Austin Gray: Hey, welcome back to the OWNR OPS podcast! I'm your host, Austin Gray. In this episode, I have Logan Robison joining us. Logan is the owner of a short-term rental cleaning company in Northwest Arkansas. Logan has been on the podcast before, and when he joined, I was starting the podcast, and Logan was starting his business while still having his full-time job.

Since then, Logan has quit his full-time job. He has also made a strategic decision to not take on any cleans other than short-term rental Airbnb cleans. At the time that he made that decision, he was at about $10K a month in revenue. He made the strategic decision to turn down those other cleans, he dipped down to $5K, and then he put all his effort into growing the business. Now, he's at right around $30K a month.

Stick around for this whole episode if you want to learn how Logan has thought about specializing in Airbnb cleans and then growing that part of the business. If you are enjoying these episodes, we would sure appreciate a five-star review. Very similar to building a local service business, five-star reviews are super important for podcasts. So would you take 30 seconds right now if you're listening on Spotify or Apple and just leave us a five-star review?

You can also follow the podcast; you'll get notified when episodes drop. And if you're listening on YouTube, we would sure appreciate a like and subscribe to the channel. If you have any ideas for who would be a good guest on the show, leave their name in the comments below, and I'll be sure to reach out to them to see if they're a good fit.

The OWNR OPS podcast, our mission here, is to deliver small business owners strategies, tools, tips, and tricks to help you grow—very simply put. So I hope you're enjoying this content; we are having a lot of fun creating this. I appreciate all you guys for listening. I did an update episode about five weeks ago, and after I checked the analytics, we had about 35,000 listens.

So I never dreamed that it would turn into this, but I do appreciate your support. I have a ton of fun with this, and I love talking business and I love talking growth strategies. So thanks again for your support. I hope you stick around; let's have some fun in this episode.

Let's jump into it. Logan, welcome back to the show!

Logan Robison: Hey, thanks, man. I appreciate it! Excited to be here.

Austin Gray: Yeah, it’s good to catch up with you.

Logan Robison: Yeah, likewise! I'm glad that I can come back on and tell kind of part two, right? Last time I was on, I was making some really big changes. So it'll be cool to kind of walk through what's happened—what's the aftermath?

Austin Gray: For sure! Last time you hadn't even quit your job yet. Could you give listeners a quick overview if they have not listened to that first episode? Just a quick introduction about you and then where you were at that time because you had just started and you still had your job at that point.

Logan Robison: Yeah, the last time I was on your podcast, I think I was—it was like Christmas or Thanksgiving break, one of the two breaks, because I was in Michigan at my grandparents' house. I was talking to you about how we had just transitioned. So I own a cleaning business, right? So, to kind of set the stage, I was talking to you about how I was just transitioning from doing all types of cleans—residential, commercial, Airbnb—and just saying, "I'm gonna hone in on just Airbnb. I'm only going to do Airbnb cleans."

Well, like the next day, I was turning down residential clean requests like it was—no, we are full in—we are only doing Airbnb. It felt kind of dumb, right? Like turning down money—cleans that I know we could do, and we had space in the schedule to do them. But it was more of a mindset of, "No, I'm digging my heels in and we are only going to do Airbnb."

Anyway, so that was, let's see… yeah, fall. I can't remember; Thanksgiving or Christmas? But I ended up quitting my job. So I had that conversation with my manager and basically said, "Look, this is what I want to do. I want to go full-time on my side hustle, make it my main hustle." I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur, right? So this has always been in the cards.

So I had that conversation on February 1st—the first day of the brand-new fiscal year for my previous employer—and I said, "This is what I want to do." I gave my two weeks' notice; I quit. I think February 6th, 14th, or 16th was my official last day. I think I might have stayed on a day or two extra, but yeah, that was my official last day.

So it’s been a crazy ride since then.

Austin Gray: Yes, and I can't wait to dive into it. So real quick, just so our listeners have all the details. You had started as a side hustle, a cleaning business, while you still had your full-time job. And at that time of recording, you were making the decision—I specifically remember this because we were talking about this whole conversation of generalizing versus specializing—and you were actively making this decision to specialize in Airbnb cleans.

And if I remember correctly, you even did a rebrand—not a rebrand per se, but just like changed up the website and changed up the description and stuff like that.

Logan Robison: Yeah, okay. And remind listeners your website link.

