Be Clean 360's Ashley on Running 30 Airbnb Turnovers

Quick Summary

Ashley, owner of Be Clean 360 and Ryan Shapiro's head of cleaning, has run Airbnb turnovers since 2015 and now covers about 30 of his Florida properties. She walks through what keeps cleanings consistent: side-by-side training, photo-verified checklists with timestamps, in-house linens instead of outsourcing, and a two-hour window for fixing maintenance or supply issues.

If you're scaling a portfolio the way Ryan has, run the numbers on the next property at BNBCalc before you add it to the mix.

Key Points

• Be Clean 360 turns over about 30 of Ryan Shapiro's Florida Airbnbs, a business Ashley rebuilt as Airbnb-only cleaning after COVID knocked the market back in 2019 and 2020.
• $25 welcome baskets pack close to 40 name-brand snacks and items, Ashley says, plus Fiji water for guests checking in at 1am.
• Maintenance or supply issues get fixed within two hours, often through same-day Instacart runs, according to Ryan.
• Every property keeps the same assigned cleaner, backed up by a second cleaner she's trained, so nothing gets missed between visits.
• Ashley brought linen service fully in-house instead of outsourcing it, since outsourced bags came back with stains or missing items.
• Without her systems, the mid-tier 'mom and pop' cleaners Ryan used before topped out around 15 properties before things broke down.
• Ashley's longest-tenured cleaners and cleaning companies have stayed with her eight years, built on more than a decade of systems and branding.

Full Transcript

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Ryan: Welcome to the Short-Term Rental Pros podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Shapiro, and today we're sitting with my head of cleaning, Ashley, who owns the cleaning company Be Clean 360. She helps operate about 30 of our homes in the Florida area, and I'm super excited to have her on to talk about everything operational.

People have questions all the time about how to pick the right cleaning staff, what they need to do, and what the process is to have them doing quality jobs and keeping track. We're going to go through all of that today. Ashley, I can promise you, is the expert in this, so I'm going to pass it off to her to explain a little bit about her background and how she got into this.

Ashley: Hi, you guys. My name's Ashley. I'm with Be Clean 360. I started my vacation rental journey back in 2015, when Airbnb was taking off. It wasn't as big as it is now, obviously it has evolved into what the standard of Airbnb is today.

During that time, we started with a few small property management companies. We really had a niche for it. We found pride in making sure the properties were to a luxury standard and maintaining them.

Obviously, 2019, 2020, COVID knocked everybody back in the market and we had to restart. When we restarted, I came back as a fully operational Airbnb cleaning company. Airbnb is all we focus on. We do not hire residential cleaners, and we do not allow residential cleaners to work with us. Our focus is luxury Airbnb turnovers.

What we've done in that time is streamline our services, so that we're able to offer everything an Airbnb host or manager may need: everything from inspections and quality control to cleanings, even simplifying the process to make sure there are welcome baskets and personal items on site for arriving guests, ensuring that five-star experience is there every time.

Ryan: Awesome. Yeah, that's a lot of stuff that she does for us. We're going to break down every piece of it individually.

Starting off, you mentioned you only work with high-end luxury and you're only an Airbnb cleaner. What does that mean to you?

Ashley: It means a lot, because we've found the place in the market we want to be. We do not want to be anywhere else. We only work with high-quality, luxury Airbnb property managers and owners. We always say we can bring the quality to your job, but we can't maintain the job if you're not maintaining your home. We only deal with luxury for that reason.

We want property managers and owners to be as invested as we are, because if we care more than you do, we can't work for you. But if you invest, if you grow, if you see where the market is and where your rental needs to be, and you make the changes to ensure it's going to work flawlessly, then that's the type of people we want to work for, because we want you to make revenue and we want to make revenue. We also want to make sure we're putting our name on quality jobs.

Ryan: Yeah, big time. I mean, the biggest thing people ask me all the time is, how do you find quality cleaners? What sets them apart? What are the standards? What do you look for? How do you interview?

