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  • 🎙SMB15: Scaling to $70K/mo in Less Than a Year with Julia Callahan, Owner of Jubilee Cleaning

🎙SMB15: Scaling to $70K/mo in Less Than a Year with Julia Callahan, Owner of Jubilee Cleaning

Julia Callahan quit a stable career in medical sales to knock on doors one weekend. A year later, she's grossing over $70K/mo and employing a team of 17.

Author

William Fry
August 06, 2025

This is SMB15, a rapid-fire interview series featuring small business owners, investors and service providers. We dig into different industries, business models, and SMB topics. Hosted by Will Fry, founder of Mainshares.

Listen now on Spotify or YouTube.

Julia Callahan quit a stable career in medical sales to knock on doors with a handwritten notebook. Less than a year later, she’s grown Jubilee Cleaning Services to 17 employees and $70K/month in revenue. What started as a low-overhead side hustle has become a full-time mission — delivering dignity through cleaning while building an operation that can scale.

In this episode, we cover how Julia priced her first jobs, hired and trained her early team, and grew via Facebook ads and phone-based quoting. We also get into her commission-based pay model, how she structures deep cleans vs. recurring jobs, and what it’s taken to grow a culture rooted in care, standards, and accountability.

Some takeaways:

  1. Starting small eliminated the fear of failure. Although starting a business carries higher failure rates, the actual capital risked is a lot less than in a business acquisition. After looking into acquiring a local laundromat, Julia and her husband decided to go the “build” approach instead. Residential cleaning allowed Julia to start the business on the side, working nights and weekends, with minimal personal capital at risk.

  2. GoHighLevel and Facebook ads now drive 100% of leads. While Jubilee began with weekend door knocking, today their growth engine is paid ads funneled through the GoHighLevel platform. The localized FB ads allow them to target folks in and around Beaver, PA. But rather than drive leads to an automated quote, Julia has maintained personalized quote calls as key to the sales motion. This allows them to adjust to customer needs and price expectations on the fly while building a human relationship.

  3. Recurring residential clients are the backbone of the business. Jubilee's revenue concentration leans heavily on residential cleaning, providing a safety net of small, recurring contracts. Julia notes that losing a $300/month client is far less damaging than losing a $50K/yr commercial contract, allowing her to better project headcount needs and capacity.

  4. Enforcing high standards was her biggest leadership unlock. Julia admitted early on she was too lenient on lateness and standards. Once she started holding the line, accountability became self-reinforcing. “The standard did its job and I’m finally holding it,” she said.

  5. “We enter people’s lives at their highest highs and lowest lows.” From helping a woman spend more time with her husband battling Parkinson’s to cleaning homes post-divorce or pre-graduation party, Julia sees Jubilee’s mission as deeply personal and life-enhancing.

Where to find Julia and Jubilee Cleaning Services:

In this interview, we discuss:

  • 0:00 Getting Her First Clients

  • 1:41 Intro to Julia Callan

  • 2:16 Buy vs. Build

  • 4:24 From Door Knocking to Paid Ads

  • 5:30 Pricing at Jubilee Cleaning

  • 7:42 Hiring the First Cleaner & Growing the Team

  • 9:53 Training & Compensation

  • 11:17 Operations of a Cleaning Business

  • 13:16 Building a Mission-driven Company

  • 14:43 Maintaining Culture & Standards

  • 16:20 Reinvesting Profits vs. Paying Herself

  • 17:13 Overcoming Self-Doubt and Staying Motivated

  • 19:35 Advice for Starting or Buying a Cleaning Business