Austin Gray: Yeah, so my company's name is Bonnie and a Broom. There's a whole backstory there. Look, I thought about the name in like two seconds because I never thought this was going anywhere, right? Like I started this company, if you remember, as part of a competition—as part of just like a six-week competition. So I was like, "First name that pops in my head, that’s what it is."

My grandma's name is Bonnie; she loves to clean, and it's an alliteration—Bonnie and a Broom—whatever, that's the name. Didn't think about it because I never thought this was going anywhere, like I never thought this was going to be a thing.

Now it's my full-time job—like now I quit my really cushy job to come start a cleaning company named Bonnie and a Broom. So, I mean, there's a whole story there, but I never thought about the name for more than two seconds. So I just got to give that backstory: the name is horrible, but it's okay; it’s memorable, and you have the domain bonnieandabroom.com.

Logan Robison: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the website.

Austin Gray: Okay, so let's dive into it. You made the choice to specialize in Airbnb cleans. Here we are, I guess it's longer than six months later. It’s like a blink three times in summer. I know it’s gone by quickly. Catch us up—how has it been?

Logan Robison: Things have been great! Honestly, things have been going really, really well. It's been a completely different change of life experience and pace of life from when I was working full-time. So yeah, I quit—it's actually—so I quit in February; I was putting myself full-time on the business for the first time because you're right, it was a side hustle, right? So I was doing probably two hours a day—like one hour during lunch and one hour in the evenings—and I had a virtual assistant.

So he was kind of managing everything during the day. But then I was like—on the first week I'm doing this full-time, I hated it, to be completely honest with you. I was like, "What the crap did I just do?" One week after quitting my job, and I was running this full-time, I was like, "This sucks!"

Because previously, I had a virtual assistant that was dealing with all the drama, right? Cleaner calls in sick, a host is upset about something, right? So I had kind of a VA to shelter me from that. And so when I was doing this now full-time, I had to deal with all that because I eventually parted ways with my VA, and I was dealing with it all full-time, and I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is terrible! I do not want to do this."

So about that week—so I quit Friday, fast forward to the next Friday—I put a job posting up for a full-time manager. I was like, "I'm not dealing with this!" I put a full-time manager job posting up.

So a week after quitting my job, probably like two or three weeks later, I had hired a full-time manager. She's incredible; I got incredibly lucky. She's with me today, obviously, and I'm so much happier than I was that first week. So I really kind of put the pieces together of I am trying to not be as removed as possible but try to focus on the stuff that only I can focus on.

I'm not the only one that can deal with schedules and respond to cleaners and do all this stuff. So I wanted to put somebody in place that could do that while I focus on networking and meeting with potential clients and really focusing on the high-level sales piece of it and the strategy.

So she came in, I think she probably came in early March, mid-March, and we've just been gunning. So when I quit—and I'll just walk through the financials with you because I know that's important for your listeners—you're going to think I'm absolutely nuts for doing this. When I was talking to you last, we were doing about $10K a month on a top line, which is like—not a lot of money. Like you probably shouldn't quit your job on $10K a month top line, but I was very optimistic, and I still feel pretty optimistic about it.

And so I quit—so $10K a month—then we said, "Okay, screw it; we're only doing Airbnb cleans." Well, that dropped down to $5K a month because I was only accepting Airbnb cleans, and we were brand new. Like nobody knew who we were at that point. So now we're doing $5K a month, and I'm like, "Well, this is not great! I'm going to go quit my job." Still, I'm doing this anyway.

Today, we're about $25K to $30K a month, so we've since come back full-on after that. And I think at the end of this year, my goal is to be hitting $40K a month by December; that’s kind of my timeline.

Austin Gray: So it works out—it works out if you put your full force into it. Good for you, man! I am excited to hear that. I mean, it’s such a bold move, and I think something I like about you is from the very beginning, you were not afraid to make those decisions.

Some people, I think, get so caught up in the generalization versus specialization. And that one—and then also another question I've been getting recently is how do you hire that first person? Because a lot of our listeners are in that solo owner-operator phase, and just like you, one of the first hires I made was just somebody to help me out with the back office because it does free you up brain space-wise to focus on—everybody always calls them higher leverage tasks. I just believe it’s more like tasks that nobody else is really going to go do, right?

Sure! So the specialization thing paid off for you; for the listeners, like you're hearing that he made a bold decision, went down to $5K, and now you're back up with a goal to hit $40K by the end of the year. I'm curious to know, how did you recruit that general manager? How did you go about hiring?

