The business began out of necessity. Saylor was farming and cleaning on the side when a friend encouraged her to work for herself. Her experiences cleaning for other companies had already given her a clear idea of what she did—and did not—want from her own business. It came down to three core principles.

“I'm not going to underpay myself,” Saylor said. “I'm not going to overwork [my staff]. And I'm going to actually train them to be successful.”

Unlike many entrepreneurs who begin cleaning independently and hire only after demand becomes unmanageable, Saylor envisioned a scalable company from the start.

“I started it with the intention to grow it as a business so that I could eventually pull myself out of the field of cleaning,” she said. 

That vision eventually became reality, but rapid growth brought a new set of challenges. After Clean Mountain Escapes grew 120 percent in a year, Saylor realized instinct alone would not be enough to guide its next phase.

“Once we got to that really big growth spurt, I knew I was in over my head and I needed help,” she said. 

Saylor found that help through Mountain BizWorks’ ScaleUp program, where she learned about financial projections, human resources, standard operating procedures and strategic goal-setting. She also worked with coaches and a strategist to better understand the financial realities of a growing company. The experience, she said, taught her to approach “business ownership in a more professional way” and gave her “a better understanding of what I needed to start thinking about and implementing.”

Professionalizing the company has also meant learning how to delegate. Saylor recently promoted a longtime team member with a communications background into a communications manager position. The move lightened Saylor’s workload and reflected one of the central forces shaping her decisions: motherhood.

“I'm a mom and I want to spend time with my family, so there's always that delicate balance: I could make more money and work 60 hours a week, or I could not make that much money and spend time with my kids,” she said.

That balance between caring for people and making decisions that keep the company financially sustainable runs throughout Saylor’s approach to leadership. At times, she said, employees have earned more than she did. She viewed that choice as an investment in the people on whom the company depended.

“The business is going to be nothing if there's no people out there cleaning,” she said.

As the company has grown, however, Saylor has had to learn that caring for employees also requires protecting the business itself. That has meant confronting difficult financial decisions, asking for outside advice, and recognizing the ways her instinct to take care of others can complicate leadership.

“I think I've always been a very compassionate person,” she said. “I've learned so much about that while being a business owner and a leader and having a team.”

One of her earliest leadership lessons was learning to communicate expectations clearly.

“My first lesson was, you need to be direct,” she said. “That's the best thing you can do with your staff: don't beat around the bush. Be honest. Be compassionate. But be direct about what you expect.”

Saylor identifies respect, trust, honesty, empathy and collaboration as values for the company. She tries to give employees room to talk about frustrations and challenges, but she has also learned to establish boundaries between work and family life.

“As women, we try to learn [about] people before we tell them what needs to be done and how it should be done,” she said. “People want to be heard and they want to be seen.”

Those values have also shaped Saylor’s vision for Clean Mountain Escapes in Western North Carolina. From the beginning, she wanted the company to provide jobs for local residents, particularly mothers. She structured working hours around weekdays and envisioned employment that could coexist with raising a family.

“I wanted moms to have the opportunity to make some money, but still be with their kids,” she said. “One dream of mine is to figure out how to pair a daycare with our business and offer more affordable day care.”

The business has found its niche among clients who value consistency, communication and detailed cleaning. Saylor invests in training and uses checklists to standardize the work, an approach she said distinguishes Clean Mountain Escapes from less formal cleaning arrangements.

“We put a lot of time into that and making sure everything's consistent,” she said.

Saylor is now thinking more intentionally about what comes next. Clean Mountain Escapes has already surpassed last year’s revenue, but Saylor’s five year vision is bigger than that. She wants to turn cleaning into a profession that can offer employees both financial stability and a life outside work.

“How do I make this a professional, well-paid job that doesn't exhaust you and still allows you to live a comfortable life?” Saylor said. “That's my five year goal. I think I can figure that out in five years.”

Learn more at CleanMountainEscapes.com.