Jim Zarkadas (00:00)
Hey, I'm Jim, and this is the Love at First Try podcast, a podcast for SaaS CEOs and developers that truly want to learn more about design and care about it, but there are no designers that find it too complex. In every episode, we discuss how to design products that become sticky and unforgettable. We dive into the topics of taste, UX, growth, and conversions, and we share practical tips and frameworks you can add into your development process. Enough with the intro, so let's dive into today's episode.
Jim Zarkadas (00:27)
That's a good one. So yeah, welcome. Welcome to the podcast. ⁓ Yeah, it's a message before I was thinking to do the intro first, like introduce ⁓ who you are. ⁓ I'll say you can go first and then I can share like our story of how we met, how we started working together and all these things. So yeah, feel free to do a quick intro.
Stephanie (00:28)
Okay, great. Well, my name is Stephanie Pipkin. I'm the owner of Serene Clean, which is a residential and commercial cleaning business in Western Wisconsin in the United States. And ⁓ I started utilizing the scheduling software Zenn made when I opened up as an individual cleaner and it has grown and scaled with me and my business is now... ⁓
Completely remotely run by myself and then my management team is there in Wisconsin doing the day-to-day operations and it has grown to about 1.4 million dollars a year in revenue. We're at year six now and ⁓ I also do podcasting for ZenMaid and kind of getting ahead of myself with how like the ZenMaid integration happened but I was first and foremost a customer of ZenMaid for years before anything else evolved from that.
Jim Zarkadas (01:49)
Nice, nice. Yeah, as you mentioned, like for ZenMate, it's a SaaS that we were working, yeah, that I'm actually designing at this point. And yeah, the story of how we met is that, yeah, we first met on the team retreat in the Netherlands. So the story, yeah, for the ones that have no idea what a retreat even is, is at ZenMate, we gather, because the whole company is remote, we gather all together once every year in a lucky...
some location around the world. And two years ago, we decided to meet in the Netherlands. And that's where Amar had, I think the story is that Amar, the CEO of Zenmade, he had the idea of let's invite Steph because you were also in touch. Because I think I heard about it like last minute, or even when I was there that, hey, also customers gonna join. So I was really curious to see who that person is. And that's...
Stephanie (02:33)
Mm-hmm.
you
Yeah, was basically, you know,
I had reached out to Amar a year ago because I was like, listen, I'm either going to open or create a YouTube channel myself or which I have no interest in managing or growing or anything like that, specifically because ZenMaid has something called the ZenMaid Mastermind, which is a Facebook community that I have, you know, been a part of for years and had shared different tips or stories or lessons that I had learned throughout the process of growing my cleaning business. Additionally, ZenMaid
Jim Zarkadas (02:51)
Hmm.
Stephanie (03:10)
has something called the Made Summit, which is basically a virtual event where, you know, industry experts come and speak about something and I had spoken at this for a couple years. And so the demand was clearly there for my style of, you know, educational content. And so I was kind of at this crossroads of like, do I make my own YouTube channel or do I utilize ZenMade's audience? Because they already had a robust YouTube audience. They have, you know, all of these kind of resources available when it comes to editing.
Jim Zarkadas (03:13)
Mm-hmm.
Stephanie (03:40)
and all of the things that I have no interest in partaking in when it comes to a channel. And so I do individual, know, independent consulting as well to other owners. So was like, this is a great avenue for me to bring in another source of revenue, but their audience is very attractive to me. So I just sent an email to Amar last January and was like, hey, like I will...
I'm either going to do this or I can make videos specifically for you and like I'm, know, Zen Maid's girl when it comes to content then. And that's how it started. Yeah. And then I think in April they're like, hey, we do this retreat. Like, do you want to come? Cause I'd only exclusively been making some marketing related content to them. And ⁓ obviously I was like, yes, of course. Like I'd never left the country before and it was, it was amazing. And I think that at the retreat, that's when we all kind of discovered like, this could go a lot farther than just Stephanie.
Jim Zarkadas (04:09)
Yeah.
Mmm.
Stephanie (04:31)
with making videos or whatever.
Jim Zarkadas (04:33)
Exactly. Exactly.
Yeah. I find it like a really, I mean, first of all, great idea that you took the chance to send a DM. It's always the cliché that many things in life are just a DM away. It's so true. I've experienced it as well. And also with Amart for like a, Amart to invite you, that was really, really cool because we had the chance to meet in person and it's also very, very different, like compared to just joining a call. Like if you work with the team for one week,
Stephanie (04:42)
Yeah.
Yes. Sport your favorite gold.
Jim Zarkadas (05:02)
can just explore many, many different things. So yeah, the stories that we met at the Netherlands and during the retreats, one thing we do is that we prototype a new feature, something that is more kind of a creative and not something we had in the plan to do. So it's more kind of a creative strategic features that we could build that we're excited about.
At that point, we wanted to design the new booking forms and make them more interactive, more of a widget, because right now just the contact from a page. We want to make it a sticky widget that is more personalized, more branded and so on. And the stories that we sat down with Steph as a team, it was, I think, me, you, Ryan, head of marketing. And then was it Ritz and Alex? Yeah, ⁓ the mobile development and the CEO. I think that was the team.
Stephanie (05:42)
Alex? Alex or Rich? Yeah.
Jim Zarkadas (05:50)
So yeah, we spent two, three, was it a day or two days, something like that, prototyping the whole thing and just kind of because we need to make some videos, you would just go in the bedroom inside, you would film the video, then send it to me, it on Figma. So it was like a hackathon. And in the end, the prototype was really amazing and now we're actually building the feature to see if it's production and we already have some good feedback. So that was kind of a epiphany, I think, I would say moment for me where...
I didn't really plan for it, but suddenly I was designing with a customer on my side. It was literally me and Figma doing the design, having you not tell me what to do, but more like being able to ask you questions, test things together, experiment together, create content that we need for the design ⁓ on the spot and so on. And this, I would say it sounds like big, it actually, it's actually true that it kind of changed my life as a design. I was like, ⁓ this is how to design. Like it's like the, the.
Stephanie (06:43)
Yes.
loop, like it was just the speed was just, would say incredible and having like, think logical reasoning as to why, like, because there's always a reason for everything when it comes to what we're designing. And I think there's no guessing involved now. So like, it probably made you feel a lot more confident of like, oh, this is the correct path. And, and I think there's a lot to be said about like customer feedback and being judicious and with that, and we can definitely dive into
Jim Zarkadas (06:49)
Exactly. Exactly.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Stephanie (07:16)
to that, but I think it was this perfect combination of like, what I certainly didn't know what to expect with the retreat. And it just really opened my eyes to like how much I enjoyed like that process, specifically sitting with you. And I was just like, oh my gosh, this is so, so cool. Like I love this.
Jim Zarkadas (07:28)
Right.
Yeah, that's something that I want to dive into in a sec as well, because I'm really curious to hear your perspective as a user and customer of the product being the design process. But yeah, it's really what you said. It was the speed that was mind blowing for me because before the retreat, had one of the challenges we had at ZenMade was that I was designing with Amar the new version, the Billing V 2.0 and it's like huge scope, new invoice templates, new invoicing features, redesign of the existing workflows.
Stephanie (07:55)
it.
Jim Zarkadas (08:01)
It was actually looking back, we did every mistake that now on my LinkedIn content, I wrote you shouldn't do. I'm like, Hey, you should keep the scope small, never go for big releases. Boom. That was like a five months redesign project. It wasn't a disaster because in the end, what happens that we created many different designs that we're actually shipping now in small steps. So in the end, it wasn't a waste of time, but the efficiency and speed wasn't really good because we couldn't really kind of build a momentum and start releasing stuff.
Stephanie (08:08)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jim Zarkadas (08:31)
And yeah, it's really what I said with you. It was really mind blowing that suddenly in just two days we could get at such a good ⁓ level of fidelity that we had actually that is prototype. It looks good and we could even go out there and build. It was, yeah, it's pretty wild. So yeah, that.