Logan Robison: Yeah, that's a great question. I think it might just be my personality, but I was really itching to get out of the mundane day-to-day cleaner drama—like a cleaner canceled; now I got to backfill—like I didn’t like that at all. Everything was on fire; my hair is always on fire when you're doing that and I thought, "Man, I'm going to die super young if this is the rest of my life," and so I got to get some buffer there. I got to find out how to solve this because I don't want to deal with hair-on-fire issues every single day, which it's inevitable if you're a small business owner.

But I think you can buffer it at least a little bit. So the manager that I hired—I had actually—there's another high-end property management company in my area. They don't just do cleaning; they're a full-service property management company, but they only service Airbnbs.

And I had saw her on LinkedIn as a cleaner, and I reached out to her previously to ask if she would clean for us because we were looking for cleaners, and she responded, "No, I really enjoy my job, blah, blah, blah." Anyway, so this is kind of the backstory. I posted a job for a full-time operations manager on Indeed.

There’s no secret formula—just on Indeed, a free posting that says "Operations Manager, this is what we do." She was the very first person that applied. I immediately recognized her name; I remember that she was kind when I was messaging her on LinkedIn. I think that kind of stuff goes a long way when you have a positive interaction with somebody.

And so I just remembered I recognized her name immediately, interviewed her—she obviously knew everything—she had actually been promoted to manager at this property management company. So now she was managing cleaners; she was essentially doing the same thing that I was looking for. She had since quit that company and was looking for her next opportunity.

So it was pretty quick. I mean, I interviewed her; she was the first person that applied, the first person I interviewed. I think I ended up getting like 30 or 40 applications; I only interviewed two people—no, three. I interviewed three people, but I just knew right off the bat that she was exactly what I was looking for—previous cleaner, promoted to manager, was looking for her next opportunity—super ambitious.

So, yeah, that was it. She's young; I think she’s probably in her mid-20s, but like is looking to grow—wants to make a big career. That type of ambition, like you just can't find in a lot of places, so I knew I had to snag her.

Austin Gray: A lot of people bash Indeed, at least from what I've seen online. But it seems I've had luck with it too. My question for people who are bashing is like, why not? Why are they bashing it? What are they saying about it?

Logan Robison: Just meaning like—I’ve seen some people say things like, "You're not going to find your top talent; the who you’re trying to recruit is not lurking on Indeed." And I just haven't had that experience. We've posted on Indeed and had great luck with it, and so it's like anytime people ask, "How do you go find this person?" it’s like, "Well, have you tried the job—like Indeed?"

We have no excuses as entrepreneurs.

Austin Gray: I mean, this opens up a can of worms for me. Twitter’s great. Twitter's awesome—X I should say, which is where we met. For some contact people, people like me and that are in my stage of life, right? Like a small business like we’ll maybe scratch $300K this year—that would be amazing if we did. Small. We have small business. The people that are posting on X, that are getting a ton of traffic—a ton of impressions, are people that are running multi-million dollar businesses.

So they are telling you things that they are currently experiencing, right? Like people on X that are running multi-million dollar businesses that have the capacity to pay six figures for somebody, like yeah, that might be right—that those people are not on Indeed because they're probably getting recruited by Head Hunters.

It's a totally different game for me; there's no way that I could pay somebody six figures, so the people that I'm looking for, they are on Indeed, right? Like I’m not going to go hire a headhunter or a recruiter to go find somebody for me. So the people that talk on X that are getting a ton of impressions and a ton of likes—and they’re the business gods on Twitter—they're in a totally different reality than the 90% of people that are following them.

The 90% of people that are following them are small business owners. There's one specific example where they're posting about—I don't remember, but I know some of the stuff that they're posting—encouraging you to do things you shouldn’t do.

Like they are saying that from a very different perspective. They have millions of dollars in the bank. They don’t need to grind—you need to grind. That is a very different story than what you're hearing. You need to be listening to Austin; you need to be listening to people that are similar to your situation where they're saying, "No, you need to bust your butt and you need to grind. Ignore these people because they have millions of dollars in the bank. You don't have millions of dollars in the bank, so you have to grind."

Sorry, that’s like a can of worms, so like ignore 90% of what you hear on Twitter because those people have already made it. They don't know what they're talking about because they're not in your situation.

Austin Gray: Sorry, man, that’s such a good word! And I know you said it opened a can of worms, but I've felt the same thing. Like I see some of those posts, and I’m like, why not Indeed?