I could speak to the process, but the thing I was really focused on, that I really liked about you, Ashley, was that you weren't focused on pay. You get paid well, more than the standard residential clean, but you were very focused on reputation. That's what mattered to you. The five stars mattered to you as much as they mattered to me, which was a huge bonus and really helped move me forward into this partnership.

The other thing I explain to people all the time is that you came in with a process. So that's really what I want to dive into. You work with luxury, you do all that, but what is the process that helps you succeed in this field versus other people doing Airbnb cleans? What's the difference between your Airbnb clean and everybody else's?

Ashley: Oh, I can tell you exactly what the difference is. This is something I'm actually very proud of.

First of all, I can onboard houses faster than I can onboard cleaners. I am very particular about who works for me, because any person or company I bring on is an investment. My time is important, my money is important. Not to mention, I'm teaching them how to brand their business, I'm teaching them my brand, what I created. So when I invest that into someone, be it a cleaning crew, a cleaning company, or a single person, that's an investment to me, and I'm very particular about who I invest into.

Secondly, because I've built these systems, I've spent over a decade building them, over a decade branding a cleaning company, every house looks the same. You could have John, Molly, and Sue on four different cleanings, and at the end of the day, every cleaning is going to look the same: every special touch, every special detail.

Most cleaning companies in Airbnb, what they do is jump into the market, start getting all these cleans, and all they see is money, money, money, money, money. Then they pay their people really low. The quality goes down, the reputation goes down, and then they just get recycled like every other cleaner.

With us, it's different, because we have the systems, we have the brand, we have pride in performing luxury cleanings, and we're able to stand heavy in the market and put our footprint down. When I invest into these people or teams, they take pride in their work, because what I'm teaching them is something they won't find at any other cleaning company. I cannot find another cleaning company owner who takes the time to train and invest the way we do into our cleaners.

Because of that, I have a strong team. I have cleaners who've been with me eight years, companies that have been with me eight years, cleaners who've been with me three years, companies that have been with me three years, and it's because of what I've invested. I also pay my cleaners very, very well. I do not pay them hourly, I pay them per job, exactly what I made physically cleaning myself in 2023. They won't find that anywhere else.

Ryan: Yeah. So we touched on three big topics there: training, systems, and pay. Let's break those down one at a time.

Number one: the biggest thing that annoyed me about hiring other people, before we get into money, was that I didn't have the time, with 30, 31 properties now, to train people how I wanted these cleans done. I started noticing the pillows weren't set up correctly, the sheets weren't done the way you'd expect hotel grade. So diving into that, what is the training regimen you use?

Ashley: I do side by side training. That's what sets us apart from other cleaning business owners, and it's why I onboard cleaning companies or people slowly: I go through a side by side process. If I'm allowing you to step into our business, if I'm giving you this opportunity to grow with us, because your business is going to boom, you're going to take off, I'm investing in you. I personally take you side by side. I might have you do beds for three days, that's all you touch. Then for three more days, you might only touch bathrooms and towel folds. That might be all you do for three days, because repetition is key.

If you're training somebody and investing in someone, you need to make sure that process is repeated in your head, because it's the same thing whether you're going into one Airbnb or four Airbnbs that day. It's repetition, and you have to repeat the same process and stick to it in every home. Because if you don't follow the process, you're going to skip a step.

Ryan: Yeah, and people skip steps all the time. Presentation is so key, where people walk in and the houses are perfectly done. It's all these little things: the towels are perfectly folded, you've got flowers or roses on the toilet paper. Those things aren't going to increase revenue dollar for dollar, but they drive the five-star reviews, the attention to detail. And if the initial look isn't good, people start noticing things really fast, and it's downhill from there. They'll nitpick every single thing about your home, whether it's about cleaning or something that probably isn't a big deal or doesn't even affect their stay, but it's a trickle-down effect that keeps going.

So presentation has been awesome. Not needing to tell people to put four pillows on a bed has been huge for me, and so has having you handle all the inventory.

Number two: the biggest thing that got me to switch over, and I tell people this all the time, is that there are actual companies out there that aren't just yes men and yes women, that actually come with a process in place. You showed up and said, this is how I do things, and I said, take it, please take it. So let's talk about the system you presented to me.

