This is a short transcript of a YouTube interview on October 6, 2025 where Mike Andes visits David of Instant Cleans to diagnose a struggling cleaning business. David reports repeated debt over the past 3–4 years, inability to use credit, and heavy personal pressure because his mother works full-time for the company. Mike notes the business did $700,000 in annual revenue cleaning short-term rentals but lacks systems, has high employee turnover and frequent callbacks, and is at risk of failure.
Questions this video answers
$700,000 (cleaning short-term rental properties).
For the past three to four years (owner's statement).
The owner's mother (David's mom).
Chapters
We were always like 5% away from just calling it quits. If something bad happens, it's game over.
Today we're in California visiting David with instant cleans.
All our funding is maxed out. For the past three, four years, we've always had debt. We can't put anything on the credit card. If we mess up, it's game over. It's done.
Last year, he did $700,000 in annual revenue cleaning out short term rental properties.
It just wasn't profitable. We were just losing so much money. There's even more pressure on me now because my mom works for us full time.
If you don't hit these certain benchmarks, you don't get paid.
If we fail, my mom's gonna have to go get a regular job, and then we're not gonna be str to pay rent.
They have no systems in place, and employees keep making mistakes.
There's always a lot of callbacks because they don't really give it their all. And then if something you miss, it's like, oh, we'll get them next time. And it was just so bad.
If you're a home service business and your service doesn't do a great job, you're eventually going to go bankrupt.
We're definitely overpaying cleaners. Every single week, we have to hire new cleaners.
This is the business turnaround show. My name is Mike Andes. I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care. We have over 180 locations around the world, and I travel the country fixing struggling businesses. I think you can build a $2.5 million business in the next three years.
My whole family is kind of depending on me. There's a lot of pressure.
So this is literally a doubling or potentially tripling of the lead flow that's currently coming in. Our goal is to give David a strategy to turn around the company in the next six weeks.
