IAM1936 – Founder Runs a Modern and Remotely-Operated Cleaning Company

Previous Episode: https://iamceo.co/2022/03/20/iam1315-founder-creates-a-modern-and-remotely-operated-cleaning-company/

Transcription:

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Neel Parekh Teaser 00:00

So no matter how the day goes wrong, if you at least in the morning have got that one test done, which you've already determined is the biggest driver in your business it helps you elevate and move much faster. Hey, if I hit these things, it's a successful week. I've done these things. I don't feel like I haven't done enough for the week.

I said, this is what I'm going to do, and it's just the top priority items.

Intro 00:21

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you are in search of.

This is the I AM CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:47

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I appreciate you listening to this episode. If you've been listening this year, you know that we hit 1600 episodes at the beginning of this year. We're doing something a little bit different where we're repurposing our favorite episodes around certain categories, topics, or as I like to call them, the business pillars that we think are going to be extremely impactful for CEOs, entrepreneurs, business owners, in what I like to call CB Nation architects who are looking to level up their organizations.

This month we are focusing on finishing it out, fighting the good fight and closing out the job. I think just as important as it is to start something, it's even more important in how you conclude it or finish it out. So if you think of the different things that you can finish out, it'd be everything from a project. It can be from a day. It could also be from a business in and of itself. And it can also, of course be for the year. So when you think of finishing out, I want you to really think of these episodes because what we're going to really focus on is the last question that we really asked, which is defining what it means to be a CEO.

And all the creative, innovative and I think truly insightful questions that we received from this question is really what we want to highlight during the show. But of course, we want you to enjoy the entire episode to think about how you're going to finish things out and how you're going to finish things out strongly. So sit back and enjoy this special episode of the I AM CEO podcasts.

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Neel Parekh of MadeThis. Neil, it's great to have you on the show.

Neel Parekh 02:19

Thanks for having me Gresh. I'm excited to be here.

Gresham Harkless 02:20

Yes. I'm super excited to have you on. Before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Neil so you hear about some of those awesome things.

Neil is the CEO and founder of MaidThis a work from anywhere cleaning franchise focused on Airbnb cleanings. MaidThis has been called the franchise for millennials, given its fully remote model in new age spin for an old school cleaning industry.

As he built his business to reach millions of revenue, Neil traveled globally for five years while managing a fully remote team and living the digital nomad life. Neil is also host of the Remote Local Podcast, which discusses how to start a remote local business and travel. Neil, super excited to have you on one podcaster to another.

Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Neel Parekh 03:04

Let's hit it, man. I'm excited.

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Gresham Harkless 03:06

Let's make it happen then. So to kick everything off, I want us to rewind the clock a little bit. I know I touched on it a little bit when I read your bio, but to hear a little bit more about your CEO story, we'll let you get started.

Neel Parekh 03:14

Yeah, sure. So actually right out of college, I started working in the finance industry. So I worked in tech venture capital investing companies, from companies I found invested about 20 million dollars and from deals I worked on was about 100, 000 of investment over a few years. So I was there climbing the corporate ladder and I realized I'm just not a finance guy. This is not what I want to do. Long hours at a cubicle, spreadsheets of the night just wasn't my life. So, decided, Hey, I want to try something else. Let me try to start a side hustle.

So a couple of years in is when I was just trying out things, moonlighting, just seeing what works and those stuff was a flop. Tried e-commerce, like a digital marketing online blog, and just nothing was really hit. Finally Gresham, have you heard about reddit.com? Yes. I was on Reddit when I should have been working and read a post of a guy who started a cleaning company and I thought, you know what, let me try this. He posted the steps there and it just started working and I started realizing in hindsight that's because it's a very old-school industry.

I was doing just things which are like current marketing but in this old school industry and it was working. Anyways, my main goal was a couple of things. I wanted to provide financially for my parents and quit my job and travel the world. So I had to build this local business in a way that was conducive for me to be able to travel from anywhere. So a couple of years into my job I think at that point we were just hitting 30, 000 a month in revenue or so is when I decided to quit, go full time, went to South America, just started building this remotely and growing it. Within that first year of going full-time, the business doubled, kept growing from there.