Stephanie (08:51)
when another
that came out of that retreat that was totally unexpected was the SOS feature, you know, that was not even in anybody's imagination until the retreat happened, which context, obviously we're servicing homes and businesses. All of our employees are cleaners, heavily female as well. And so I just started talking to some of the developers who, again, coming into this retreat, I'm like, I'm not going to talk to those nerds. that, like, what are we going have in common? And like the developers, I like my favorite people on the whole team now.
like those are my friends. so.
Jim Zarkadas (09:22)
Right. I love engineers. used to be a developer
back in the days as well. And ⁓ I mean, now I'm getting very stereotypical. Like I'm starting with stereotypes. So I don't want to generalize. It's just kind of a personal experience that I've had in the past. ⁓ But what I love, like I've been a developer that became a designer. And one of the things I always admired designers, but I
didn't always like them. Many times I didn't like them because they were too snobby. They would kind of feel, ⁓ I'm the designer. I'm some kind of a special person where the developers would feel all the pain because all these cool ideas of the designer, they're the ones that have to execute it. So what I love with the developers is that they're grounded, really grounded. They're kind of always solution-driven, trying to do stuff and not really playing the rockstar game. That's something that I've seen in the design scene that I hate.
like designers trying to so often kind of beat the rocks around the team. That's why I always like love being on the engineering side. like, hey people, we're a team building cool stuff and we support each other. So yeah, I have the same experience as you. It's like, there's this stereotype that developers are nerds, but they're really cool people and they're not nerds. They're...
Stephanie (10:31)
Yeah, they're actually
people too. Yeah, so I'd met, I'd never met, ⁓ I've never been in software at all, obviously. This is totally, I was very nervous coming into this, but it was really cool just kind of sharing.
Jim Zarkadas (10:33)
Mmm.
Mmm.
Stephanie (10:45)
different experiences with them of like me as a cleaning business owner, like different things that have happened. And so I was sharing horror stories of like safety issues basically, and that safety is a huge problem in our industry that nobody talks about. And that...
Jim Zarkadas (10:56)
Hmm
Hmm.
Stephanie (11:03)
our staff being able to really quickly get a hold of us if something's going wrong in the field is like really important and that that's been a struggle in the past. And so they, you know, went off for two days and I think like the last day or last couple of days of the retreat, they're like, all right, like we've got a surprise, let's present it to you. And they had prototyped the SOS feature, which is now, I mean, got shipped very quickly after the retreat. Within a couple of months, that actually went live again, totally.
Jim Zarkadas (11:28)
Yeah.
Stephanie (11:33)
industry revolutionary, nobody else has anything like this. And I don't think anybody's copied it yet. I mean, they should, but like they haven't yet. And it was just, was really incredible to like be a part of that. Like that made me feel like incredibly honored to like influence something like that in such an impactful way. So that was ⁓ one of my favorite moments of the retreat for sure was the development of that.
Jim Zarkadas (11:49)
Hmm.
And now I feel like that you mentioned is the perfect time to ask the questions like, what is your experience so far with the actually on the retreat and be, also with the design calls. And I just realized I forgot to mention something is that after the retreat, the thing that we did is that I realized the value was insane. And I said to Ammar, Hey Ammar, I strongly feel like every Tuesday we have our design call where we review and plan the things that we're to design for the coming week.
we really need Steph in this call. Like we can just move so much faster because all these calls that had between me and Amar for invoicing, there were many times we were like, what should we do here? We don't really know. What do people need? Let's drop a DM, let's say to Maria, like a, which also clean business owner. And then we would wait for like days to get a reply. But if we had somebody in the call that is a real user, we just take decisions on the spot really fast and move 10 times faster. yeah, that was the thing that.
happen after the retreat is that we started inviting you to the design calls and yeah it's been how many years is it two years already one year sounds like that
Stephanie (12:57)
I mean,
this is, well, we just had a year of me being in the design calls because Amsterdam was last year. We just went to Barcelona this year. So a little over a year that I've been involved in weekly design calls and then obviously any additional hackathons outside of that as well. ⁓
Jim Zarkadas (13:02)
Mm.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah,
true. So yeah, the question that I wanna ask is what has been your experience? Some kind of a highlight, things that you learned. I'm gonna keep it open-ended because I just wanna see where your mind is gonna go. ⁓
Stephanie (13:23)
Well, frankly
for me, my cleaning business, ⁓ wonderfully so, runs incredibly smoothly. And that means...
When it comes to when you own a service-based business, things get very boring because you're running into the same problems for the most part. There is nuance, but it's like we're going to hit the same problems over and over again. And frankly, that's not particularly, like I love my business. Obviously like that has caught like it's my life purpose to run a cleaning business. However, ⁓ when it comes to like intellectual stimulation and having interesting conversations and dealing with like solving different types of problems, even though it is still
Jim Zarkadas (13:41)
Mm-hmm.
Stephanie (14:03)
in
the same industry, it is just really gratifying to me from just a ⁓ career perspective or just like me and really enjoying my work because I will say like the design calls is one of my favorite parts of my week. I look forward to it every single week. I love it so much. And I think it's just because I know that it just, it feels really amazing to be able to like influence other.
owners in a positive way. And what I mean by that is though it's like, yes, like you guys are the software and everything like that. I know that the better that we can design, the better that other owners can run their businesses. like the trip, like I'm very much like, uh, I don't, God, this sounds pretty pretentious. I have a very like visionary behavior of like, I, like to see the impact. Like I want to have a big impact. And like by being part of the design calls, I'm directly contributing to impacting owners and employees as well as their local communities.
Jim Zarkadas (14:58)
Hmm.
Stephanie (15:02)
when you can run a cleaning business better, you all of a sudden have more money to go around, you can donate, you can do all of these good things. And again, that doesn't mean everybody's going to do that in their business. That's what we've done in Serene Clean. So the more I can help cleaning business owners, and I do that in a variety of ways now, obviously with the marketing side of things, but.
Jim Zarkadas (15:05)
.
Yeah.
Stephanie (15:22)
From this perspective, what I love is that we can really, in some cases, be quite opinionated about what best practices are because a lot of ZenMade's customers are very inexperienced business owners. And so they don't know how to effectively run or manage or operate their business. And through our UX and through our design, we can actually...
show them the path. And it's not just this like open-ended no man's land. And that's that for me is some of my favorite moments of like, it's just like a light bulb of like, it needs to be like this because this will teach them how to behave correctly or it will make the cleaners behave in a certain way. And just we're really seeing that.
Jim Zarkadas (15:59)
Hmm.
Stephanie (16:03)
Even in this most recent call when we're talking about revamping the notes of like, okay, like we're talking about human behavior, how can we adjust it with the design itself? And that's just really cool to me of like, all right, how can we alter how people behave with design? That's just so fascinating to me.
Jim Zarkadas (16:19)
So if I recap on this, like the thing that you really, because for me, it's one of the most beautiful compliments. First time that I heard it was from Amar. Recently, I also heard it from Alex when he introduced a new team member to invite them to design call. It's like, hey, it's like the design calls, the favorite ⁓ call of the week. I was like, that feels, yeah, it's really like an honor and always kind of, feel like, like it's the biggest compliment because people usually complain about calls that it's draining their energy, like destroying their productivity.
Stephanie (16:29)
Mm-hmm.
It is.
Jim Zarkadas (16:48)
And it's the exact opposite of what I'm hearing about the design. So what I hear from you is that what are you really love is the fact because on the design, you create the future, right? You visualize, you create the future in a way that you design a solution you actually created when you implement it. Like the developer officially creates the future, let's say, when they build and see the thing to production.
there you put all the ideas together and you give it a shape. You save the future actually, that's the verb that I was looking for. So what you really love is that if answered correctly is that you have the chance to actually save the future and have an impact by being part of that code, right?
