A House Cleaner's Son.
On September 11, 2001 — the same day the towers fell — my mom landed in America. She cleaned houses and babysat through the day, and went out to clean more at night. Years later she brought the rest of our family over from Brazil.
By 16 I was riding shotgun on her cleaning route — first in San Francisco, later in Austin. Driving, calling clients to confirm appointments, handling dispatch from the passenger seat. Evenings after school, weekends, every break. I learned what home services actually look like from inside the van — the work, the dispatch, the pricing decisions made in the cab, the difference between a client who pays in 7 days and one who pays in 70.
Eventually I built my own cleaning business — logo embroidered on the t-shirts, my own route, my own clients, my own messes to clean up. I went from helper to owner. After that came door-to-door sales (solar, security), then marketing salesman to CEO of a marketing company. In 2023, I built Leapify Media to do for home-service operators what no agency had ever done for the cleaning business that raised me — and the one I ran myself: actually understand the business they're trying to grow.