So that's my story. And then just last year we started the franchise model. Now people were saying, Hey, can I copy what you guys are doing? And I said, sure, let's just do it via franchising. So just looking for a handful of motivated folks who just literally want to copy and paste what we're doing in their own city in the US. So that's where we're at now.

Gresham Harkless 05:00

Nice. I absolutely love that. So it's great to hear that you've been able to create that model and then have opportunities for other people as well, too.

Neel Parekh 05:06

Yeah, I appreciate it. And it's funny when you're franchising, I always thought it's such an old-school thing, like franchising is what my parents do but another thing I like going into old school industry is franchising is an old school industry.

All these guys are doing the same way, the same thing they've been doing forever. So, doubling down on bringing technology and new processes to the old-school industry is what I've been doing in franchising.

Gresham Harkless 05:27

Yeah, I absolutely love that. Sometimes it's looking at what exists and bringing those new ideas to something that is an old industry like you were able to do is sometimes the biggest innovation and creative thing that you can implement.

Neel Parekh 05:39

Absolutely. The reality is, I feel like it de-risks a lot of things this industry exists, businesses are making money in it, you just have to do a little bit better, right? So I think it de-risks a lot of things as well.

Gresham Harkless 05:50

Yeah, and I almost feel like at the heart of, business, it's all about minimizing as many risks as possible. Most people that are in business are the people that are jumping out of airplanes and driving on motorcycles, but really at the heart to minimize the risk as much as possible.

Neel Parekh 06:07

Yeah, very well said.

Gresham Harkless 06:09

Yeah, absolutely. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more. I know you touched a little bit upon the business, the franchise. Can you take us through a little bit more on how you're serving your clients, where you're serving them and how you're making the impact for the client you're working with?

Neel Parekh 06:21

Sure. So let me talk about a little bit incorporating what it is we're doing. So we're actually the first and only cleaning franchise focused on vacation rental. So this whole airbnb short term rental thing popped off recently last few years and all of a sudden, these airbnbs need a cleaning service, right? Turnover cleaning service, high volume between guests. No one's really doing it. No one's dealing with the tech spin.

So we could actually sink into the calendars of airbnb host or VRB host or anyone, automate the scheduling. Anytime there's a guest checkout, automatically schedule cleaning with us. So we do that plus residential cleaning and residential cleaning with the new age twist, meaning online booking, fly rate pricing, login to reschedule, automated notifications, like just trying to make it as convenient as possible. That's the stick of what we're doing from like the individual level, and that's how we've grown.

On the franchise arm or offering is exactly that as a package for the franchisee, right? So if you want to have a local business copy of the systems, if you want to do a completely remote travel world, like I did, we do half of this, we do tons of things for you as part of this and you get a copy of the blueprint as well. So that's the business service we're offering now.

Gresham Harkless 07:24

Nice. I love that and again, just to get that opportunity to lean into the expertise and knowledge. And I imagine things that are worth all the rolling up your sleeves and things that probably didn't go according to plan that you probably went through when building the business, you get to jumpstart your business with all your knowledge and information.

Neel Parekh 07:39

And just time collapsing, right? Like I made so many mistakes at the beginning. I was doing as a side hustle on my job and we had our first cleaner. I didn't know how to pay the cleaner. It was like, okay, just come outside of my building. I'd go to the ATM, grab cash, car drives by, I'd give the guy money.

Everyone in my building could see me going outside and giving the guy money in the car. They are like you're a drug dealer for sure. I didn't want to tell them that either. So I was just like, all right, I can't explain what I'm doing over here.

Gresham Harkless 08:11

Exactly. Yeah.

Neel Parekh 08:14

So luckily, hopefully, like my friend doesn't have to look like a drug dealer anymore. I can tell them exactly how those work.