Stephanie (17:29)
Yeah, absolutely.
And that is just like I know that by making these changes like we are going to make other people's lives easier or better And I guess I'm just I'm so passionate about this industry So it's just a really interesting way to be able to affect it in ways that I perhaps never would have contact I'm not perhaps I absolutely never would have two years thought that I would be part of this like it's just such a cool niche thing for me and It's almost hard to explain sometimes like yeah every week. I talk to this and we do this
Jim Zarkadas (17:53)
Mm.
Stephanie (18:01)
It's favorite part of the week. It's just so, it's really cool to think about these types of problems and how can we get creative with the solutions. And honestly, just, I really appreciate that like my kind of role in ZenMade is to be like incredibly like honest of like what I think. like, that's nice of like, have, mean, I don't have a filter in general, but like I would say that the design calls is very much unfiltered of like my raw, like this is wrong.
Jim Zarkadas (18:21)
Mm-hmm.
Stephanie (18:31)
like this, that type of thing. And I will say like it has, I'm very aware because of our first retreat, it was really useful for the marketing departments or Ryan's the head of marketing here. His presentation was on the ICP or the ideal client profile. And knowing that the designs need to fit for that person who is not me. I am not the ICP in any way, shape or form. I was though. And so it's just constantly for me.
drawing back to that that period of time in my business ⁓ journey or timeline of okay what did I need then or what did I think then knowing that the goal is to get back to where I'm at today so it's like how can we with the design and decisions we're making guide them on this path but
Jim Zarkadas (19:11)
Mmm.
Stephanie (19:20)
my opinion sometimes is completely off base. And I'm very aware of that of like, this is not ICP Stephanie, this is current day Stephanie. And she's not going to get what she's asking for right now. But this is the path hopefully Zedmate is going to take. Because yeah, we're helping people grow their businesses with the product.
Jim Zarkadas (19:40)
True, Yeah, especially for the community you're part of, like ZenMate is not just a nice small tool to just send an invoice. It's to actually run the whole business. And it's also like the approach of ZenMate of creating a lot of educational content, which gives you the space to actually have an impact. Because if it was just a micro small tool, it wouldn't be the, yeah, it was just a small part of their workflow. And it's also very interesting what you're saying,
On the other part, that it's also creative for you and a way to kind of like refreshing that you can just join a technical product design call with a bunch of nerds and discuss about like what kind of cool stuff we can build for the community you're part of because you're busy all day with like the cleaning appointments and like kind of coordinating everything and managing everything that comes up and so on. So that's something that I never really thought of that. Yeah, it's a way to kind of see something else from
Stephanie (20:14)
Yeah.
Jim Zarkadas (20:34)
⁓ different type of people as well because you're hanging out with like all the your office managers, your cleaning technicians and so on but not really with engineers designers so you get the chance to meet people from different ecosystems.
Stephanie (20:47)
I've been in such a blue collar business and obviously I interact with my staff, but what you just touched on is exactly right. It's like for me, my work was then made and specifically really in the design call, it's so lighthearted and there's no pressure where in my business, it's a lot of pressure. have 30 families to feed, it feels like. So it's like if I'm failing or if I'm stressed and serene clean, it really, it's a lot. It's a lot to handle and manage that strength.
Jim Zarkadas (20:50)
Hmm.
Stephanie (21:17)
where it's like, I'm just showing up and having a good time and telling you what I think on Tuesdays. So like, really, I like that. It's very refreshing and almost like a nice like oasis of like no stress for me. Cause I'm like, this sounds bad, like it obviously matters, but it doesn't impact like me or like my employees in that way of like that, that response, like there's no responsibility. And that's really nice when you are a business owner, cause you have so much responsibility.
Jim Zarkadas (21:48)
Yeah, I fully hear you, fully hear you and agree. Okay. That's really, really cool. Yeah. And really cool that we're doing this podcast episode because it's, we never really had this conversation of like, Hey, Steph, how do you feel so far? Like, how's this experience been for you? We just kind of work on the autopilot. So yeah, it's really nice that we're getting the chance to reflect on all these. What are, okay, let me think. What are, I have some questions in my list. One of them is,
Stephanie (22:00)
Hehehehehe ⁓
Mm-hmm.
Jim Zarkadas (22:13)
What surprised you about how product decisions are made and how we build the product behind the scenes? ⁓ yeah, if anything really changed in how you think and how you approach things after like being part of the design sessions and observing how we build a SaaS product behind the scenes.
Stephanie (22:34)
Yeah, definitely a lot surprised me and it really has influenced even just how I behave as an owner and leader in my own business because specifically when it comes to scope of work, scope of projects and complexity, I sometimes I say something or ask for something having no idea what that actually entails or like why the timeline is what it is. And so it's given me a lot more patience, I would say towards
towards ZenMade, although my managers have had the opposite effect of like, cause now they know that they have an in with ZenMade. So I get messages all the time like, this is like, blah, blah, blah. This needs to change. This needs to change. Or for me, I feel like I have such patience of like an appreciation because I see just how much work goes into every feature and how much is happening behind the scenes. So I have a much deeper appreciation for the level of basically what, what to the user feels like invisible work, right? Like it's like, that's not, it's almost
Jim Zarkadas (23:00)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Hmm.
Stephanie (23:30)
Like it's not real it just is happening where it's like clearly, you know There's how many people working tirelessly to make these things happen? So I would say that's something that really surprised me and kind of like humbled me when it's like when we're requesting this thing and Specifically, I think you know last year
in ⁓ the Netherlands when you and I and Alex sat down and I was like, okay, I wanna talk about availability. That is one of the biggest problems that if you can solve this for all of your users, like they're never going to leave, because nobody's solved it yet. No competitor has solved it. And there's a reason for it, because it's such a complex issue. And like us sitting down and like walking through it and then, know, Alex put all this work into like...
coming up with a solution, one could call it, for availability, but it totally does not, like it's still not, it needs so much work and that's not his fault, it's such a complex problem. Like it is one of the hardest problems to solve, I think for the software, for any software. And so, and what I'm speaking of is basically the scheduling software showcasing to me.
Jim Zarkadas (24:23)
Mm.
Stephanie (24:35)
what I ⁓
Jim Zarkadas (24:44)
Until it's not, yeah.
Stephanie (24:56)
V1 to be happy that, know, and honestly, a lot of the things that have came out, we still don't use in SereneClean because we are so far past ICP level that it's like, this is going to be great for somebody with three cleaners. It's not cutting it for us at 30 staff members, right? And so I've definitely just, I've come to appreciate that not everything is going to be for me in the software, or at least not at V1. Maybe at V6, it's going to be to the place where it is, right? For example, a digital checklist.
Jim Zarkadas (25:22)
Yeah.
Stephanie (25:26)
you know, ⁓ we implemented the checklist feature that is revolutionary for thousands of customers. It doesn't, it's not going to work for us yet because we like to have the client to have the
Jim Zarkadas (25:36)
Hmm.
Yeah, the printed version,
Stephanie (25:39)
copy of the checklist or
until that's able to be either sent or filled out, whatever. Like whatever that looks like, we're not going to implement that. And so, but that's okay. And so I think it's been really interesting for me to see how decisions are made on...
what is priority to work on because there's only so much bandwidth within the development team. And so it's been really interesting to see from a business decision standpoint of we are doing this because we are either, you know, like.
why are we pursuing this? Is it because it's gonna bring in more customers or it's gonna stop customers from leaving? It's kind of like, it reminds me of like defensive and offensive or proactive or reactive or whatever we wanna call it of like, ⁓ defensively we need to make things so people do not leave, but then offensively we need to make features that pull people in. And so it's really interesting to make decisions based on like, where is this at? ⁓ Which features have the most,
Jim Zarkadas (26:21)
Hmm.
