick version of a decade play on building a tech company, right?

So it’s like the whole point of having this podcast and having these conversations with people like you is to showcase under the hood of what it's actually like to start from zero.

Because I think there are so many formative decisions that you have to make in that zero to million phase. I mean, even like zero to 100K! Like just getting your first 100K, there is sort of a framework for that.

And to your point, you made a decision to invest in a coach to ideally go from roughly $250 to $1 million. And it’s like you place that bet, one, because you believe in yourself to follow the curriculum, and then you’re also placing a belief in the coach that the system and the framework work.

But look, I know it's going to work for you because I know you're gonna do the things and follow through on it. But there’s a reality that you make that decision, and it's a lot of money in the early days of business, and it doesn’t work out, right? Like, there’s always that chance.

And I feel like there are so many of those decisions—being only one of them—that just don’t get talked about online.

And so like I’m really appreciative that you’ve been on several times now just to share that growth journey because like the last time you were like, “Hey, we’re drawing a line in the sand; we’re going all in on Airbnb.”

And I think that’s small business! Right? You make these decisions, you go all in on it, you test it, and then you’re like, “Shoot! Yeah, I really screwed up there. Okay, let’s pivot! Let’s rock and roll!”

Right? And like I love your energy because you're just like, “Okay, I'm accepting it. There are a couple people I know and trust who are recommending that I go this other way. Let’s go do it for a year.”

So like I really just think like this is small business for our listeners: you are seeing firsthand what it’s like to quit your W2 job from Logan and jump into small business and make decisions and go all in on it and then pivot again a year later.

And it’s like—yeah, that’s what we signed up for! You can change your mind; there’s nothing wrong with changing your mind. I think it’s a problem when you change your mind like every day, right? And you're like you can’t make a decision.

But I made a decision, and I went all in on Airbnb cleaning, and I realized at the end of the year that it probably was not a bad decision, but I don’t think it was the best decision.

And so I, like you, eat that Humble Pie. You’re like, “Look, I made a mistake. I'm wrong. Let’s fix it, and let’s change, and let’s pivot.”

But yeah, finding people that you trust that have been there before that are willing to share. Like the guy that I went to lunch with—he’s already made it! Like he’s in his 50s, sold this pest control company for tens of millions of dollars; a multi-state pest control company, and he’s like already made it!

He has no incentive to tell me what to do, but he’s like, “Hey, from one entrepreneur to another, like what are you doing? Like you really should probably think about this differently.”

So finding those trusted mentors and having the humility to actually listen to them and think about—you know, I probably could have done this better. So yeah, it’s really cool to watch the journey, and I do appreciate you coming on and sharing here.

LOGAN: Yeah, sure! I’ve got—was there one other thing on my prep doc that we didn’t discuss? Hold on just one second...oh, my summer shiny object syndrome, which I think will be good.

AUSTIN GRAY: And I believe that that’s kind of—I'm interested to hear what you have to say about shiny object syndrome because as somebody who struggles deeply with shiny object syndrome, like your ability to say no to that first guy, I think that’s a really good trait, even though like you’re looking back and going, “Okay, now I'm deciding to grow into residential and commercial.”

But that first decision, whenever that first person told you to think about it differently, you were like, “No, I made this decision; I'm going to give it enough time to see how it plays out.” I think that’s a powerful thing, Logan—I really do. But I’m interested to hear your perspective on shiny object syndrome and how it played out for you.

LOGAN: Yeah, so over the summer, and this is going to be a lesson—I think this is a lesson to all new entrepreneurs. Every time I speak, every time I do a podcast like this, I always try to put myself in the perspective of what would Logan want to hear a year before? Like what would Logan want to hear just like if I were a year younger?

So this year, the beautiful thing about entrepreneurship is a double-edged sword. The beautiful thing about entrepreneurship is you can up and go; you can leave; you can take a vacation!