Obviously, it’s worked for you. I mean, just as simple as like going to your local coffee shops and just asking people who are working behind the bar, oftentimes that's—it's not a full-time career for them; they're kind of in this transition phase of life, you know, where they're like maybe just graduated college. They just moved to this place, they’re trying to find a full-time role. Simple things like that, and we have no excuse today. There are so many job boards—what is there? I've only used Indeed; I haven’t used ZipRecruiter.

But yeah, to your point, LinkedIn as well. Did you do some direct outreach? What was your thought process on LinkedIn as far as outreach goes?

Logan Robison: Yeah, LinkedIn I was just—it was pretty directed. I knew what I was looking for, so I just typed in, you know, "Airbnb cleaner Bentonville Arkansas" right to see if anybody had that on their LinkedIn profile, right? Typically, if you're an Airbnb cleaner, you most likely don't have a LinkedIn profile.

I think that would be kind of a rare exception, but this individual—my manager did because she’s ambitious, right? Like she’s going places. So she did have a LinkedIn profile, and it was kind of just luck that I found her profile and that we had connected a couple of months previously.

So then when her name popped up, I recognized her immediately because we had chatted.

Austin Gray: What are some of the things you put in the job description to be very clear about the expectations of what you wanted out of that role?

Logan Robison: Yeah, gosh! I had to go back and remember it was very focused on—I think it was pretty blunt about it. Like we’re a small company, like we're growing, like we have ambitions to be the best cleaning company in Northwest Arkansas.

But yeah, I think it was pretty clear that we were a small company and that I was looking for a full-time manager position.

So I don't know if there's anything special about it, but I tried to be honest in the job description. So in there, it was pretty broad about like you could be wearing multiple different hats. Oh yeah, I put the—like you're in charge of scheduling cleaners, you're going to be talking to hosts, you're going to be doing quality control inspections, you're going to be doing supply purchases, like you're going to be doing all of these things.

I need you to keep the business humming while I'm getting coffee with property managers and I'm like recruiting and I'm don’t have time to be managing the schedule.

Logan Robison: Yeah, I understood. So it sounds like that person manages the schedule, handles coordination of the cleaners. She runs the show. I am a dead weight at this point. I tried to really set it up so that this is—then this is kind of the example: I took a trip recently—my wife, my kids, and I—we went out to Utah, Nevada, Colorado for five weeks; we were gone for five weeks.

And this is during the busiest part of our season. She handled all of it! She was in charge; she ran it. She was responding to hosts; she coordinated cleans; any issues that would pop up, she would deal with it. If it escalated, then we would chat about it.

But she was really running the whole show, and that's what I want, right? Like that’s my vision! I would much rather make less money and have somebody else do the stuff that I don’t want to do.

And so I’m very happy with how that went. So I think when I was gone for those five weeks, I mean this is kind of sound terrible, but I was probably working like 15 hours a week during that time because I was like, "Hey, where do you live in Arkansas? We never see our family! I’m gonna go out there and have a great time with my family."

The business was taken care of; we grew during that time. We hired during that time; we got new clients during that time. And so I really kind of said, “She’s in place to run this; let's let her run it.”

And she did a phenomenal job—a great job. I'm so, I couldn’t have been happier with that.

Austin Gray: That’s great! So since you made the change to full-time Airbnbs, you said you dipped down to $5K. Now you're back up to $25K or $30K.

How did you think about growth at that point? What were some things you did to get the business on the right track after making that decision?

Logan Robison: Yeah, maybe I’m doing everything wrong. I might be doing everything wrong, but it seems to be working! I don't spend anything on marketing. I don’t spend a dollar on marketing.

So I think we could be significantly bigger than we are, but I don’t spend anything on marketing. My biggest thing is just cold outreach. I do cold outreach every single day. My goal is to have 10 conversations with potential customers every single day.

So I'm doing—I just DM on Facebook. I post in Facebook groups. I call people; I’m on the website, and I’m looking for, you know, Airbnbs in my area, and I’m just cold calling. I was a missionary for my church for two years, so I have no problem cold calling, door knocking, doing any of that stuff.

So that's been my approach. I'm like, "Look, I don't want to spend a lot on marketing because frankly, I haven't seen it be that effective from my perspective."

And so I think I can do a better job spending two or three hours a day trying to get in touch with 10 people. And the math of that is pretty simple, right? So every new customer for us is worth about $8 to $10K a year.