Mmm
Stephanie (26:42)
⁓ need and that's been frustrating for me because I have my opinions of that but that doesn't matter necessarily what all customers want. So just keeping in mind that it's not all about me.
Jim Zarkadas (26:50)
Mmm.
Yeah, yeah,
there is the thing that I'm more he I remember we're driving to the center of Zandvoort, like in the Netherlands to go and grab a dinner. And we're discussing something about those products and so on. And I really like how he phrased the following thing he said, because what we're discussing, actually, to explain better is that the whole idea of the customer is always right and how wrong these mentalities and he said, the customer is like, he's always right is wrong, but the customers are always right.
Stephanie (27:21)
Yes.
Jim Zarkadas (27:22)
That's
true, which is like pretty much what you're saying as well is that you need to look at the market and not like just individuals and look at the patterns and so on, which was very well and simply explained. It really stood out and kind of stayed with me. And I fully agree on everything that ⁓ you mentioned with the...
Stephanie (27:29)
Mm-hmm.
Jim Zarkadas (27:44)
building the basic version, it's also like a good reminder that when you design or build something, you really need to know for who you're doing this. Like because the depending on the who, like in our case, the size of the business, it's going to look very, very different. And maybe you want to do it to serve everybody, but you have to start from somewhere and like step by step, iterate until you get to the big one. ⁓ Cool. Okay. Very interesting stuff. Thank you. ⁓ Let me see.
Stephanie (28:10)
Mm-hmm.
Jim Zarkadas (28:13)
⁓ Yeah, now it's the other topic that I was thinking to discuss, which is the taste. So the podcast is really about how to combine delight and growth together, how to build products that really grow. They acquire more customers, like you said, like with the offensive ⁓ and defensive, that they acquire a lot of customers. They have higher retention. They do all the growth stuff, but also they're delightful and they have taste. They're nice to use and they don't just do the job and convert you.
So yeah, we've been always discussing about tech products and so on, but it would be cool to think about how all these things apply into clinic business. I'm a big fan of seeking inspiration outside of tech. So I'll bring a kind of unrelated example, but I feel it's a good example is let's say you want to do visual design. One advice that a friend of mine gave me that is a brand designer was that
When you want to find inspiration for colors and so on, don't go and look on triple. Like just look at the nature, for example, look at trees, look at the sky. Like the sky has beautiful gradients. If you think about it, look at, go to museum, look at paintings and start observing different details. And that was, it was really cool because suddenly like a new world kind of opens up and you realize you can find inspiration everywhere. Also a big cliche, but true. So in this case also for business.
Stephanie (29:36)
Mm-hmm.
Jim Zarkadas (29:38)
I strongly believe that you can find inspiration on how to improve your business by looking into businesses that are completely outside of your ecosystem. Like if you're a SaaS, you can look, let's say, into a cleaning business or something else. So yeah, enough with my intro on this. I'm curious to hear more how, what kind of what taste, and you, like, how do you define taste actually? Let's keep the questions more sculpted actually. So how do you define taste in your case?
Stephanie (29:52)
Hehehehehe
So I guess I see that more as a branding thing and that's where my mind goes to is I have very strong branding instincts and I always have since day one of Serene Clean and even when it was just me, individual cleaner and I think, so I don't know if that's, when I think taste it's, it's.
Like when you have good taste, it's like it's intentional. Like it feels thought out to me. And I feel like I had intentionality even from the beginning as a, you I opened my business at 22 years old and I was doing the cleaning myself and I already felt that I had some really good like taste instincts. ⁓
Jim Zarkadas (30:46)
So it's also about quality, you would say. it's, what do you say, you would taste instincts like that in the beginning? Was it more like, how would you explain that with an example?
Stephanie (30:51)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
So I guess when I, again, and it's hard for me to like discern taste versus branding or, you know, we had talked earlier this year and we talked about like your brand having a perspective and again, I just, feel like it's a level of intentionality and not just throwing, you know, noodles at the wall and seeing what sticks. It's like, no, I have this perspective. I have this very specific type of.
feeling that I want my customer to feel by interacting with me and that it needs to be consistent. It needs to be at every single interaction that they have with my business. It needs to be incredibly consistent so that they know what to expect from me. considering the particular industry that I am in, ⁓
Jim Zarkadas (31:28)
Hmm.
Stephanie (31:48)
dependability, trustworthiness, that's important. But that goes across all businesses. Like if you don't have those traits and your customer doesn't feel that you have those traits, then you're not going to be successful. You're going to fail. And I think that something that a lot of businesses struggle with, ⁓ you know, particularly in our industry is that we all are like, well, I'm a great cleaner. Why are they not choosing me? And the reason that they're not choosing us is specifically because we are not communicating.
effectively via our visuals, not just verbally, but it's everything to do with the entire business and every interaction that they have with us from a subconscious level needs to scream the traits that you are trying to...
Jim Zarkadas (32:34)
Hmm.
Stephanie (32:35)
or you were trying to influence them with of like, okay, the problems that people have with, actually just did a podcast episode on this, it'll go live next week. ⁓ The problems that people have with cleaning businesses, or a cleaner, having a cleaner, let's just say.
What are we trying to solve? It's not just, it quality work? That is only one aspect of a customer's potential frustrations with a cleaner. And though your core base and foundation needs to be a quality service and getting the actual cleaning itself done, the physical labor needs to be done correctly. Yes, that is only one aspect of what that customer is looking for. And so if we just hammer in on like we're quality, we're quality, we're quality,
and even just verbally saying that when all of the competition is also saying that, to me that word means nothing. The word quality means nothing when everybody's saying it because who do you believe if we're all saying it? And so it's very important to me that we showcase how and that for us means that...
Jim Zarkadas (33:32)
Hmm.
So don't tell,
yeah.
Stephanie (33:40)
Show don't tell. And I think that that has been my kind of like guiding light throughout and kind of the focus of all of my branding. Like the taste is show don't tell. like, and you know, in a variety of different ways we can do that. And so if we're showing them the quality and you can do that in different types of ways. ⁓
Also, you know, they want dependability. They want somebody that they can trust in their home. They want to know that you're going to show up and do the job when you say you're going to, and you are trying to make their life easier, not add more mental load. So everything about Serene Clean and our brand is geared towards not only delivering the deliverables, but making them feel that way. Additionally, knowing that ⁓ there is a certain level of psychological shame sometimes for people to have a house cleaner.
to outsource this work, so touching on that lightly as well. Additionally, additionally, ⁓ I'm in a small area and I know, rural, where I started my business was only 5,000 people, the first location, and we have three locations now, but still incredibly rural. And so I know that what's going to work in my area or what's going to connect to my customer base is very community oriented. And so highlighting...
not only our community with give back, like every single month, we've always been employee chosen donations, but like for me, the heart of my business is my staff. And so highlighting them to the point of every single before and after it has an image of the person who did that work, right? Every testimonial has an image of the person that that review. So it's all very intentional so that I want when somebody interacts with Serene Clean, even in passing, it just slaps them across the face of exactly who we are and what we're all about.
Jim Zarkadas (35:00)
Hmm.
Stephanie (35:30)
It's just, very intentional with what that means. And I think just like not getting distracted by shiny abject syndrome when it comes to like marketing or anything like that. like, this is who we are, laser focus. This is what we're going to do. And here's all of the proof associated to showcase that we can do that. So when I think of the UX of it all, from each touch point,
from the very first touch point, I want it to be a very specific way, right? Like everything is like templatized. Everything is tried out. ⁓ Everything has been adjusted and tweaked until it's this perfect thing so that when they reach out, they fill out that booking form on our website, which are all getting funneled to that so that they interact with the website. I don't want them reaching out on Facebook. don't want like everything gets funneled to this one point where they must fill out the booking form or in this case, you know, the pluvius form that we've developed, but all,
All of that said, they're interacting with the website. So that's very, very integral that that happens. So that's their first impression. Well, Google reviews or Facebook or word of mouth is their first impression, but then...