So I decided with my wife and my kids that we were going to go on—my parents are in Utah; my wife’s family is from Las Vegas; and so we live in Arkansas, and we have no family out here. Our closest family is in Michigan, believe it or not, which is not close.

So we decided we’re going to go spend six weeks out in Utah and Nevada, and we’re just going to enjoy being with family for a long period of time.

In my mind, I was like, “Okay, that’ll be great! I've got a full-time manager; she’s got it under wraps. I can step out for six weeks.”

That was never my intention to just like kick my feet up and coast for six weeks, but when you’re with family for six weeks, when you’re staying at your parents’ house or your in-laws’ house and they haven’t seen you or their grandkids in several months, they just want to hang out and have fun.

And there’s nothing wrong with that; it’s wonderful! But as an entrepreneur, especially in your first year in business, that’s something you probably can’t afford to do.

So for six weeks—I probably worked two to three hours a day. But think about how much that halted the growth of my business! I think about those six weeks—peak of the summer, right? Airbnb cleaning.

Even if we had just stuck with Airbnb, and I said, “We’re gonna really hit this hard in the six weeks during the summer,” I think about how much business we lost just because I was like kind of checked out for six weeks.

I had this false sense of security that, “Oh, my manager will take care of everything.” And she did! The business did great! We continued to get five-star reviews and continued to make money. We continued to grow the business, but it did not grow nearly as fast as it would have had I been like, “You know what? I love my family; I love that we’re here spending time with them. I have to be disciplined and still work, you know, six, seven, eight hours a day.

Like, I still need to treat this like a full-time job. I can't take six weeks off.” And which is effectively what I did—I was only working two to three hours a day.

So let that be a caution to you as listeners: yeah, entrepreneurship is great! You’re going to get that first taste of freedom—time freedom—you’re like, “Oh, I can do whatever I want.” That’s true to an extent, but if you’re trying to grow, don’t do that!

Right? Like it was a bad decision. I regret it. Like I said, the first year is a bunch of Humble Pie.

And then the other thing that I did that I felt like was not the best decision is I started a newsletter as well, which I think is fine to like capture my thoughts and to share.

We have 6,000 subscribers now to the Airbnb cleaning newsletter. It's called Same Day Turn, and it’s all about Airbnb cleaning. So that was a good decision, but I spent more time building a newsletter than I did actually building the actual business.

So during those six weeks, I spent more time trying to grow subscribers and trying to build this newsletter—for what? Like, so I could have like a couple hundred dollars in ad revenue? What’s the point of doing that? And I neglected my business that’s making real money, that’s making real cash flow!

And I was like, “No, I’m just gonna focus on the newsletter.” And we’ll just ignore that. So like just cautions—I just have a bunch of cautions to first-time entrepreneurs of these are the traps that you can fall into.

If something’s working, just dig in and keep going. Like don’t get distracted by, “Oh, you might be able to do something here!”

Like what is a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush! It’s so true! Focus on the main business. Don’t take six weeks off during your first year; like really grind!

I love my family. I love that I got to spend time with them, but I was just irresponsible!

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AUSTIN GRAY: It’s such a great point because you see—I don’t know—like some people will reach out and they’re like, “Man, I just hate my corporate job! Like, I just want freedom and I want more time with my kids and I want time to travel and all these things.”

I’m like, “If you want to start like...” I mean you’re bringing the point up. I’m like, “I don’t think this is going to give you that lifestyle anytime in the first five years if you actually want to grow!”

Right? And so I’m glad you bring that point up because I see a lot of it, and it’s like... And once again, it’s like I’m really trying with this podcast just to showcase under the hood what it’s actually like to start the business and to not work corporate and to jump into entrepreneurship headfirst.

And you’re showing people what it’s actually like! But the reality is—and I believe that’s why I chose the username, the OWNR OPS, and like the OWNR OPS podcast—it's like, dude, you got to put on your owner-operator hat!

Like, it doesn’t mean you always have to stay like solo owner-operator, but you know for people listening to this, it’s like, like Logan said, like you step away for six weeks. Who else is doing sales? Who else is doing cold outreach?

