Episodes

In this episode Neel and Johnny discuss the business of gurus and how they've both changed their attitude on them over time. Johnny was formerly a hater until he himself became a "guru" by sharing information in free and paid form. As for Neel, he used to be anti-guru too, until he learned to simply "respect the funnel" and see that these guys did work really hard, even if their style wasn't for everyone. They also discuss: Some of their favorite gurus — both Neel and Johnny are Alex H...

In this episode Neel and Johnny give four proven tactics that they have used to drive hundreds of thousands of dollars of sales for their respective cleaning businesses. Those tactics are: Local Facebook Groups (Johnny explains his method of guerrilla marketing in these groups) Cold Email (Neel highlights the template for this underrated way to get new clients) Giveaways (Johnny harnesses the social power of Instagram to get a huge list of new leads) Postcards (Neel shares a bran...

In this episode Neel and Johnny discuss the benefits of a $50,000+ mastermind that Johnny and his business partner joined. Originally Johnny had hired this company to help with sales and in classic "value ladder" style the company overdelivered on the entry-level product so that Johnny was primed to hear an upsell. Things had gone so well with the original sales help they asked for that it was a no-brainer to join the mastermind (even though they had to split up the payments). Johnny's loved ...

In this episode Johnny catches up with Neel about his recent visit with the Hazda tribe in Tanzania. Neel got the special government permission necessary to go out there and learned a lot. Neel's day started with joining some of the members of the tribe hunting for food. He was blown away at how fast the tribal members moved through the bush and how accurate they were with the bow and arrow. Neel and Johnny also discuss: what an average day is like for the Hazda why the Hazd...

In this episode Neel and Johnny revisit the old quote about the five closest people to you and talk about proactively upgrading those people. They discuss: the power of groups like EO, EOA, and the Dynamite Circle why it's worth paying to join some groups (Johnny paid $50,000+ to join one particular group focused on e-learning businesses) the power of meeting people in Facebook groups and on Twitter. Neel and Johnny also talk about how easy it is to reach out to people on Twitte...

In this episode, Neil gives listeners a step-by-step guide to starting their own vacation rental biz. He starts by highlighting the opportunity: people prefer vacation rentals to hotels now, and there is a huge demand for hotel-level cleaning services and a massive lack of companies to fulfill that need. Steps which Neel outlines include: Your website: it doesn't need to be perfect...it just needs to get up ASAP Your booking system: will be different for residential cleaning...

In this episode Neel and Johnny discuss opportunity vehicles: what you are doing in your career, and how is it helping you achieve your life goals? Things they consider include: different "levels" of opportunity how those levels can be completely different for people with different skill sets and personalities the undesirability of low margin businesses with lots of moving parts Enjoy the episode!

In this episode Neel and Johnny chat with Sergio, Johnny's business partner in Orange Window Cleaning, about their recent sale of the business. While Sergio and Johnny had always had a goal of growing a business to $10M, they realized over time that the vehicle they had built was not going to get them there without a much higher commitment of money and time. By contrast, another business they had built did have that potential, and they realized over time that they couldn't succeed in that bus...

In this episode Neel sits down with Dan Andrews of the Tropical MBA podcast. Neel reveals that Dan is the one who first used the phrase "remote local business" to describe what Neel was doing at MaidThis. Alas, there will be no royalty payouts if the podcast ever sells for a billion dollars :-) Neel and Dan discussed: how to disconnect your location from your earnings to live remotely why remote-first businesses should really spend time on their first few job postings how Dynamit...

In this solo episode, Neil offers 8 Pillars he uses to audit and improve his personal life. A couple years ago Neil was happy with how systematized his business was, but was shocked as to how not-systematized his personal life was. Inspired by Gary Keller's The One Thing, he created a monthly and weekly system to help him level up in: Health and Vitality Friends and Family Productivity and Performance Lifestyle and Wealth If you want the other four, and how you too can consis...

In this episode Neel interview Mike Grigery of ClickCallSell.com to get the scoop on how to market your local services business. Mike has helped hundreds of companies execute thousands of marketing campaigns and he's been Neel's business coach for sometime. He definitely knows what he's talking about when it comes to home services and how to properly market them. Tune in to learn: The importance of LTV The relationship of brand awareness and online reviews to conversion rates The...

In this episode Neel and Johnny talk about the impact of sharing what you've learned in business. After five years of grinding and building a window cleaning business, Johnny packaged what he learned to create Home Service Academy, which is an e-learning platform that helps people build their own home services business. Neel packaged what he learned after years of building MaidThis in a single location to go the franchisor route. It's important to share the information you learn, because ...