Ashley: I do have a process and a way I do things, and I really won't take on too many people unless they're willing to adapt and change to that process. When we came on, I said, hey, if I take on any of your cleanings, they're going into this software. This is the software I use, I pay for it, we handle it, it's no cost to you, but this is what we use to make sure everything is automated. I do not want to sit up all night looking at schedules. I don't have the time to communicate back and forth about schedules and when houses are flipping. So we put you into our system, we automated all of our bookings. We have about 30 homes with you, and we do not have to communicate about scheduling at all. That's a big relief. A lot of cleaning companies, when they jump in, are manually doing schedules, missing cleanings, showing up late, not knowing when a house turns same day at noon. We eliminated that problem.

Secondly, on supplies, whether we supply them or you supply them for the owners, depends on what the owner wants. We've taken that process off your plate. In the homes where the owner wants everything hotel style, hotel toiletries, the minis, we get our orders in bulk. We have a semi truck come in every week from Daytona with toilet paper, paper towels, mini soaps, everything ready to go. That way we've been able to put that process into your business and take away the overhead costs that add up for smaller units that don't need as much as the bigger bulk orders.

Thirdly, the cleaning process itself, which we've already talked about. We were able to change your homes to give everything a luxury touch. Like you said, when you walk in, it's, oh look, there's a rose on the toilet paper, oh look how pretty the towels are, oh it smells so clean, oh the light bulb is reflecting off the lamp just right. That's one of the things I always tell my cleaners: make it so clean the guest doesn't want to touch it.

Ryan: Yeah, and we've had that. Her welcome baskets are so nice. We do Fiji water, and you can check out our listings at the luxury cohost.com to see the welcome baskets. Fiji water, snacks, because people come in, you know, somebody might be showing up at 1am after driving 14 hours, and Florida's water isn't the best. I use those water bottles myself. I'm staying at one of our houses right now, just doing a little staycation, and it smells fantastic. I came in at 1:30 in the morning, grabbed the Fiji water, went right to bed. It was a great experience.

Ashley: And those baskets are great too, because we've been able to break the cost down: for a very small fee, $25, guests are getting 36 snacks, 40 items in a $25 basket, all name brand, all luxury brand, all nice things. Like you said, when somebody's coming in at one in the morning and they have kids or they're tired, they think, oh, there's something here, I don't have to go Uber Eats something, I have a snack until morning.

Ryan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that part.

Circling back to the resort clean software. A lot of people probably have their own processes, I had my own turnover process before we had all the cleaners come in. We had it automated, but I'd say the hardest thing was really creating checklists and inventory lists for every single individual house, and then making sure the cleaners actually did them was a huge challenge for me. We had them do photos, we broke everything down exactly how they were supposed to do it, and what did they do? They just checked the boxes, checked, checked, checked, checked. Did they actually do the work? No, but they kept checking the boxes.

It got to the point where I thought, do I hire an inspector now to babysit them, to go through everything every single time, and have that come out of my business? Or are there actually people out there who provide that service, who check on their own cleaners, train them up, and have the processes in place so they don't mess up? Everybody makes mistakes, of course, that happens, we'll get into the ugly part of the mistakes too. But the biggest eye-opening thing was that you already had that process. I was very close to hiring another person and going down the road of more software, more hires, more of that, just throwing more on top of the problem instead of solving it at the core.

Ashley: Well, that's what we do, we remove all of that. What I love about resort cleaning software is that we know when the cleaner checks in and when they check out. We have photos at the end of every cleaning with timestamps, so if a guest damages something, it's documented with a timestamp. We have photos every time, they're required, cleaners can't get past it. It also shows the geographic location of every photo, so there's no skipping, no cheating, no checking a box and using a photo from three cleans ago. We have it locked in, and it's been great. Resort cleaning and the process we use there is an amazing automation, and I really thank it for a lot of the expansion in my business.

Ryan: Yeah, and to touch on that, I don't know if there's another software that does this, but it pulls in our listing photos, which was the biggest issue I was having: this doesn't look like the photos, this doesn't look like the photos, why doesn't this look like the photos? I had to figure out an alternative process to make sure the cleaners had every single photo, or had to go look at the Airbnb listing themselves. It was just a clunky process. Now we have our own photos.

