Adam Stokes wanted his own company from the day he got married. For twenty-one years, through furniture delivery routes, water delivery routes, and a few miserable years behind an in-house sales desk at a local steel company, nothing felt right. Then a friend who owned a carpet cleaning business made him an offer that changed everything twice: first, come learn the trade and run the local operation while I move to Tennessee; then, when the move fell through, buy my backup equipment set and I’ll help you go out on your own. Stokes talked to his wife, said yes, and started a carpet cleaning business at forty-one.
Just past the one-year mark, he told his story on a recent episode of Everyday Excellence with host Todd Baldwin of Everyday Media Group. Maverick Cleaning Solutions serves the Treasure Valley from Caldwell, Idaho, about twenty minutes west of Boise, with carpet cleaning as ninety-eight percent of the work alongside tile, upholstery, and newly added dryer vent cleaning. The headline number from year one: he operated only six months last year, and by September of this year he had already doubled the revenue from those first six months.
The episode is a clear-eyed field report from the hardest stage of any home service company, the one-man, no-budget, nobody-knows-your-name stage, and from a founder whose advice at the end is still unequivocal: “Do it. I don’t think I could ever go back to work for anyone else.”
The New-Car Effect, and the Comfort Zone That Had to Go
The biggest surprise of year one was not the work; it was the hunting. “You see the success of other people and you’re like, okay, I can do the success,” Stokes says. “The biggest surprise was just how hard it is to go out and get those customers.” With little marketing budget, growth meant pounding the pavement, and the market revealed itself the way a new car does: start a business and suddenly you see competitors everywhere, including companies with twenty and thirty years of established name recognition.
The adjustment was personal. Stokes had been a salesman, but an in-house one, and door-to-door and business-to-business knocking sat far outside his comfort zone. He went anyway, and what he learned about himself became the quiet theme of the episode: the willingness to go find work when no work is scheduled is the job. He is also finally formalizing the network side, joining a BNI chapter after his brother in Utah kept recommending it, with a friend already in the group.
The Black Light Doesn’t Lie
Maverick’s niche is the job most homeowners dread: urine and pet stains. Stokes explains the difference between professional cleaning and the rental machine at the hardware store in terms any homeowner can follow. Rental shampoos and soaps deliver a topical clean; the surface looks good, then the underlying stains wick back up, and urine never actually leaves, because breaking down urine crystals requires the right pH balance and emulsifier before extraction. His black light tells the whole story on a walkthrough, revealing invisible urine stains, and even revealing past DIY shampoo jobs, which fluoresce a telltale purple.
The Maverick way starts with honesty about what he is selling. “I’m not really selling them on the business. I’m selling them on me,” he says of being a one-man show. The walkthrough happens with the customer: what the light found, what the carpet needs, what it will cost, and why. He is not the cheapest and not the most expensive, and he leaves every job with care instructions, nothing wood or metal back onto wet carpet, and a standing offer to return if anything was missed. Hardwood he deliberately refers to his friend and former mentor, now a friendly competitor: “You could turn a two thousand dollar job into a ten thousand dollar fix.”
She Said $500 Was Too Much. He Didn’t Budge.
The day before the recording, a caller from Google asked about roughly 1,100 square feet of carpet. Stokes quoted around five hundred dollars, with his current special applied, the first 400 square feet for $119. Too much, she said. His reply: “All right, well, if you change your mind, let me know. I’m not gonna lower my prices.” He credits an Everyday Excellence episode he had been listening to for the reinforcement: the customers who want the cheapest are usually the customers you do not want.
The discipline extends to minimums. A one-room job has to clear the real costs stacked underneath it: a thirty to fifty dollar pay-per-lead fee, gas, product, and equipment payments, which is exactly the math price shoppers never see. Baldwin’s agency-side experience matched it: the cheapest clients are reliably the most demanding, and raising minimums over the years filtered for clients who value the work. Thirty-eight five-star Google reviews in year one are Stokes’s proof that the market agrees.