Gresham Harkless 08:20

Yeah. So I know I don't have a blueprint or anything in front of me, but I can assume that that's probably not in the pages of the blueprint about.

Neel Parekh 08:26

Chapter one. Don't be a drug dealer.

Gresham Harkless 08:31

There you go. I love that. But let me ask you this, I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. This could be for yourself, the business, the combination of both, but what do you feel sets you apart and makes you unique?

Neel Parekh 08:44

Sure. And question for you. Do you mean for the business or myself personally?

Gresham Harkless 08:47

Either or either or, or a combination of both?

Neel Parekh 08:50

Let's do both. For the business the brand has for millennials, new age, tech savvy, focused on like millennials, Gen Z, just people who want convenience. If you want a book from online, if you want automation, no, like in person estimates, just as easy as possible is the stick of what we're doing with both the service offering as well as the franchise. So that's unique service offering that we're doing in addition to going after short term rentals and Airbnbs, which is high volume. So I think that's our secret sauce is just being very new age and current in a very old school industry.

Personally secret sauce I think it's just I feel like I have been complimented on my team for identifying problems quickly, meaning if they bring a problem to me, I could say, okay here's the real problem. Here's the core of the problem, right? And building that still say over time, it's taking a long time, but if you could quickly identify what the crux of the problem is, then all of a sudden you're not putting much bandaid on stuff.

You just go figure out what's the actual problem is as opposed to just the symptoms. So I felt like it's taking a while to develop that superpower that's what is leading us now.

Gresham Harkless 09:49

Nice absolutely love that. How were you able to train yourself to do that? Was that something that you feel like you had a knack for over time? Or was this something that you just started to work on different issues?

As you were experimenting, did you see if this was something that you could you could use a superpower?

Neel Parekh 10:03

Yeah, really good question. I think generally with superpowers, you don't really know it's a superpower until you get enough people telling you about it. And you're like, Oh, I guess that's a superpower. I guess for me I'm sure it sure was not natural. I think it was just me putting out enough fires to see patterns naturally.

It just occurs after you do something repetitive to say this is the real problem or hey, this is the real problem and whenever I'm sure everyone listening can attest to this. If you're the owner, the founder, you're dealing with all these problems, right? So as long as you don't try to put a band in on it and really think, okay, what's the real problem you will develop.

Everyone will develop the same superpower very quickly.

Gresham Harkless 10:39

Awesome. Awesome. I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Neel Parekh 10:49

Dude, let me tell you something. It's been game changing. It only takes me five minutes, seriously. I plan the next day, the night before. I know like people say this all the time, but I'll tell you why it's been so game changing for me, because in the morning, before I used to wake up, look at my email inbox, which is what people are demanding of my time, right? Which is probably not as high priority. The reality is all tasks are not made equal. If you checkmark a bunch of stuff on your task list, doesn't mean you really made progress. That just means you checkmarked a lot of stuff off.

So the cool part, when you start planning ahead of time with a clear mind the night before you should, you've identified what is the biggest driver in my business. I'm going to put that as number one task list. It's the first thing you do in the morning. It's written at the top. That's what I got to do. So no matter how the day goes wrong, if you at least have in the morning have gotten that one task done, which you've already determined is the biggest driver in your business it helps you elevate and move much faster.

So having that shift has also caused me less anxiety just because I know okay, I've already planned that hey, if I hit these things, it's a successful week. I've done these things. I don't feel like I haven't done enough for the week because I said, this is what I'm going to do and it's just the top priority items. So that's actually been a very game changing for me. it literally takes a few minutes the day before. That's it.

Gresham Harkless 12:03

Awesome. I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So it's a little bit more of a word of wisdom or piece of advice. I like to say it might be something you would tell a franchisee, or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

Neel Parekh 12:16

Yeah, man, I don't even know where to start with this one. One thing or advice I'd give to everyone is if you don't like doing something, pay and outsource it quicker, as opposed to just leaving it on you and not getting it done, because sometimes people, especially entrepreneurs, we just use grunt forces to get stuff done.