So basically our process is: Ashley, brand new house, inventory walkthrough and onboarding. Then she sets up exactly how the house is going to look for photos. We come in, take the photos, list the property. Then she pulls all the photos from the listing, which shows exactly how she wants her cleaners to leave it, and they have to follow that. So if a chair is turned the wrong way, or a table isn't positioned where it's supposed to be, we know it's wrong, and they have no excuse not to know it, because the photos are right in front of their face.

Ashley: Exactly. And we notice immediately if we're checking through the photos at the end of the day: oh, there's a pool stick missing, or a pool ball missing, or where's that vase that goes right there? We have it all documented, you can't miss anything. Then we can start investigating: when was the last time that pool stick was there, did you notice this? We can put timestamps and dates on things, which helps with owners and with claims for the houses. So we're not having to shell out extra costs, and property management isn't stuck replacing items that were just missed, because we have such a large amount of documentation.

Ryan: Yeah, and to transition quickly, we'll come back to more positive stuff after this. The ugly stuff you need a cleaner for: number one, everybody makes mistakes, that happens. It's just how people handle those circumstances. We try to be as perfect as we can, but sometimes a cleaner decides, I'm not working well today, and that's it, they walk out or do a half-assed job. The biggest thing is understanding what that process looks like. This wasn't something we had to implement for Ashley's team, since she came with that process already: it was spoken about from day one, that if a clean is on us, we refund the cleaning first and they don't get paid for it. It's agreed upon, and we have that in place.

Number two is how fast they're going to go out and handle those situations when they come up.

Ashley: Ryan, how fast is that?

Ryan: It's two hours at most. Half the time it's Instacarted, if there's supplies missing, which doesn't even come out of the owner's pocket. I tell her sometimes, just send me a bill, but usually she Instacarts it right away. If a sheet's missing, or towels, or not enough paper towels, anything, it gets sent out. Or if there's a team member around the corner, max, max, it's an hour, maybe even 30 minutes, but two hours at the most. That's pretty much what I've seen.

Ashley: And that's why it's so important to have a system, or a company with a system, that works so closely with you. A lot of people who work with us say, Ashley, what I love about your company and the service you provide is that you're almost working alongside the property management company, almost like you're a property manager yourself. I swear I will never get into property management, I like the back end of things, I don't want to be a property manager. But like I said, we've streamlined our systems to work hand in hand with property managers.

If we get a guest who says, hey, we only had one roll of paper towels, or five dish pods and only three rolls of toilet paper, and we expected our whole stay covered, even if it's something we don't provide, it's, hey Ryan, let's go ahead and make these guests happy, I've got a cleaner close by, or we'll Instacart it, let's get it together. We flow back and forth together, you know what I mean, everyone's loss turns into a gain. You have to make sure you have service providers on your team who think that way, because Ryan will see some weeks where I'm shelling out money from the cleaning side or the inspection side left and right. But the next week I'm winning, my team's winning, everyone's winning. You have to have people who work with you who aren't just looking to get 20 Airbnb clients, run the properties into the ground, and keep the cleanings coming just for the money. You have to find someone who has streamlined everything, who knows what's needed to make that business run properly, who's showing up every day, and who's willing to take a loss to get a gain.

Ryan: Yeah, and we do that too, for mistakes we make. We send out the wrong maintenance guy, or somebody on our team doesn't do the job correctly, and it happens. At the end of the day, we're liable for coming up with the right solution. We make mistakes, and we're open to it: all right, we sent the wrong maintenance guy, that's on us. You actually had somebody in place, like an HVAC company, and we sent a different one, that's on us. There are mixed situations where we have to dish money out and solve the issue. It's all about longevity at the end of the day. If you're nitpicking $120, $100, $50, you're probably going in the wrong direction. We had an issue today, and I was just like, just send the $150 and move on. Let's keep moving forward. Positivity over here.