I know they're interacting with the website. And then after that, it's this like, it's this incredibly specific types of interactions that we're doing after that. It's all been very thought out. And so I want, when they get that first estimate email and they see our attached cleaning checklist, they see a video of me talking about their frequently asked questions. They, they see the offer, they see the pricing, they see all of these, like it's just, it's, it's very intentional because I want it to elicit a certain feeling of, holy shit, they know what they're doing.
because that's what people want in their house cleaner. They want to just be at ease and to take this off of their mind. So I want it to be this feeling of, they got this, they got this. I don't have to worry about this. so long story long, that is like my thoughts on this.
Jim Zarkadas (37:18)
No, that's
beautiful. And it's like one thing that always stands out like from what I hear from you is like, you know your user. Like you know deep, like I remember the conversation we had ⁓ at the retreat where I asked you like, what's your why on your business? Because we're doing this branding workshop and I was trying to understand what is the deeper motivation because like branding is really speaking to the soul, like to the heart of the other person. You serve your staff and then I ask you the...
Stephanie (37:26)
Exactly.
Jim Zarkadas (37:44)
⁓ about the impact you have on your customers. And it was really interesting all the stuff that you mentioned also with women, example, of like feeling guilty because they have a cleaner and everything. I was like, what? Like I would never think about it. Like for me, just, you need somebody to help you at home because you're too busy with kids, work, whatever you're busy with. And you just need somebody to help you clean the house. So you don't do it by yourself on the weekend. But it was really interesting for me how deeply you understood your audience, your customers.
And I feel like, not I feel like that's a rule I would say. It's not a personal feeling that great UX always starts with deep empathy, like deeply understanding what your users think and how they feel. Again, big cliche, but easy to say, hard to do. Like everybody says, yeah, just get to know your users. Yeah, cool. How the hell can I do that? Like you really need to hang out with them, go there, provide the service and pay attention and so on. So yeah, it's a...
Stephanie (38:24)
us. ⁓
you
Yeah.
You gotta curl
or be them and that's the nice thing is that like I share so even though you know I don't have children yet like I don't share I'm not my perfect ICP which is mostly you know, know my avatar whatever you want to call them which I have multiple for residential and remember we're 50 50 % commercial as well where you have a huge commercial side of my business However, that doesn't you know for us? People and businesses are also people who have houses so they cross over a lot and so we try to be really geared
Jim Zarkadas (39:09)
Hmm.
Stephanie (39:12)
towards like the like you said the emotional side of it is I think that's why it's so important to yeah like get to know your customers and it's so easy to say like you said but it's like until you've seen somebody crying or they're on the phone crying because they're so ashamed of the way their house looks and and even like okay if your house is a mess Jim and you have friends over unexpectedly nobody's gonna think wow Jim's bad at housekeeping you know who they're gonna think about your wife you know it's like wow
Jim Zarkadas (39:41)
Hmm.
Stephanie (39:42)
She can't get it together and like why can't she if they think that at all? as women we know that that's what like we're thinking about so like it's why you know for me I'm like I panic if somebody stops by unexpectedly because I know it's going to reflect on me as unfair and Messed up as that is it's just like okay that emotional raw string There's something there and we need to address it because if you don't address that that deep need to feel Not ashamed, you know if we don't address that we're
Jim Zarkadas (39:59)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Stephanie (40:11)
We're
missing out on a huge opportunity to connect and show our customers that we understand we're there to solve their problems. And so I think not every obviously, well, honestly, every, like we think about it, any product or service, like it sounds dramatic. But if you don't feel deeply that with your business, you are gonna change the life of your customer, well, maybe you shouldn't be in it. And I'm not saying you have to be like this like psycho passionate person about your thing.
Jim Zarkadas (40:17)
Hmm.
Stephanie (40:41)
but I think it will grow. I may not have been this passionate, I know I wasn't, but the passion grows of like, I know the positive impact my work has.
Jim Zarkadas (40:48)
Exactly. And like what you said with the change
in the life of the customer, like that's a really good one because with all the bullshit also from Silicon Valley and so on, yeah, we make the world a better place. We change the lives of people and so on. It's like there has so much bullshit, has been so much bullshit in the past where like it's been overused and like they presented as if they're changing the whole life. But actually it's true because you're changing the life of the customer, but at a very specific context.
Like you're changing the life of like you solve this pain that really is a strong pain for them. Let's say, like I can think about other products or services that I have that are actually changing my life, but a very specific part of my life. And it's yeah, just kind of a being happy, happy with that. Like a realization, for example, that I had as a designer, I've been always trying to understand what is the value we're really creating as a team? Why do people like what we do? Why do they pay? And what is the real value?
Stephanie (41:15)
Thanks
Jim Zarkadas (41:44)
I always thought it was just design. Yeah, we just do designs. They get nice designs, that's it. But it's not that. One of the things that I started to realize more and more is that when you provide a service, the deliverable is 50 % what you actually deliver. So it's the design or a clean house. The other 50 % is the customer experience, the customer understanding. It's actually, for example, in my case, Ammar, the CEO, he's the person that I work most with.
It's my responsibility to save that person time and make them think less and give them more, like provide them more decisions. Like they're paying me to take these decisions so that they won't have to think, for example. So it's not just about sending them five design proposals, say, hey, Amar, which one do you like? I'm being paid to actually have the sharp thinking and take decisions and ask the right questions and so on. Or like the way you're going to ask the questions, like make sure it's efficient. It's like so many small things.
that are not related to the design itself that create a lot of value and play a big kind of a role in the impact you're to have on the business as well. yeah, it's very, very interesting. The course is going in all kinds of directions, but it's pretty interesting. You always start with a question, then things like topics kind of open up.
Stephanie (43:00)
Yeah.
Jim Zarkadas (43:03)
and how you see UX ⁓ in your business. Intentionality was the other thing that stood out. It's like you're very intentional with every single detail because you have a really clear understanding of what's the impact you want to have. ⁓ If we talk about delight, what are some ways you add delight ⁓ to your customers? Like things that you make ⁓ and surprise them. I really like how Amar...
explained how he perceives delight in general in products and he said when there is an unexpected nice surprise. I think that's how he phrased it. I don't remember the exact words but there was the surprise element in it that it's unexpected. for example ⁓ like in Asana it's a to-do software, project management software. After you complete I think five tasks or something you mark them as done.
then you have a unicorn flying suddenly in your screen. And it's just a nice detail. People have been sharing this. It's like, it's one of the signature things of Asana. So yeah, I'm curious, like in a clinic business, do you have anything to delight customers? And if so, what is that? What's that?
Stephanie (43:59)
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
And this is something that, you know, we have, it's kind of a luxury to be able to even think about that, you know, and you have to be far enough on in your business to.
Be intentional about adding unexpected delight because there are some certain things that I would consider expected in that we explain that this is going to happen like for example One of our selling points is that we have extensive standardized checklists that are left behind after each cleaning So, you know exactly what tasks were performed in your house, right? They expect that because we use it as a sales sales point However, it doesn't stop them from commenting on how much they love that Additionally one aspect of delight when it comes to that is there is a note section and we encourage
Jim Zarkadas (44:41)
Hmm.
Stephanie (44:53)
our cleaners to leave like sweet little notes about that. We encourage our cleaners, though they are expected to clean up in a particular way and get this done, you know, if you can find things in the house to do like, you know, put the little stuffed animals in a heart or have them waiting for the child or put the blanket in a heart or whatever, like little details like that are always nice. Clean out the dog dishes, like those types of things when it comes to the actual like service itself for sure. Additionally, in the past year,
Jim Zarkadas (45:14)
Hmm.