LOGAN: We—sorry, sorry, six weeks, yeah!

AUSTIN GRAY: But like in those early days—as the owner of the business—you know it’s like that’s the hat that, if you want to grow, right?

And so I hope listeners can take your story and hear that in the beginning days because the first, I think that we’re Twitter X—whatever—that’s how we met each other; that’s how I’m sure a lot of your listeners have found out about this podcast.

Twitter/X is a blessing and a curse, right? I will—it's a blessing and a curse! It’s a blessing because that's how I started entrepreneurship, was because I saw that tweet from Johnny.

I built the cleaning business! I quit my job! All that came from Twitter, right? I attribute all of that to being on X, right?

The downside of that is you see the flip side or not the flip side, but you also see people who are on the boat all day, or they’re on the golf course all day, and they’re talking about how successful their business is.

And if you want to be successful, you’ve got to go play golf, and you’ve got to go: like—yeah, okay, that’s true to an extent, but it looks so enticing.

And it looks so appealing to be like, “Yeah, I can grow this business while I’m spending six weeks out in the pool in St. George, Utah!” Right?

Like, “Yeah, I can grow this business while I’m at the pool!” And like the reality is, “No, you can’t.”

Right? Like unless you have people doing the job that you’re supposed to be doing, it’s not going to grow! Right? Nobody was doing—you said it, nobody was doing cold outreach for me; nobody was marketing the business for me! It was all me at that point!

So who did I think was going to grow the business while I was by the pool? Right! Or golfing. And so Twitter’s, you know, it's a double-edged sword: you see the best, but then you also fall into traps that, you know, are just not true.

You can’t— you can’t be on the golf course all day and grow a business from zero to a million dollars by golfing! Right? Like sure, maybe somebody’s done it—maybe somebody’s done it before—but I don’t think so!

If they have, they’re likely very experienced entrepreneurs who have had multiple exits underneath their belt to where they’re just like, “Hey, I know what I need to do to start a business.

I have capital that I can deploy. I can hire the right people. I can put these people in to X, Y, and Z slots, and these people have these responsibilities, and ready, go! And then it’s like managing from there.

But it’s like when we’re on our first and second businesses, like still trying to get to that point, it’s like, man, the whole bootstrapping, like, scrappy mindset of like, I’ve got to wear as many hats as I can to keep that profit margin as high as I possibly can because cash flow is king!

And so, man, you're getting me all fired up right now because like this is the phase of business that I love!

I appreciate you sharing that story because it’s real! It’s real! If you’re listening to this and you're trying to start a business, like—and you’re seeing all the posts on Twitter about all the big-time guys who are on the golf course all day long—like it’s just not reality!

What are you going to change in 2025, and how are you going to hit the million mark with your personal time and schedule?

LOGAN: So I got to—I have to pull myself out of the day-to-day. Like, I think that is paramount to me hitting a million dollars. I have to pull myself out of the day-to-day! Right?

Like I cannot—I cannot be worrying about if this property doesn’t have the right supplies or this sheet is stained at this property!

I'm still very much involved in that, and I can’t do that if I’m trying to grow to a million. My process, my thought needs to be, “Okay, if these are tasks that do not require my direct input, I have to outsource them; I have to delegate them,” which is why I have two VAs now.

I cannot be growing a business if I’m worried about this property being out of shampoo! Right?

Like that is not going to help me grow my business! And to be frank, that takes a lot of time and effort to be like, “Okay, we got to place a Walmart delivery order; we got to get it there at the right time that the cleaners are going to be there.

They have to make sure it’s there before the guest like it’s a whole process. So I’m streamlining all of that!

We're probably going to, you know, do laundry offsite. We’re probably going to take laundry offsite to a professional laundry service, which is going to be a little more expensive.

We’re going to take supplies offsite and have all the supplies in a storage unit that the cleaners have to go to before they go to the property so they’re prepared.