I'll say one more thing, and then we'll close this out talking about how to pay people. One other process I wanted to bring up is linen service. But before that, the biggest priority I explain to people looking for cleaners is: you could be a great cleaner, but if you're not identifying and reporting maintenance issues, since cleaners are the eyes and ears of the property, that's not really an Airbnb cleaner. Talk about that process, handling maintenance.

Ashley: Oh, I can talk about that, because when it comes to Airbnb, I say it's the creme de la creme of cleaning. You have to know what you're doing, you have to know that standard, that bar. That's also what sets us apart from other companies, we keep true to it. Once we take on your home or homes, we keep the same cleaner in that home every time, with a backup cleaner trained in case that person has multiple same days and can't make it. Everyone knows what's going on in that home. So if we walk in and a ceiling fan isn't working, or a light bulb's out, we're going to notice it, because it's the same person coming into that home every time.

It also ties back to maintenance. We only take well-maintained properties. We do not want to be out here, as I say, polishing turds. We want to work with owners and managers who care about the properties. The only way the manager is going to know about an issue is if we tell them. If cleaners are just going in and watching the house fall apart around them without reporting it, what happens? That Airbnb is going to tank, and you're going to get messages from guests saying this isn't working, this isn't working, this isn't working, this is broken. That's not what we want, because the five-star experience comes together as a team. Everyone has their own part, and you're all working together to make it run.

Ryan: All right, my phone died, so this might have cut between the last sentence and this one, but to recap, maintenance was the main thing there. We've got two more subjects to cover. That pretty much wraps up maintenance, other than how Ashley's team also handles things like propane tank replacements and a lot of the smaller things cleaners don't usually do. Having that whole system in place is extremely important when you're hiring a cleaning crew, right?

Ashley: It's very important to have everything in one place, so you're not going between different services or juggling different costs to get things done. It's all done in one go.

Ryan: Exactly. So from there, one of the biggest things we wanted to talk about is linen service versus non-linen service, and keeping it in-house versus outsourcing it. I've been through all of those processes, but this is something Ashley had a solution for when I was having issues with it, which I'll get into. So I'd love to hear your opinion on linen service.

Ashley: Linen service, we do a lot differently than most. A lot of property management companies outsource their linens to a linen service, and a lot of cleaning companies do too, to take the hassle off the cleaners. But it leaves a lot of unaccountability on the table. We are against linen service. It's not dependable, it takes the accountability out of our hands. We don't know if we're getting a linen bag back with stained items, or if every item is even going to be in that bag. That leaves a lot of uncertainty, because if you get a bag back with half the stuff stained and items missing, you're stuck still having to wash on site just to have what you need to complete the job.

So we took that away completely and provide linen service in-house ourselves. Since I assign the same cleaner to every job, each cleaner is accountable for everything, including the linens. We do stain removal and spot treatment, and we report everything with photos before we even try washing it. If we can't get a stain out after washing and treating it, we report that so we're able to file claims. This also means we always know the exact count on the house, the exact state of all the linens, and if anything needs to be replaced. We're able to file the claims and keep that accountability.

Ryan: Amazing. Yeah, that's pretty much what I noticed too when we had our own linen service. The biggest issue was cost, we had no idea what the cost was going to be from one week to the next. How are we supposed to charge guests and owners a cleaning fee when it's priced per pound, and sometimes the linens were wet and sometimes they weren't? I'd sometimes get $30 back, sometimes $150 back, all over the place. The other problem was not knowing where the fault actually was: linens weren't being delivered, linens were showing up at other houses they weren't supposed to be at, the cleaners were telling us it's the linen company, the linen company telling us it's the cleaning company. You pretty much solved that whole problem by bringing everything in-house, no outsourcing, no risk, and we haven't had an issue since, honestly.

I'm a big proponent of non-linen companies, but at the same time, some outsourced services do a good job, there are people out there with a real process in place. It's just a lot more work for them. Between you and me, non-linen, everything streamlined, one price, one result, it takes away a lot of problems for us as a cleaning company, we're not wondering if we're going to have what we need for the job. And I'm sure you've noticed it too, your cost of replacements has gone down, the amount of stained linens that need replacing has gone down, and it just makes an easier environment for everybody to work in. We have what we need.