In this leisurely spitball episode, Neel and Mitko Karvoshki talk all things remote work and digital nomad as it applies to different spots around the world: who's winning, who's losing, and who's underrated. If you don't know Mitko, you're missing out! He runs Parable, which produces HBR-style case studies on online bootstrapped businesses and has a weekly newsletter called Remote Insider (subscribe here). You'll hear Neel and Mitko rap about: Who's winning lately (Bankso, Portugal, a...

In this episode Neel and Johnny discuss various pieces of software that they use to run their businesses. There was clear agreement on some of the big hitters today, like Slack (can't live without it), G-Suite (tons of tools), and Loom (great for training). But there were also some different companies and use-cases discussed: Neel shared his love for Launch27 as his CRM with ActiveCampaign as the email outreach arm of that CRM Johnny loves BookingKoala and uses integrations from Nic...

In this episode Neel and new co-host Johnny Robinson offer a blueprint for earning your first $10k from scratch without reference to cleaning companies, a sector both of them have had a lot of success in. Neel and Johnny outline: where to find subcontractors and how to pay them the importance of the "money milestone," earning that first dollar on the Internet why there really is no such thing as "market saturation" They both also recommend $100M Offers by Alex Hormozi to give yo...

In this episode Neel and David discuss David's three-month meditation teacher training course and what his future looks like. His last appearance featured his explaining what he had to do in order to be gone that long from his businesses. This podcast originally began as a co-hosted effort between Neel and David but this is the final episode of that era, as David moves on to what's next in his life (which does not include running a podcast). David shares what his teacher training was l...

In this episode Neel offers thoughts on how to make your Remote Local business better prepared for recessions. Neel takes a two-pronged approach to preparing for recessions. First, he focuses on insulating the business, which can include estimating a percentage dip (25% at MaidThis) and adjusting accordingly, which can include cutting expenses, speeding up receivables, and getting promos ready for email and phone reach out to existing customers. Once that's secure, you can look at oppor...

In this episode Neel welcomes Keith Levenson of Angela Coté Inc. to talk about franchising. Keith got his start in franchising by actually helping a family entertainment center go through the process themselves. He then took an opportunity to become a franchise advisor, helping dozens of brands grow by focusing on franchisee growth. Neel and Keith also discuss: Who should franchise (and who shouldn't) the differences between an emerging franchise business and an established one (and...

In this episode Neel is joined by Johnny Robinson to whiteboard some Remote Local business ideas. Johnny has been on the pod before but we kick off the episode with a brief bio to catch up listeners who may not have heard him before. Neel and Johnny then go back and forth, trading possible ideas with their pros and cons, including: mobile car detailing (both Neel and Johnny love this idea, but the low average ticket amount is a concern painting (there are some challenges in making t...

In the second of an ongoing series on EOS, Neil shares his adaptation of Gino Wickman's Entrepreneurial Operating System, and how he's used it to great success at MaidThis. In this episode Neel gives strategic tips for how to deal with specific aspects of "EOS Lite," including: creating vision (dump the fluff, focus on what's real) developing KPIs via scorecards (lagging, not leading metrics that matter) and rocks (measurably quarterly goals that are reported on each week) running L...

In the first of an ongoing series on EOS, Neil shares his adaptation of Gino Wickman's Entrepreneurial Operating System, and how he's used it to great success at MaidThis. Things Neel learned in the process of creating an "EOS Lite" include: how to have quarterly meetings that ran like clockwork and had clear and measurable KPIs how an org chart can help you figure out which roles really matter how clarity on core values in concert with the org chart led him to clear out some poor f...

In this episode Neel shares what he learned catching up with dozens of digital nomads (past, present, and future) at a Dynamite Circle conference in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. He found out that: Travel is definitely back (except for parts of Asia, which remain closed) The Western Hemisphere, particularly Mexico and Latin America, have profited from Asia being closed Many used the last two years to create permanent home bases where they travel from There are still plenty of new nom...

In this episode Neel sits down with Donald Spann to look over the pros and cons of the various remote local business models he has tried. Like Neel, Donald was part of the Launch27 crew, aka the "cleaning company mafia," which came out of a subreddit thread back in 2013. While Neel has continued to grow his cleaning business, Donald has exited his and iterated around remote local concepts. Neel and Donald chat about How Donald started Vicki Virtual, a fully remote call center service, ...

In this episode Neel shares different ways to think about exiting your business, including his own current plans for MaidThis. While some might say that you need to know what your exit plan is before you even start your business, Neel very much advocates for starting first and thinking more short-term, in terms of one year. He goes on to share four frames to use when thinking about exiting a business: No strategy (buying a job) Scale and sell to private equity Legacy (pass on to ...