One cleaner has been with AMT Reliable Cleaning Services since the company opened in 2022. Ana Paula Pinheiro, who owns it, wants to give that cleaner a share of the business.
“I’m trying to get one of my cleaners right now to become a partner of the business,” Pinheiro says.
Her reasoning is practical. A cleaner with a stake, she figures, will treat AMT as her own company and not as the owner’s. Pinheiro has no plan to sell and does not want to change what she does. “This is my life,” she says. Over time she would like each of her cleaners to hold some part of the company, so that it grows bigger and they grow with it.
The idea follows from something she already tells her crews. “I can’t handle anything on my own,” she says, “so if you guys are not here, the company doesn’t exist.”
Pinheiro says much of her team has stayed with her since she started, some for two or three years. She credits how she treats them. They go out to lunch or dinner together. Their birthdays go on a calendar and get celebrated. Whatever happens, she wants them to pick up the phone. “Hey, Miss Ana, this is going on, so how we can fix that,” is how she describes the call.
She came to the work young. Pinheiro grew up in Brazil, where her mother cleaned and taught her. By her account she was learning at nine or 10 years old. “I grew up in the cleaning field,” she says, and she traces all of her experience back to those years.
AMT, a Florida LLC with an office in Davie, works across Broward County. Along with houses on a regular schedule, Pinheiro wants to focus more on offices, post-construction jobs, deep cleans and move-outs. Her crews talk with clients when something slips, such as running 15 minutes behind or having car trouble. The company uses a system that shows when each cleaner arrives at a home and when she leaves. Pinheiro says the cleaners are background-checked and the company carries insurance.
Pinheiro still cleans her own house. Her cleaners sometimes offer to do it, and she turns them down. She puts on music and works through it as a break. When she cleaned on her own, clients wanted her to organize their pantries and closets, and she still does it the same way: everything comes out, the space gets cleaned, and everything goes back by color and by size. “I need therapy,” she says, explaining why the crew does not get her house.
Her crews spend time at the office as well as on jobs. When a cleaner has a break or a cancellation, Pinheiro says, she stops by. There is an area set up for coffee and a dog to play with.
“They enjoy coming to the office,” she says. Nobody walks in groaning that it is time to go to work again.