And so if I just get that one new customer a week—that’s been my goal. I'm going to get one new customer a week—then we'll be able to hit our goals for sure.

And so that starts with 10 people a day. Most of those people are, "We already have a cleaner, thanks, but no thanks," but I'll get the occasional one or two people a day that say, "Yeah, would love to get a quote."

And then once I get it—once I'm able to give them a quote, then they can really see, “Wow, we add a ton of value outside of your typical solo cleaner.”

You'll never have to text us to say, "Hey, the guest just checked out; are you able to come over?" or "We just got a new booking; can you take care of this?" because we see it all in our calendar. We have it all; we've got the software.

We'll never cancel on you, right? A lot of people call us in a panic because they say, "My cleaner just got in a car accident and they can't make it. Can you come clean?" Well, we've got 14 cleaners, right? So we will never cancel on a clean.

Anyway, so we do the quote; we're able to show them what the value is of working with us. We're a lot more expensive obviously, but once I'm able to get that quote in there, then our close percentage is pretty high. Once I'm able to get an actual quote and so yeah—10 customers a day, try to get at least one or two quotes out of that, try to close one customer a week, and if we do that, we'll be marching toward our goal very simply.

So that's kind of how I thought about growth. I know that a lot of people are just pouring money on the marketing machine and just let it go, but I really am trying to be strategic about how fast we grow as well because I can't just hire any cleaner off the street, right?

Airbnb cleaning is really specific. It's really particular, right? Like you have to do staging; you have to do laundry; you have to put supplies—you have to manage all the supplies—like it’s a really specific role!

You have to know how to treat stains; you have to know how to do crazy stuff that a residential cleaner doesn't typically do—like staging. The pillows have to look good and the couch has to look good—how are you going to put the throw blanket on the couch, right? That's stuff that Airbnb cleaning is very specific for.

So I can't just grow super fast because I don't have the talent to back that up. And so one customer a week allows me to bring on a new cleaner every couple of weeks and grow methodically.

Austin Gray: You throw around the fact that you have 14 cleaners on your team like it’s easy. I think a lot of people who are listening right now are thinking, "How do you go find those 14 cleaners who are going to do the cleaning with this much detail?"

Logan Robison: Indeed, dude; it’s all from Indeed! I just have three job posts that are constantly going, and the job applications come in. I look at their experience. If they don’t have Airbnb cleaning experience, I really don’t even talk to them. They have to have Airbnb cleaning experience already.

And so if they have that experience already, we set up an interview.

Austin Gray: Wow! So just from Indeed.

Logan Robison: Yeah! I just have three job posts that are constantly going, and the job applications come in. I look at their experience—if they don’t have Airbnb cleaning experience, I really don't even talk to them. They have to have Airbnb cleaning experience already.

And if they have that experience, we set up an interview.

Austin Gray: I love that we're having this conversation because I believe it needs to be talked about. And I think you hit the nail on the head earlier: so many people are influenced by these very large accounts who have multi-millions of dollars in their bank account for recruiting.

But the reality is, if you're under $500K—and we've seen this too—even at our growth stage—Indeed works at the local level. This is great for bringing it to light!

I’m shocked to hear that you’re saying that people don't believe in Indeed because I’ve only ever used Indeed. I didn’t know that.

Logan Robison: Yeah, I've had great luck with it. So I love that; I love it!

So talk to us about your interview process. The screening piece is the fact they do have to accept that they do have to state that they have had Airbnb cleaning experience.

Logan Robison: It’s very thorough! I really am trying to create the best cleaning company in my area, so it’s very thorough. They apply in the job description; I ask them point-blank, "Do you have Airbnb cleaning experience?" If the answer is no, it's like an automatic decline—like I’m not going to train you—I don’t have time.

I don't want to. I don’t have time for that; I’m looking for people that already have experience, which is really sad. But like, at the same time, I have certain goals that I'm trying to reach, and if it's not going to work out, it’s just not going to work out.

And so we have to set our standard—do you have Airbnb experience, yes or no? If they say yes, great! Let’s hop on a 15-minute phone call. It’s a 15-minute video call and we just get right to it.

I ask them, you know, how long you’ve been cleaning, how many clients do you currently have, stuff about your schedule, where are you located? It’s very quick—just to the point!

And based on that, if all sounds good, I give them a quick blurb about our company. Then I ask for references they give me; I call those references. If they check out, then I do set up an initial clean.