What Is Working Now: Speed to Lead and the Towns Nobody Drives To
Stokes is candid about his lead mix: roughly ninety-five percent of his work comes through Angi’s pay-per-lead program, where he lands about half the leads he pays for. His edge is pure hustle: when the notification hits, he calls immediately, and customers regularly marvel that they posted the request a minute ago. Google produces quote requests but mostly tire kickers shopping for the cheapest price; local service ads bring messages he cannot sell himself through, since a one-man brand sells best by phone; and Yelp, in his words, did not work out. The reviews engine runs on a closing joke: if he did not provide five-star service, customers should tell the real boss, his wife, who will put him in timeout. What is missing, and he admits it, is any follow-up sequence after the first ask.
The geographic strategy is the quiet gem of the episode. From his Canyon County base, Stokes is ten minutes from towns like Marsing, Homedale, and Greenleaf, communities of a few hundred to a few thousand people that bigger Boise-area companies will not drive to. He caters to them on purpose, shows up in their map results, and turns proximity into preference. Add door hangers hung with his kids on school breaks, paid in lunch, and fresh yard signs for the road corners, and it is a masterclass in zero-budget consistency.
It is also expanding sideways. One commercial account complained about their lawn service, and Stokes said he would do it, lawn care, sprinklers, ice melt, snow removal. “Technically, you’re cleaning their lawn,” he laughs. The company name was chosen for exactly this: Maverick Cleaning Solutions commits him to nothing narrower than solving cleaning problems, with janitorial and job site cleanup in the five-year vision alongside a first employee to take the afternoon jobs he protects for coaching football and track.
The Lesson: Build the Foundation Before You Need It
Asked about AI, Stokes gave the most honest answer on the subject the show has recorded: he uses ChatGPT to write his social posts, knows homeowners are starting to ask it who the best carpet cleaner is, knows his friend somehow shows up in those answers, and closed his own contact pitch with “Google me or ChatGPT me, but I don’t know if I would actually come up.” For a business that is ninety-five percent dependent on paying thirty to fifty dollars per lead, that visibility gap is the whole opportunity.
Baldwin’s on-air prescription was deliberately scoped to a year-one budget: get the foundation right once, then grow into it. Proper title tags, heading structure, and content set up so Google understands everything the business does; answer-first FAQs built around the questions homeowners actually type into AI tools; Google Search Console connected so organic traffic becomes visible; and a simple review follow-up, two or three reminders after the ask, which nobody ever gets mad about and which turns one review a week into fifty-two a year. In smaller markets like Marsing and Homedale, that foundation alone can earn rankings that big-city companies spend thousands chasing, because, as Baldwin put it, if Google likes your site, AI typically gives you love too. That foundational setup, and the ongoing SEO, answer-first content, and lead tracking that build on it when the budget is ready, is exactly the work the team at Everyday Media Group does for home service companies, with one standing warning Stokes should keep: run from any agency that promises guarantees.
Key Takeaways From Adam Stokes
- Speed to lead is a free advantage. Calling an Angi lead within a minute of the notification wins jobs before competitors open the app, and it costs nothing but attention.
- Own the towns nobody drives to. Ten minutes from Marsing, Homedale, and Greenleaf, Stokes turned small-market proximity into map rankings and loyalty the Boise companies concede without a fight.
- Hold the price, know the math. A $30 to $50 lead fee, gas, product, and equipment sit under every quote. “I know what I do and what my worth is,” and 38 five-star reviews in year one back it up.
About Adam Stokes
Adam Stokes is the owner of Maverick Cleaning Solutions, a carpet, tile, upholstery, and dryer vent cleaning company serving the Treasure Valley from Caldwell, Idaho, with a specialty in urine and pet stain removal. A former delivery driver and steel salesman, he started the company at 41 after twenty-one years of wanting his own business, and doubled his first six months’ revenue within the following year. Find Maverick on Facebook and Instagram or at https://mavcleaningsolutions.com/.
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Everyday Media Group helps home service and trade businesses get found and chosen: SEO foundations and ongoing optimization, answer-first content for AI search, review systems with follow-up built in, and lead tracking that shows what every channel really returns. Hosted by Todd Baldwin, the Everyday Excellence podcast features real conversations with the owners behind growing home service companies. Schedule a free consultation at connect with Todd Baldwin on LinkedIn.