Q 1. Kindly give our readers an introduction to your business. Please include what your business is all about, in which city you are located and if you have offices in multiple locations/ cities.
Ans: Hi My name is Karla and I am the owner of CIA Maids. Which stands for Clean It All maids. We do homes, airbnb, and light office professional cleaning services.
Q 2.Kindly give us a brief description about yourself (it should include your brief educational or entrepreneurial background and list some of your major achievements).
Ans: I have a bachelor’s degree in information technology and began working with startups during my college years in Silicon Valley. Then moved to more established companies to provide both customer service training to business analytics. I have always owned a business, from the time I was about 13 and loved it. I believe that this country was built by entrepreneurs and continues to thrive because of them.
Q 3. What inspired you to (start a new business venture) or (to make significant changes in an existing business)? How did the idea for your business come about?
Ans: Oh that is easy. I was tired of searching for maids for my own home. It was a tedious process.
Q 4. What three pieces of advice would you give to budding entrepreneurs?
Ans: Stay focused. Stay on budget. Know your numbers
Q 5. What would you say are the top three skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur?
Ans: Knowing when to throw in the towel. Knowing how to hire good people. Keeping a realistic outlook in your business at all times.
Q 6. How many hours do you work a day on average?
Ans: 12.But it varies depending on promotions, holidays, training etc.
Q 7. To what do you most attribute your success?
Ans: Customer service, hands down. Both by our office staff and our professional cleaning techs.
Q 8. How do you go about marketing your business? What has been your most successful form of marketing?
Ans: We focus on online marketing. However, offline marketing has been a great way to reach many
customer for us as well. But we focus on online about 95%
Q 9. Where did your organizations funding/capital come from and how did you go about getting it? How did you obtain investors for your venture?
Ans: We did not get financing, we are self funded. We literally started with a small, and I mean small budget and built from there. We started out the first weeks, using our own supplies and then bought supplies as customers came in.
Q 10. What is the best way to achieve long-term success?
Ans: Planning, budgeting, great staff
Q 11. Where you see yourself and your business in 5 – 10 years?
Ans: Having about 50-75 employees and another office.
Q 12. Excluding yours, what company or business do you admire the most?
Ans: Disney. I love the customer service. The time that they take to train their employees about customer service and how important it is to their company just amazes me. Each customer is happy. The level of integrity that the employees has for the company even after they leave, just makes me smile.
Q 13. How important have good employees been to your success?
Ans: It is our best kept secret. We believe that each employee is important to our success. Each employee gets background checked and thoroughly trained so that we can help them to be as successful as they can be in their career with us.
Q 14. How long do you stick with an idea before giving up?
Ans: It really depends. I generally look at it from the numbers standpoint and keep it focused. So it can be 2 days or 2 years. Just really depends.
Q 15. How do you build a successful customer base?
Ans: We really do a lot to find a good variety of customers. Some just want to have a company that is consistent and does a great job each time. So we focus on that each time. So everytime we go to the home to clean, we act as if it is the first time. And work on improving our level of clean in their home each time
Q 16. What is your favorite aspect of being an entrepreneur?
Ans: Being able to have more time for family time. And of course building a creating something from scratch and watching it grow.
Q 17. What has been your most satisfying moment in business?
Ans: Hitting those customer success goals. We do a lot of surveys to our customers. And when we get them back we are always so happy. Even if one comes in that is not 10 out of 10. We look at that as a way to improve and to meet customer expectations.
Q 18. What kind of culture exists in your organization? How did you establish this tone and why did you institute this particular type of culture?
Ans: We are very caring and professional. We want to do a good job and we care about each job we do. Everyone we bring in to train as a professional cleaning tech has to love cleaning and love people. If they do not, we do not hire them.
Q 19. What are some of the biggest mistakes you’ve made?
Ans: I am not sure there is enough time for this questions. LOL
Honestly, has an entrepreneur you a lot of mistakes. It is just part of the process. That is how we learn and grow and become great at what we do.
Q 20. How can you prevent mistakes or do damage control?
Ans: We always measure our wins and losses. So damage control is almost always built in for us. We try to prevent mistakes by having systems in place. So if something goes wrong, we implement a system or process for that so it doesn’t happen again.
Q 21. What are your hobbies? What do you do in your non-work time?
Ans: We go to a lot of farmers markets here in Central Austin. I know it sounds boring, but there is just something relaxing and fun about going to the markets. There is music, food and crafts. It’s like having a fair every weekend. We meet a lot of small artisans and enjoy supporting them.
Q 22. What sacrifices have you had to make to be a successful entrepreneur?
Ans: Sleep! That is the biggest sacrifice I have had so far. There are only so many hours in a day to get things done and a lot of times sleep is the last thing you get when you are focused on completing deadlines or when issues come up that need a quick resolve.
Company Detail:
Company : CIA Maids
Contact : Rick and Karla
Address : 1779 Wells Branch Pkwy Suite 110B-333
City : Austin
State : TX
Zip : 78728
Phone : 512-828-8001