Ashley: A hundred percent. We know when things are missing, and we know where they are, whether they're with your cleaners or thrown in the garbage. Otherwise you're calling twenty people trying to figure out an answer you never really get.

Ryan: So you brought up a pretty big subject there, cost. That's the last topic we really wanted to discuss today. I've been through every level of cleaner: cheap cleaners, medium cleaners, and the most expensive, which is Ashley, but the best. So talk to me a little about your experience across those three levels.

Ashley: What a cleaner charges in this industry can make or break your business. A lot of low-cost cleaners price it like it's a residential clean. They don't take laundry into account, they don't account for everything that needs to be touched when pricing an Airbnb clean. That's why you get lower cleaners who cost less, but the job isn't as thorough. They miss things like cabinets, they miss reporting the same linens, they don't touch the backyard. A lot of cleaners who charge less won't touch a grill, won't touch the backyard, and then you get hit with, oh, well, I didn't charge you for this, so I need to charge extra for that. If I have to go outside, if I have to touch the grill, if I have to do anything extra, they add it on, because the way they're pricing isn't built for professional Airbnb cleaning.

A professional Airbnb cleaner has all of those costs wrapped into one. We're not charging extra for a grill. We're not even charging extra if a guest trashes the house.

Ryan: Yeah, because we know the rules of Airbnb. We know Airbnb has tightened down on claims, and some days you get good guests and some days you get terrible guests, and you've just got to eat it. It's the loss-and-gain thing, but it all cycles itself out.

Ashley: Then you get the median cleaners, who are actually good cleaners, but a lot of them are mom-and-pop operations, just starting out or growing, and their focus is split across different things. They have residential clients too, and they can't meet the Airbnb schedule that needs to be met. Like we talked about earlier, with some of your old cleaners, you'd have same-day turns and they'd say, hey, we don't have a check-in today, so we're going to push this cleaning to the next booking date. But Airbnb doesn't work like that. Airbnb is a machine, and to keep that machine moving and everyone making money, it's a funnel process. You have to make sure these cleans are done by 4pm, because you could get a booking at 3pm from someone who wants to check in at 4. You need people who know what it takes to work in Airbnb, who know what it takes to get the job done right, who know what maintenance issues need to be reported, who know every little detail that has to happen.

That's the difference between a low-end cleaner and a high-end cleaner. When you pay a high-end cleaner like us, you get everything: software, automation, welcome baskets, every service streamlined to what your rental needs to make the business work. Whether you're a private owner or an Airbnb host and property manager like you, you're getting all of this because you're paying for it, and you get what you pay for. It's one of those things where you pay now or you pay later, and I'd much rather pay now to make sure everything's taken care of than end up with all of these add-on costs and issues down the line.

Ryan: Yeah, no, exactly, and you hit the nail on the head. When you sold me on your service, you pretty much understood every process I'd already been through. The cheapest cleaners worked for maybe two to six months, at most. They didn't touch the outside, the exterior was basically nonexistent to them, and in Florida, the exterior is one of the most important parts. So that kept dropping the ball. They did their own cleans and their own linen, so we didn't have a lot of linen problems, which was great, but overall, issues kept happening at the house, maintenance wasn't reported, and the exteriors were never touched.

Then, like you mentioned, the medium side, we went through that too. Mom-and-pop, no real processes, not a lot of employees under them, doing most of the work themselves. They'd create their own schedules, and we ran into situations where they just wouldn't tell us they hadn't cleaned that day, then they'd go the next day, and suddenly we had a same-day clean and they were scrambling. That only worked for about 15 properties, and after that it broke down fast.

We kept growing our way up. We would have loved to start at the highest and best right away, but thankfully we got there. This podcast, to wrap it up, is really about explaining to people what those growth stages look like, and hopefully how to get to that best stage as fast as possible, without going through the same mistakes I did.

So that pretty much concludes this episode of the Short-Term Rental Pros podcast. Thank you so much, Ashley, for coming on, and we'll see you on the next one.