So I’m changing up that process. I’ve hired two VAs: one is focused solely on operating the business, so I do not—frankly, I do not want to be contacted about this property being out of supplies or this property having a stain.

Because I need to spend my time connecting with other people, right? Like who are the people—who are the property managers that I need to be connecting with? Who are the branch managers at the banks that I need to be connecting with?

Who are these other people that are going to help me grow to a million dollars this year? Those are the people that I need to be spending my time with, and I need to be leading the team and delegating the team and training the team so they can operate without me!

Right? Not because I’m going to go sit on the beach for six weeks, but because I’m going to be spending my time on bigger picture opportunities, stuff, right?

I mean, I say that, and it sounds a little bit like I’m backtracking what I said earlier, but I’m not because I’m not going to go sit on the beach; I’m going to go be getting coffee with a plumbing company, right?

Like the owner of a plumbing company, and we’re going to talk about how we can do business together.

I’m going to go do cold visits and just stop by different places so I can drum up new business. Like I think my shift needs to 100% be—what are the things that only Logan is qualified to do?

I’m not going to send my VA, and I’m not going to send my cleaner to go meet with potential clients, right? That’s my job!

And so I need to focus on, “Okay, Logan! Get out of the day-to-day. Spend money on marketing. Actually invest in marketing and train your team so they can sell the one-time jobs or the recurring customers.”

And then Logan needs to go focus on what’s actually going to drive the business to a million dollars because I love the book—and my book recommendation that I’ll leave with your listeners—is "10x is Easier Than 2x" by Dan, ah gosh...Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan.

They really focus on, look, the business owner—if you break your tasks up into 80/20, right? Like what 20% of tasks or what 20% of responsibilities drive 80% of the business?

That 20% is what the business owner needs to focus on, and he has to delegate the rest of it! Right?

So what is the 20% in the cleaning business? That 20% is actually building those relationships with bigger customers: property managers and things like builders and things like that.

Like I have to build those relationships so that we can 10x. If I just want to 2x my business, we did 250 last year; if I want to get to 500k this year, then doing what I’ve been doing is going to be fine—like we’re going to get there.

We finished last year, our run rate—we did like $438,000 in November, so we’re on a $500,000-a-year run rate.

We’re on a half a million dollar-a-year run rate, and if I want to hit half a million dollars, we can just keep doing what we’re doing. But I’m trying to hit a million dollars.

So how do I completely change what we’re doing, delegate the stuff that I do not need to be involved in, so that I can focus on bigger picture stuff and build those relationships? So that’s what we’re changing. You know, plus actually spending on marketing and investing there.

AUSTIN GRAY: I love it! I love it! Well, I am going to be excited to stay in touch with you throughout this year.

I think you’re focusing on all the right things, and I’m excited to see you hit a million! I know you can do it, and I know that you will do it!

LOGAN: Let’s do it! I’m excited!

AUSTIN GRAY: Why don’t we do like a... I think what we’re going to do here—an idea popped in my head, it’s like thinking about doing some sort of like an OWNR OPS t-shirt for like people—anybody who starts and hits the seven-figure mark, maybe like some sort of like package for the OWNR OPS podcast?

Yes! If any listeners have any ideas about that, whatever would be cool, let us know!

LOGAN: Give me one!

AUSTIN GRAY: YouTube! I’m always jealous of those YouTube plaques that say like, “Oh, the YouTube plaque. A million subscribers!”

Like I want a plaque—a gold plaque that says a million dollars in sales! Like that’s a goal!

LOGAN: Noted! Noted!

AUSTIN GRAY: I love it! Well, it’s always good to catch up with you, Logan, and thanks so much for being on another episode of the OWNR OPS podcast!

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LOGAN: Thanks for being on!

AUSTIN GRAY: Yeah, thank you! I appreciate it!

Alright, listeners! We’ll see you guys in the next episode! Don’t forget: work hard, do your best, and never settle for less!