Stephanie (45:23)
We've really kind of focused on that of like how can we make this more of an experience and and yeah that unexpectedness is really nice and so one of the things is we we got a custom scent blend created that is For serene clean specifically we have a room spray that all of our staff have they spray the rooms about when they go and then at their third cleaning with us They get a basically welcome card of like welcome to this rain clean family because at this point they've you know They've had their first clean which is the Super Bowl they have
Jim Zarkadas (45:29)
Hmm.
Stephanie (45:53)
their second clean which is 50 % off to get them sucked in. By third clean you're part of the family what else can we do? Well here is a candle it is in that scent called Reclaim Your Calm that is our slogan that you know it's beautiful candle it coincides with the room spray and they have this welcome card that the cleaner themselves totally you know totally unexpected and again welcome packages are not unusual for cleaning companies to do but again just trying to be very like it's this smell I want them to be Pavlov dog
when they walk in the house, they start drooling because they smell serene clean, right? We were here. And because I know that olfactory senses are incredibly like important when it comes to memory and feeling, that's why we went through down the scent route, right? ⁓ Another aspect of delight that I have done and specifically this was because of a Zenmade ⁓ feature that got released was the anniversary and birthday feature for both cleaning staff and our cleaning clients. by all of a sudden now being able to see
Jim Zarkadas (46:37)
love it.
Hmm.
Stephanie (46:53)
in the software where my cleaning clients anniversaries are, meaning service anniversaries, right? They've been a customer of mine for one year, two year, three year, four year. In the past, since that got released, I think that was in January, every single month I now create a custom loom video for every single customer that has their anniversary that month. We schedule them out an email to send on that day with the thank you video from me. And so I've been able to systematize that, that yeah, it takes me a couple hours every single month.
But the feedback, mean, when you talk about absolute delight, mean, yeah, that has just nailed it. They are shocked. They're like, this is how you do it. I've never seen this before. Like, they're just dazzled by it, right? And so it doesn't take me that much effort, you know, but it, mean, it's kind of a nuisance, but it's worth it because I'm rewarding the loyalty and it's something, loyal customers are oftentimes forgotten and because people are so focused on getting new customers. And so it's just like the much.
Jim Zarkadas (47:51)
Yeah, they feel that
you take them for granted in a way. Yeah. Yeah.
Stephanie (47:54)
Like how can we make them feel appreciated? And then also we leave a note on the anniversary, like, the cleaning that is most close to their anniversary. They also are getting a candle and a thank you note at that moment as well as a, as a reiteration of thanks there. So we're trying to really make sure that they feel appreciated because for a cleaning business, our reoccurring revenue is the core of our success. It's not about one-offs. It's not about move-outs. It's we build this strong foundation of like a bunch of clients and we add to that. So how can we keep them here and have them?
them
not either just cancel cleanings, do it themselves and or go to a cheaper alternative. And these are the little touches that's going to hopefully make them say, yeah, but serine clean does it this way. And I know exactly what to expect from them, that consistency. So those are a couple of examples of delight.
Jim Zarkadas (48:39)
You're a real designer, Steph. No, for real, it's like
what you describe is pretty much branding and UX design, like in product design in the context of kind of a clinic business. And it's like a code that I, it's something I used to say since my early days as a designer, that I believe that everybody's a designer. They just don't realize it. Like as an engineer, design architectures, systems.
components and so on. Your experience, your design and experience. What you literally used this word before. And I love all the details. And I mean, as a designer myself, I always appreciate when people so much thought into the details and how can I create a feeling and not just solve a problem. It's like solving a problem. Sure, it's like the fundamental. Otherwise, people wouldn't pay you. But then it's about taking the extra mile and just going to a level higher.
You don't need to, you can build a great business without doing it, but it's just more fun. Life is more fun when you're creative.
Stephanie (49:36)
This part!
And the cleaners like it too. They feel excited to be giving these gifts. then, know, for us, our internal customers, our staff, staffing is the biggest challenge for any service-based company. know, like that, like I'd be a multimillionaire if I didn't have, you know, the staffing turnover. It's horrendous in the cleaning industry specifically. You know, it's just hard in general, but it's a constant problem. for us, when you're talking about UX of that cleaner's experience working here, like that's what we're taking my new website towards is like,
focusing
on the staff because like for me, that's the strong horse of like, if I can just nail what my employees experiences working here and making them feel as special as they are. like, so I would say the UX of employees is actually even more intentional of like, insane levels of appreciation. Like that is what is important. They need to feel seen and that is the core. need to seen and respected and heard. And so if those are the things we're trying to solve, how can we
Jim Zarkadas (50:29)
Hmm.
Stephanie (50:37)
solve those with our behaviors basically and basically systematize culture right.
Jim Zarkadas (50:43)
Love it. Yeah, love it. And it's really like also interesting. It's like going the extra mile, focusing on delight and just not blanking it at a basic level attracts also better people. It's like, I feel like this quote kind of fits here is like your vibe attracts your tribe. It's kind of a true, it's kind of a seamless, like the quality of your service and what you put out there is gonna attract people that believe in these ⁓ as well. So if you put out their quality and delight, you're gonna attract people, you're gonna, people.
that are gonna click with your brand or people that actually value these things. So you make your life easier in the end as well.
Stephanie (51:19)
And it's
all touchy feely. It's like, okay, like, you know, we're going on, you know, this,
year we've had just insane levels of high quality, meaning going, you know, months without a complaint. We're at a six week point now where we haven't had a single complaint. And when we're talking about thousands of appointments, that's like very impressive and unheard of in our industry. like it, like all of these things I'm saying doesn't negate the fact that that core is quality and that we have incredibly high standards. But when you behave in this way and make people feel this appreciation and, and, what, for example, delight, like on my, on my employees anniversaries, they're getting shot.
with ⁓ attention, I either make them a custom AI song that is specific. Like I make that, I make that and I make the lyrics about them and then I use AI to make it. Or I make a poster about them with AI that has everything about them, like all of the special things that make them special. And so that's coming from the boss of like, do I need to do that? Absolutely not. But I like it. They love it. They all look forward to it. And, I hope they do. Maybe they're just saying it to me, but like that I would say taking it to the next level of like,
like,
okay, how can we delight them so they don't like, they're not gonna forget that, right?
Jim Zarkadas (52:29)
Yeah, exactly. 100%. 100%. It's also like an interesting use case of AI that you mentioned completely a topic, but yeah, I love it when, because with AI app for so many like things on LinkedIn, like about how it's going to replace everybody and all these formal and kind of a clickbait content. And in the end, it's just see people using AI for like coming up with recipes or like your case, delighting their teams. Like it's a beautiful technology, but yeah, off topic. don't have to go into that. Right.
Stephanie (52:55)
You know, I know, but sure,
yeah, 100%. Like we're big, I mean, it's made us so much ⁓ more innovative and productive and really helps us get past a lot of stopping points where we're just stumped and we need a different perspective on something. So yeah, big fan.
Jim Zarkadas (53:13)
Yeah, I'm going
to say something. I'm curious if it's going to make sense since we opened this topic very briefly. It's like, I feel like AI is democratizing creativity in a way that it actually, it gives you like, you can write a song for your, for your team. Whereas before you would literally have to think about lyrics and it would be impossible. it's like creative ideas suddenly can happen because of this, technology. yeah, it's a, it's something.
Stephanie (53:31)
Yeah?
Jim Zarkadas (53:37)
That's why I always love technology and why I fell in love with the world of startups and tech and so on is the whole democratization kind of a vibe, like information. Like if I look at the generation before us, they couldn't Google, like now also Googling something feels so old school, I can just add to GPT and do a conversational research and actually ask questions and just go deeper and deeper, which feels like so nice to have. yeah, it's access to.
It's democratizing this case like access to information, in our case like creativity and giving life to these cool ideas. ⁓
Stephanie (54:11)
It's very empowering, incredibly empowering.