What I realized time and time again is if you really hate something, that even though you think Oh, I'm the only one who can do it, figure out like how to pay more than you might be comfortable with just to get it out of your way beause that'll free up your time and energy to do something more meaningful.

For me, even now I have trouble because I don't want to pay for stuff unnecessarily, but there are some stuff where I'm like, I just hate doing this. Like, why am I doing this task repeatedly? I wish I would've told myself, dude, it sounds like big money now, but in the future, it's not going to be that much money. Just get it out of your way. So that's a nugget I would love to pass onto myself in the past.

Gresham Harkless 13:07

Nice. And definitely tell my younger business off that as well, because I think it's so valuable to make sure that we're drilling into that. I love how you said the time, obviously time is great value, but also the limited amount of energy that you have.

You want to put that towards the solutions, the things that ultimately you are only going to be able to do or do to the best level for yourself and for the organization. So spending that energy and the best possible place is going to help you move forward as well.

Neel Parekh 13:31

Exactly. Exactly.

Gresham Harkless 13:33

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote and quote CEOs on this show.

So Neil, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Neel Parekh 13:43

Being a CEO, I guess I equate that to being a founder. Man, it goes so many different ways. For me, being a CEO means having the freedom to dictate your company in the way you actually want. A lot of times I say this because I believe your business should almost be an extension of you where it's there to serve you as opposed to you serving the business. So if you're a CEO, that doesn't mean I need to serve this business at the sacrifice of my life.

You're the CEO. You could literally make this company what you want, as long as it's serving others in the way you want, as long as it's serving you in the way you want, so using that wisely, so what it means for me is I want to be CEO because I want to provide freedom for myself as well as freedom for my team members, time, location, freedom, monetary freedom, that's what I want to do.

So that's my goal as the CEO is to provide that level of freedom. That doesn't mean I will sacrifice my life for the detriment of that, because luckily I'm the CEO and I could actually decide that. So, yeah, being the dictator of your own company in a positive way is what it means to me. Gresh, I'm sure you've answered this in previous podcasts. Same question to you. What is your answer?

Gresham Harkless 14:42

Yeah, for me, I think it's ultimately about like what you said about freedom, but I think it's also for me a way by which you're able to create your own path in your own lane. I've always said that entrepreneurship to me is equal hope and a lot of that hope is in alignment with what you said, because it's the opportunity that we sometimes don't realize we have. I don't know about a lot of people, but I myself have not been groomed to be an entrepreneur, to be a CEO, to be a business owner.

So once you realize that, Hey, I can think something and I have this vision and oh, it can come to fruition. It becomes hopeful because you start to see problems. You start to see certain things and you get to create hope in whatever way you decide in a hope to see hope.

Neel Parekh 15:20

Wow. Said, man. Thank you.

Gresham Harkless 15:22

Thank you. Thank you. That's why I call it the I AM CEO podcast. So there we go. There we have it. So I definitely appreciate that definition. Obviously, I appreciate your time even more. So, what I wanted to do now was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know.

And of course, how best people can get ahold of you, find out about the franchise opportunities and all the awesome things you and your team are working on.

Neel Parekh 15:44

Yeah, absolutely. So, if anyone has questions for me at all about anything, you go to neelparekh.com or maidthisfranchise.com. I'm pretty active on Twitter. So message me over there as well. And just, I guess ask for all the listeners, I am looking for a handful of franchisees for this year across the US who want to copy the blueprint of what we talked about here, have heard my local business and just grow.

So if you or someone might be interested, just shoot me a message.

Gresham Harkless 16:10

Nice. I appreciate that. And to make it even easier, we'll have the links and information in the show notes as well too, so that everybody can follow up with you. Thank you so much for doing that, I appreciate you for taking time out of course.

I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Neel Parekh 16:21

Thank you so much, Gresham.

Outro 16:22

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Don't forget to schedule your complimentary digital marketing consultation at blue16media.com. This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harless, Jr. Thank you for listening.

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