70: Building a Company People Actually Want To Work For with Lora Ladd

Today on The Bold Life I’m joined by Lora Ladd, founder and CEO of The Tidy People, a home cleaning and self-empowerment brand.

Lora started her business with $50 in her pocket when she was just 21 years old and during the 2008 recession. Over the years, Lora has learned the importance of putting self-care as a key pillar of how she does business.

On this episode of The Bold Life, Lora shares how she found the mental strength and resilience to pivot during the pandemic, and the emotional intelligence to lead her team.

Moving Back Home With Her Parents and Getting Any Job She Could Find

During the 2008 recession Lora lost her job as a graphic designer.

The economy had taken a nosedive which forced Lora to move back in with her parents at the age of 20. This wasn’t an ideal situation as Lora had experienced some family challenges when she was growing up.

Desperate to get out of her parents’ home, Lora applied for a house cleaning job in Portland, one hour from her parents’ house.

It wasn’t an easy decision, Lora explained, as she had worked so hard in school for a degree that she was no longer using. And the cultural stigma of being a house cleaner was always weighing on her mind.

Nevertheless, she got the job and loved it! “I didn’t realize how good I was at house cleaning,” Lora laughs.

With a process-oriented brain, Lora created an entire business around house cleaning.

“I had nothing to lose!” Lora explains. When you have that mentality, it’s easier to just go with it and be okay with failure if it comes.

Building A Thriving Business Then Seeing It Crumble

For the first couple years Lora worked alone. A pretty busy one man band!

In year two, she began hiring employees with no idea what she was doing (just like any beginner entrepreneur). She hired two employees and the house cleaning part of her business really started to take off!

All at once Lora was busy with working, training, creating handbooks and tutorials, and filling in any other gaps to make her business a success.

Year after year, her clientele and staff continued to grow. At her peak Lora had 15 employees.

She was managing all of her staff by herself and in retrospect, says she didn’t really know how to make an inclusive workplace culture that thrived.

Then things took a bad turn…

At one point Lora lost half of her team due to workplace bullying. It was another rock bottom for Lora, but she didn’t throw in the towel. Instead, she realized that to lead a thriving team – she needed to improve herself first.

Lora started going to therapy to strengthen her emotional intelligence to better lead her employees.

This included creating systems and processes to better her business – like those handbooks Lora was creating!

Lora’s tip – Get curious about the processes in your business. Once you have the solution and step by step process, write it down! If X, Y, & Z happens, what’s the answer? Creating handbooks and SOP’s helps everyone in your business know what’s expected, and helps you scale up.

Lora has a total of seven handbooks for her company. From training to cleaning to everything in between!

Crawling Back From Team Crisis

That time Lora lost half of her employees. How did she bounce back?

Not only was workplace bullying affecting her staff, but Lora was also going through a breakup that was affecting her personally.

To make matters worse, the staff that left Lora took a huge client of hers who made up 25% of her sales. It almost destroyed her business and put her right into debt.

Lora began to learn more about what humans need, not just employees.

This included integrating core values such as

mutual respect,
maintaining communication, and
boundary setting.

Lora changed her behavior as a leader and became more bold and fearless. She removed the attachments to outcomes and instead focused on what her employees needed.

In addition, Lora hired a “Human Happiness Coordinator” who deals with clients and staff to make sure everything runs smoothly. This means that Lora can focus on the business side of things knowing that both her customers and employees have resources to achieve the best possible outcome.

Getting Through A Global Pandemic As A Small Business

Giving autonomy to her team was key in getting through the pandemic, Lora says.

All at once, there was

Conflicting information
Difficulty making decisions in real time
Trying to take it day by day
Fear of the unknown

When the pandemic struck, Lora gave her employees the option to be laid off. All but one of her staff opted for the layoff, and that one employee continued to take on client jobs and house cleaning during that time. Lora also went back in the field to help manage the client demand as well.

“There were tears and there were days that I laid on the couch and stared at the ceiling” Lora said.

Eventually, after she rode out the COVID storm, Lora was able to hire most of her team back to The Tidy People.

The thing is – tough times are important to have! It teaches you that you may not know what’s going to happen but you got this! You’ve been through tough times before and you got through it then, so you’ll get through it now.

A key takeaway – You don’t have to suffer from these downfalls! Instead, find the lesson. Don’t ask “why is this happening to me”, instead ask “what can I learn from this?”

Wanna Learn More?

Check out Lora’s website to learn more about her amazing business. She’s also launching a new cleaning product line!

You can also check out Lora’s new course for all tips on cleaning and scrubbing your home in a mindful way!

Show Highlights

[02:32] How Lora decided to start her cleaning business at the age of 21.

[08:18] Learning to not “should” on herself when it comes to personal and business life.

[14:38] How she learned to build a company culture and thriving workplace.

[15:37] Creating workplace boundaries after she lost half her team.

[16:46] Lora’s recommendations on how to put systems in place for your business.

[22:48] How to handle conflict within your company.

[27:27] What Lora has done to pivot her business during the pandemic.

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