Even, yeah, just in personal life. know, I love interior design and like working on my living room and I'm like, okay, you're an interior design expert. Like tell me, what's the, you know, I need to do this gallery wall. Like what is best practices? What should I do so I really like that it's like, yeah, democratizing creativity because it's like, I have this inside me, but I need the confidence of like, no, this is the direction to take it. Or it reminds me of this year's retreat in Barcelona where we did the customer portal exercise where we're using
using these AI tools to basically generate the website, I guess, I don't know what call it, the portal. ⁓
Jim Zarkadas (54:45)
Yeah, Yeah, the web application.
Yeah.
Stephanie (54:49)
Yeah, like that was amazing because it's like here you're taking a bunch of non developers and within an hour and a half we have six different examples of what a customer, like working customer profile or portal could look like. And it was, I think that was a very empowering experience for the entire team. Like we all felt really like so creative of like, my gosh, I saw my ideas come to life and we could have never done that without AI.
Jim Zarkadas (55:07)
Hmm
Exactly,
exactly. 100%. Yeah, AI is like really interesting. We could make an episode just on this to discuss about all the cool use cases. Let's see. I see we're 55 minutes in. So I have some questions as kind of the closing ones that I wanted to go through. And they're the following. First,
Yeah, it's actually two questions. The one is what's your favorite SaaS product at the moment and why by SaaS? Yeah, it's a bit technical. Like what I mean with a SaaS product is actually what's one of your favorite tools, like your favorite tool that you're using throughout your week, let's say to run your business.
Stephanie (55:55)
Zenn made obviously. That is the foundation of Serene Clean. But I would say, yeah, same thing. I know I might be watching a lot of So yeah, if listening to mine. So I would say like when it comes to a really well done software that we've really been enjoying utilizing in Serene Clean.
Jim Zarkadas (56:02)
It was like a test. Let's see.
Stephanie (56:21)
is going to be Trainual. I really like Trainual. think that they did an excellent, like it's a great software. And so what that is is basically a platform for, I don't know how to describe it, but like documenting.
Jim Zarkadas (56:35)
Yeah, training knowledge
and learning management software. Sorry for interrupting. I was just kind of reading the title.
Stephanie (56:40)
Yeah,
was hoping you would look it up because I wanted to know what the exact description is and that's something that we started using in the past year ⁓ for Serene Clean for onboarding staff as well as just documenting our procedures as we continue to scale and grow. ⁓ And the reason I like it so much, it's very intuitive, it's very clean, they have a beautiful knowledge base and their onboarding was second to none. have never, because it's a up where it's like the possibilities are endless of the directions.
Jim Zarkadas (56:44)
You
Hmm
Stephanie (57:10)
we can take
this and that can be very overwhelming without hand holding. Now aside, now ClickUp has, you know, really great resources for that. You can get a lot of, as many optimization calls as you want. So I've done many optimization calls with ClickUp, but totally beside the point with Trainual, they really were quite insistent on the path that we took with onboarding of like, no, you are going to meet with somebody like, let's make like, and we're going to go through this and we're going to make sure you're making progress because they want you to buy in, because it's an expensive software.
Jim Zarkadas (57:17)
Hmm.
Stephanie (57:40)
at least for us, it's expensive. And so the...
Jim Zarkadas (57:40)
yeah yeah it starts at 250 yeah
Stephanie (57:44)
Yeah,
yeah. And so for us, was like, I really appreciated that because I needed that. I needed that accountability in order to utilize it to its fullest for us at the time being. And for them to explore use cases of SereneClean, because they knew the more that we integrate into it, the less likely we are to cancel, right? Once we start building things out in there, we're not ever leaving because it was so much fricking work. And ⁓ it's just, and I have seen such an, like,
all
of our new hires, they go through the orientation we have in the quizzes and they say they're like, we've worked at a lot of places, we have never gone through an orientation like this. Like this was amazing. And so knowing again, the experience of my staff member when they, that first week is crucial to like, and so it's just, again, taste of, want that first interaction that they have day one of working at Serene Clean. I want it to be like this really specific experience of like, listen, we're gonna, like, I know that this is over,
Jim Zarkadas (58:25)
Hmm.
Stephanie (58:44)
to start a new job and you've never done this before. Like let's walk through what it's gonna be like here. And I mean, we have like the six hour orientation in there and there's quizzes and all of this stuff. But yeah, the train is just, it's really, it's easy to use as well. Yeah, I just, really like it. I would say for me, that's one of my top, top softwares that I've used recently.
Jim Zarkadas (58:52)
Hmm.
Okay, that's very interesting because I was taking the website, you cannot just sign up on your own. So they don't do what we call the product-led growth where the product can sell itself. You actually have to go through some kind of a sales and customer success team. ⁓ But it's very interesting. Yeah, I've used it to be when you sent us, when we're doing some research together and you send us the actual kind of training material that you have over there. But since you mentioned, it wasn't...
like what I had in mind to ask, but now I'm too curious to not ask. It's like, what was the onboarding experience back there? Because a big part of what I do as a product designer, right, with my team as well is to improve the onboarding experience of somebody so that we can, like our goal is actually do exactly what you described, like make the user successful, which means to achieve the goal that they have in mind when they joined, but in a self-service format in our case. So we need to design interactive experience.
Stephanie (59:35)
you
Jim Zarkadas (59:57)
that is gonna guide you to that outcome. In your case, you had a team. So I'm curious, what are the things that they did where you're like, like, it's so cool here. Like I have one of, I'm having one of the best onboarding experiences ever. Is it training of the product? Was it best practice on how to train your team and document things? I'm curious what, if you remember, yeah.
Stephanie (1:00:15)
I see. So the onboarding into
the software or the onboarding into SereneClean that we've created? Which one are you referencing? The onboarding on the software? Okay, yeah.
Jim Zarkadas (1:00:20)
⁓ with the Trenual, like what was so amazing
with your experience on Trenual?
Stephanie (1:00:24)
So I think
I liked the, I would say almost aggressiveness of like, you will be doing a call. there is no, like if you sign up for this, like we are picking a date, you are doing this call, we're sitting down, we're walking through it. So I really liked that kind of assertiveness in, ⁓ it's not only, like this isn't optional. I'm sure like you could back out, but they're gonna harass you until you hop onto those optimization calls so they can run through. And then they basically kind of called me out like, hey, I see you haven't,
Jim Zarkadas (1:00:36)
Hmm?
Stephanie (1:00:54)
built anything yet. Like what do we need to do to help facilitate you starting to build this out? Cause they know how, how integral it is that if we're not building stuff out in there, we might drop. Right. And so they know if like they, they were very incentivized to get us to start building out some, ⁓ you know, some of the, like, ⁓ I guess whatever you want to call it procedures in there or whatever. And so for us, we knew that our first, order of business for trainual was to do orientation, right? Like that, like we wanted to build out an orientation program.
and forced to ring clean new employees. And so that was our biggest and highest goals. But then even just like making sure all of the users were added and explaining how to group people and whatever. like, I wouldn't say, I mean, it wasn't anything like particularly revolutionary. I think it was just that level of like, you know, as a business owner, like, or somebody who is like considering different softwares, we're very like, I mean, we're most likely scatterbrained just because of the especially like if we're just scatterbrained, we got a lot of shit going on.
Jim Zarkadas (1:01:50)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Stephanie (1:01:54)
I need somebody to be persistent in pursuing me when it comes to like, okay, I signed it because I have signed up for softwares before that I've completely Stopped using like yeah, I just didn't have time to like or it's not that I didn't I did not make the time to actually invest in learning the software and like for example Yeah, yeah like for click up like I took a weekend course on how to use click up because I was like, you know what? I'm just like I know that this can change my life, but I just don't know how yet And so I had to like set aside time
Jim Zarkadas (1:02:10)
I love it, yeah.