And what we’re doing now—we've changed; in the past, we weren’t doing this, but what we’re doing now is we’re actually pairing that person up with one of our more seasoned cleaners to go in and say, “You guys are going to split this clean and you’re going to do everything that this lead cleaner tells you!”

Because she consistently gets five stars; we want you to be just like her, so we’re going to pair you up—you're going to do this clean together, get that.

Anyway, so we move on from that; then they’re on their next clean. If that doesn’t go well, we give feedback; then they’re on their third clean. If that clean still doesn’t go well, we cut ties at that point.

They kind of have like a three-clean trial period: one with one with a training clean, one by themselves, and a third one by themselves—it's kind of like a three-probationary period—and that has tended to work pretty well for us.

We do quality control inspections on 75% of our cleans, and so we know that even if we hire somebody who’s not the best cleaner, we can resolve it with quality control inspections.

Austin Gray: I'm glad you brought this up because this is one topic I do want to dive into. I saw one of your posts where you said, one thing we do at our cleaning company that doesn't scale well—quality control inspections. The total cost for me as a business owner is about 3% of our total revenue, but I believe it’s what takes a decent cleaning company to the next level; truly becoming the best.

Can you elaborate more on your thought process behind this and how you have implemented it and how you are currently doing it right now?

Logan Robison: Yeah, absolutely! Cleaning is a tough job, right? And you could probably apply this to multiple different industries. Cleaning is a tough job. I’m asking these ladies—I only have—I used to have a male cleaner, but right now it’s just all women cleaners.

I’m asking these women to go in and here’s a checklist of 60 items that you have to complete in a 3-hour to 4-hour time period. And if you make one mistake—like we’re going to hear about it, right? Like a guest that checks into an Airbnb and finds a hair in the shower—you better believe that guest is going to say something to the host!

When a guest—this is what’s different between residential cleaning and Airbnb cleaning; in a residential cleaning, they know it's not going to be perfect because they live there, right? Like they know it’s not perfect. They know they’re disgusting!

And so they know it’s not going to be perfect; that's the difference between residential and Airbnb. When an Airbnb guest checks into an Airbnb, they are expecting perfection. They are expecting, "I’m paying $200 bucks for a cleaning fee, and there’s a hair in my shower?" like they really are expecting this clean to be absolutely perfect.

So that’s why I’m asking our cleaners to go in, do 60-plus items on this checklist, and have zero mistakes. It’s not possible! Right? Like somebody’s going to mess up. Somebody always forgets something. So we have to do quality control to make sure that each clean is perfect.

And we have a five-star guarantee. So if that guest leaves less than a five-star cleanliness rating, we will refund the clean. That’s how serious we are about giving our host a five-star clean. But like we charge a lot of money, right?

Like we charge a lot for this because the hosts that truly care about their cleaning fees or their ratings are willing to pay a high cleaning fee because they know that higher cleaning ratings lead to more bookings, anyway, all that stuff.

So we have to do quality control because none of our cleaners are perfect, and I don’t expect them to be. But I do expect the clean to be perfect.

So then we do quality control. So like I said, it costs about 3% of my total revenue, which when I was looking at the other day, I was like, "Dang, that's a lot. Like, that’s a lot of money that I’m spending on quality control."

But if I think about it, like what would happen if I weren't doing quality control? How many refunds would I have to give? How many hosts would I lose because they’re getting bad cleanliness ratings?

So it’s really important to me that we do quality control. We do 75%—typically it’s been more like 85% of our cleans get quality control. And we do our bonuses based on the results of that quality control.

So if our quality control inspector comes in, they have a checklist as well—they’ve got a checklist of like 30 items that the inspector is supposed to check off. And then they rate at the end of each clean one to five—one being, "This cleaner didn't even show up; this place is a disaster," and five being, "This is a perfect clean; we need to give this cleaner a bonus."

So I look over two weeks—look over your average rating over two weeks. And if you scored above—I think right now it’s a 4.3, we expect a four, right? Like a four is minor mistakes, but overall was a good clean; like that’s the expectation because we know that nobody's perfect.

If you do get a five, we do give you a bonus, right? So if your average is like a 4.3 over the past two weeks, we’ll give you a 5% bonus on each of the cleans that we inspected. So for our top producers, our top cleaners, that's a pretty nice bonus every two weeks.

Austin Gray: Logan, this is awesome! You have built the bones for an incredible business! I have so many questions, but I know that we only have a couple of minutes left.

