I speak and write about building businesses remotely, delegation, local and home services, remote staffing, and small business experiments. I am especially interested in conversations that move beyond revenue as the only measure of success.
Christopher Schwab is an entrepreneur, operator, and the founder of the Local Business MBA. He began building Think Maids publicly in 2016, operated it from Japan for nearly a decade, grew it into a national cleaning company, and sold it in 2024. That case study helped popularise the remote local business model. He later built and sold Inova Local, the first virtual staffing agency dedicated to home services. His work explores how useful companies and better measures of success can create independent income, return time to their owners, and serve a life larger than the business itself.
How to start a cleaning business: from zero to $60k a month
Going remote: running your cleaning business from anywhere
Running a cleaning company from 7,000 miles away
Keynotes, interviews, and podcast appearances. Press play on any of them.
Chris Guillebeau tells the Think Maids story: the constraint, the systems, the first year.
A piece on people who built lives that travel. Think Maids appears briefly, among a few others doing the same thing. A small mention, kept here honestly.
The case study: building a seven-figure service company without ever meeting a customer.
Chris Guillebeau’s telling of the early days: the constraint, the systems, the first year.
A long-form interview on the numbers, the hiring, and the phone tree that replaced the owner.
The consumer-side story: what it costs to start, and what it pays back.
Named to the industry’s expert list, alongside headline talks at the ZenMaid Summit every year since 2019, to thousands of attendees.
Chris Guillebeau’s bestseller tells the Think Maids story under the headline “College student earns $20,000 per month cleaning houses”: the constraint, the systems, the first year. As Guillebeau put it later: “I mention your story all the time.”
International headline speaker in the cleaning and staffing industries. Each talk is operational, honest about the numbers, and free of hype.
The model, end to end: how absence becomes an operating system, and what it asks of the owner who builds it.
The first virtual staffing agency for home services: what remote teams can and can’t do, and how to hire for warmth at distance.
A working session on documentation, delegation, and planning your own redundancy. The kindest thing an owner can do.
For conferences, podcasts, and press. Include the publication or programme, proposed subject, format, recording date, expected length, and deadline. I read every relevant request.