Stephanie (1:02:24)
out of my normal schedule for a weekend and take, you know, eight hours of how to click up effectively basically. And that really, it did change the game for me because now we utilize it so much more. yeah, but I'm not doing that. Like that's not something that I ⁓ ever foresee myself or most people doing. And I think that...
Jim Zarkadas (1:02:34)
Yeah, it's really cool software.
Stephanie (1:02:45)
You know, for most of us, we are using just a fraction of what a software offers when it comes to the features most likely. So it's like, if that's the case, then I think it's on the software to really be on. Don't just let it be this like freeform thing, because they may or they may not. then, you you get you get this high of like purchasing something of like signing up like this is going to change my life. The marketing sold me.
Jim Zarkadas (1:03:07)
Hmm.
Stephanie (1:03:09)
Now the bill comes, I've got busy, I haven't done anything when it comes to actually utilizing or setting this damn thing up. And now I'm like, I just don't have time, let me cancel, right? Or this is just, I start to feel buyer's remorse and it's not because of the software, it's because I haven't invested time to actually make it work for me or like implement in the business. So I think they're helping force it at the most impactful, important time so that we actually are like making progress.
Jim Zarkadas (1:03:34)
Yeah, love this part is accountability
is like in a self service way you do it via emails like nothing people. Hey, you've seen you haven't made progress. What's going wrong and so on. But like booking a recurring call is like on another level because now it's in your calendar. If you don't want to do this, you really need to send an email to that person say, hey, I'm too busy. cannot do the call. So that's a smart strategy. Of course, it's not scalable, but it doesn't mean that it's a it's not a good one because he cannot scale like with a small team. Yeah.
Stephanie (1:04:03)
Mm-hmm.
Jim Zarkadas (1:04:04)
I never, yeah, it's the first time that I know about optimization calls. I have it in my design playbook that is something you should offer when it comes to the onboarding, but making that call recurring, that's kind of an interesting approach.
Stephanie (1:04:16)
you
I think the first
three months of the software, basically, we had a reoccurring call, whatever it was. They also have something called Stranule U, which is their university, which one of my managers went through. So it's like this very tailored educational path so that you get the most out of it. So if you aren't on the calls, they are like, hey, you need to go through this built-in course. And we would chug away at that to make us successful as well. So I liked that too, because it's not just a resource library. It is a path.
Jim Zarkadas (1:04:21)
Hmm.
Stephanie (1:04:46)
it's a learning path, right? So I think that a lot of softwares have this resource library and yeah, I look at it, but it's like, I don't know anything. So I don't even know what I don't know. So why would I click on any of these? So I think having a learning path is really useful. Yeah.
Jim Zarkadas (1:04:48)
Exactly.
Yeah, exactly. It doesn't give you a path of where to start, what to read next and so on. It's more of like a help center. If you have any specific question
to go and find the answer, not really to learn something. Good stuff. And a good reminder that building great product experience is not always about the product itself. It's about the things around the product as well as like the full ecosystem you're offering this person access to. So yeah, really cool stuff. And
So on the products, yeah, you said Trenul is your favorite one at this point. ⁓ And the other, my last question is one small detail you've seen in any products or, yeah, let's keep it product, not service that made you say, whoa, these guys really care.
Stephanie (1:05:28)
Hmm?
I would say you know I I guess this it is a product so you know I get my ⁓
I know I've shared this before, but it still just blows my mind. So I get, you know, I have my dog and my cat who are my babies and I get food from Chewy, which, you everybody knows who Chewy is. And so that is, you know, a product. They offer dog food and cat food and pet supplies. And, you know, they, I had uploaded my pet's information and into my profile of their names and in a picture. And I got right here, you can see that, that painting, that hand painted painting of my border collie, Lily is from
from
Chewy, like they sent me that. ⁓ So I'm just like, I mean, and I know Chewy has, mean, an absolutely delightful experience just in general. but like that just like, that blows my mind to the point of it is in my bed. this is important to me. It's very special to me. And that's from a dog, you know, dog food supplier company. And so that really blew, like that blew my mind that they did that and they do a lot of like kind of handwritten, it just feels very personalized despite the mass scale at it. And so like kind of that gift.
Jim Zarkadas (1:06:22)
Really? ⁓ that's cool.
Stephanie (1:06:51)
initiative ⁓ is quite impressive and inspirational to me and that honestly that did inspire me of like I want to do things like that for my customers because it made it made me feel so special you know.
Jim Zarkadas (1:07:05)
100%. And like, yeah, that's a really cool story. Yeah. And, and this, it's always like, that's always the challenge with like delighting customers. When you think about it as a business owner is that, let's have like a hundred customers, thousand, whatever the number could be. How can I do it for all of them? But sometimes maybe you don't have to, maybe you're just going to pick five. Like you have to choose the depth over the quantity. It's like, you can do something or quality over the quantity that can go like five levels, levels deeper.
Stephanie (1:07:09)
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Jim Zarkadas (1:07:35)
Yeah, this is very interesting topic like Stripe. They've done some really cool stuff in the past. And it's a topic that I, because one of the things that we're doing like in the secret sauce of how we design is the branding, right? That we don't do just UX. We actually bring taste and work less branding experience. And the whole thing of merchandise and like how you like creating swag items, like cool items you can send to your audience is a topic that we're not really paid to do or something or like.
any of the teams we're working with would say, guys, can you design something? But it's something that I'm a big believer of. So if I can bring some cool ideas and even just the library of research of here, how like some cool companies did it, it would be already, already useful because yeah, like it's, it's what I said in the beginning as well with the branding is being intentional on every customer touch point. And it's not just the logo or colors. It's really like the, the candles that you mentioned or the
this spray, like how that spray is gonna feel like and so on, yeah.
Stephanie (1:08:35)
Make some feel. absolutely. Yeah.
And it's just really cool once you start having these conversations of like, it really makes you think that.
everything like, you even ourself as like a person or whatever, like for, you know, my podcast, Filthy Rich Cleaners, like we're talking about making merch and all of that type of stuff. And that's, made the podcast, but I hosted it, suppose. But I say it's my podcast. But like even to the point of like how I designed this, right? This is my office. I did it incredibly intentionally because I want it, like, I need to stand out, but it needs to say like exactly what people are going to experience with this ⁓ podcast of like my personal
personality, it's very like larger than life. like you're gonna like it's it is different and so you need to like get that like I want the first time they turn it on they're like, ⁓ this isn't this isn't the typical stuffy, know, cleaning business owner podcast, right? Like this is going to be a different experience.
Jim Zarkadas (1:09:20)
you
yeah that's a good point, I never
thought about it but yeah it doesn't give the typical vibes yeah that's a good
Stephanie (1:09:33)
Yeah,
yeah, it's like, this woman is like bougie and over the top and there's probably swearing. like, like this is this is what you're going to get here. It's not all buttoned up and stuffy. We're going to talk about real shit. Most like literally. Because we're cleaning up.
Jim Zarkadas (1:09:44)
Yeah, true. And like
great branding always starts by having a ⁓ not a unique person, but having a bold personality, would say, like being somebody that's where you need to start. If it's like about personal branding or like also on a company level, like you can be just a copycat or you can be a company that believes in something has a character, let's say, does have to be something super groundbreaking or something.
⁓ Cool. Yeah, I think that's all the questions that I had for today. We're one hour and 10 minutes, so it's a good time to wrap up. Thanks a lot for the, yeah, thanks a lot for joining on the podcast. And I'll keep it in mind, it would be cool to do another one on some kind of a different topic, like the AI, it's not fully related to the podcast topics and so on, but it's just super interesting. So yeah, why not?
Stephanie (1:10:18)
Yeah.
Yeah, no for sure. Obviously,
I love to talk to Jim and I just like to talk in general. So I could talk for hours on anything you want to talk about.
Jim Zarkadas (1:10:46)
Love it, love it, same, So
yeah, thanks a lot. And yeah, we'll keep you posted if we're do another one.