You're good! I let them know I was gonna be late.

Austin Gray: Well, I want to respect your time, so let’s stay on track here because I want to get you back on the show, and I think this is a good place to wrap it up.

But I know you're writing a newsletter where you're diving into more…

Logan Robison: Yeah! So if you are interested in starting a cleaning business, and if you're listening to this and you have all the questions that I have—like how did you implement this rating system? Why are you charging more? Why are you committed to delivering five-star service?

Like how are you recruiting your cleaners? How’s who is doing quality control? We didn’t even get to dive into that yet, so I'm gonna stop the interview right now. I'm gonna let you share with our listeners about your newsletter where you do dive into those topics, and then if we’re lucky enough—guys, we'll get Logan back on in another six months or so to dive more into these topics.

So can you tell us a bit about the newsletter where you do write about these topics?

Logan Robison: Yeah, absolutely! Shameless plug! I write a newsletter called Same Day Turn. So, same day turn.com—for those that aren't familiar in the Airbnb space—it’s when a guest is checking out, and a guest is checking in on the same day, so you have to turn it on the same day; it's called.

So it’s called same day turn. It is really all about Airbnb cleaning. Like it is a super niche topic but we have over 5,000 subscribers now that are solo Airbnb cleaners or they have their own cleaning company trying to get into Airbnb cleaning.

And so I write twice a week just like full details about like my last newsletter was on quality control inspections, right? How do we do them? How do we pay them? All that stuff.

So I dive into how to find new customers, how to interview, what’s included in the departure cleaning checklist. It’s like extremely niche—just Airbnb cleaning.

If you’re a host as well, you could get some value out of it because a lot of hosts clean their own properties. But yeah, I love it! It’s great; we’ve gotten great feedback. Yeah, go ahead and subscribe! I think it’s exciting.

Austin Gray: So that’s great, and it is samedayturn.com!

Logan Robison: Same day turn.com!

Austin Gray: Perfect! Well, for listeners, you're probably wondering, "Alright, Austin, you guys run a tree forestry excavation business; you guys are running big equipment. What? Why Logan—a cleaning business owner—on the OWNR OPS podcast?"

When I started this podcast, I had the assumption that all small businesses have commonalities, and you can hear in Logan's voice when he gets excited about not being the cheapest in the market—charging a fair price to deliver a great service—and he is committed to delivering five-star service.

And he is creating all of these processes to implement into his business, and I believe that's where the similarities are. And so I love bringing people like Logan on, even if we’re in different industries because I believe the thought processes are very similar in how to build a small business.

So just a reminder for you guys: like what the OWNR OPS podcast is and where we are going—we're going to have multiple different industries on the podcast from different, you know, all the way from cleaning to excavation to tree service to foundation repair to roofing to plumbing, to you name it—all building and getting the business off the ground.

It all has similarities, and so that's our goal here. We want to provide an online resource for small business owners to be able to listen to people like Logan and learn from people like Logan who have sort of been there, done that in the early stages.

So Logan, once again, thank you for being on! We appreciate you sharing your advice.

Logan Robison: Yeah, absolutely! And for your listeners, feel free to reach out anytime on Twitter. I think it’s Logan A. Robison. You can DM me. I have made all the rookie mistakes; I am still making all of the rookie mistakes, so like if you’ve got questions on, you know, “When did you decide to quit your job?,” I’m happy to respond.

So yeah—just another plug for this podcast as well! I’ve gotten a lot of insight from it as well as I'm just trying to build. So I think you guys are doing a great job!

Austin Gray: Well, thank you! I appreciate that! And by all means, like we’ve all made mistakes, and I think the important piece is if we get on here and we talk about the mistakes we did make and then how we learned from those, then I believe that's what can help other people who are in the early stages.

So thanks again for being on, and listeners, thanks again for listening to another episode of the OWNR OPS podcast. If you enjoy this type of content, we would sure appreciate a five-star review. Very similar to Logan building a great cleaning business and very similar to me with the goal of building a great tree business here.

Five-star reviews are super important for the podcast, so if you wouldn’t mind to take 30 seconds and leave us a five-star review on Apple or Spotify, we’d appreciate it. And if you're listening on YouTube, we'd sure appreciate a like and subscribe!

If you have any ideas for a great guest for the podcast, leave them in the comments below. And don’t forget to work hard, do your best, never settle for less. We’ll see you in the next episode!

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