Pause. Reflect. Move Forward. The Truth-Telling Powerhouse Behind the Mop

Holly Oldham doesn’t just run a cleaning business. She leads a movement.

Her company, PRMF Cleaning, stands for Pause Reflect Move Forward. What started as a personal poem became a tattoo, then a business name, and now a guiding philosophy for how she lives, loves, parents, and profits. In our latest episode, Holly brings the kind of energy that makes you laugh through your tears and scribble down life lessons faster than you can say Clorox.

This is not your typical cleaning lady story. Holly is a comedic poet, a janitorial sales coach, a luxury house manager, and a shoreline volunteer who’s cleaned houses across state lines and even countries. She’s a mom of four, a grandmother, a member of the LGBTQ+ community, a cannabis advocate, and a master of taking pain and turning it into purpose.

She joined us to tell the unfiltered truth about life after a toxic marriage, building a six-figure business from nothing, and why charging what you’re worth is the best kind of revenge.

From Survival to Strategy

When Holly left her marriage, she had $100 to her name and no home of her own. She slept in a semi truck for six months, couch surfed, leaned on friends, and slowly began to build a new life. Her story is full of grit, but it’s also full of clarity. She knew she had skills. She knew her work mattered. And eventually, so did the people who hired her.

As a stay-at-home mom, she was never thanked for the work she did. Today, she charges a premium for it. Her message to other women: those unpaid skills can become your paycheck. Whether it’s folding laundry, stocking protein shakes, managing contractors, or prepping for dinner parties, Holly turned domestic labor into a high-end service that her clients value deeply. She didn’t just clean houses. She cleaned up emotional wreckage, internalized shame, and years of underappreciation. And then she raised her rates.

Luxury Cleaning with No Apologies

Holly calls herself a “dirty cleaning business owner and dirty poet.” She’ll organize your pantry, manage your household, tell a joke while scrubbing your baseboards, and charge $80 to $150 an hour while doing it. She’s not trying to compete with low-end cleaners or win the race to the bottom. She works with high-end clients who trust her inside their multi-million-dollar homes. They’re not just paying her to clean. They’re paying for the peace and clarity that comes when your space feels good.

And Holly knows exactly what she’s worth. The more she charges, the fewer headache texts she gets. The clients who balk at her rates are simply not her people. The ones who tip her over $10,000 and cry with her when she pays off her car? That’s her community. That’s who she builds for.

Scaling Through Storytelling

This episode is filled with hard truths and hilarious stories. There’s the one about showing up to a 7:30am networking event in gold heels and being asked if she cleans in them. Her response: “You can’t afford me now. What makes you think you could afford me then?”

There’s her viral quote: “I’m not smoking to get high. I’m smoking to get by.” And the story of how cannabis helped her heal when alcohol had nearly destroyed her family.

There’s her teaching moment with a cleaner who said, “No one’s ever asked me to do laundry,” and Holly’s perfect reply: “No one asked me either. I asked them.” That kind of initiative has helped her build two cleaning businesses, the second of which she owns outright and runs exactly how she wants.

She created a course called Solo Cleaner to Essential House Manager that teaches cleaners how to stop leaving money on the table and start creating profitable, personal, and powerful businesses. She teaches what she’s lived. And it works.

Creating Environments That Heal

Holly isn’t just passionate about tidy counters. She believes in creating environments that support mental health, physical well-being, and energetic peace. She talks about clients who’ve lost weight because their homes became more manageable. She explains why clean vents, replaced AC filters, and pre-construction preparation are part of luxury-level service. And she’s crystal clear about this: when your space is in chaos, your mind often is too. Her work is about restoring order and dignity.

She also shares the deep emotional cost of divorce and the grief of parental alienation. At one point, she went nearly a year without seeing two of her children. But rather than let that break her, she built something instead. A business. A platform. A life.

A Business Built on Gratitude and Grit

Holly replaced hate with hope. She swapped bitterness for boundaries. She said no to low-paying clients, to judgment, to the people who told her she was “too pretty to be hired.” And she said yes to herself. She put her heels on. She stepped into the room. And she kept showing up.

Now she gets paid not just to clean but to coach. Not just to organize closets but to organize careers. And she does it all while living as authentically and audaciously as she speaks.

What Holly Teaches Us

The cleaning industry might be “dirty work,” but Holly is proof that it can also be sacred work. Healing work. Laugh-out-loud work. And very profitable work. You don’t have to wait for someone to give you permission. You can pause. You can reflect. And then you can move forward—exactly as you are.

If you need a dose of raw honesty, a reminder of your worth, or a business model that centers care without compromise, Holly delivers. She’s living proof that your story doesn’t have to end in the mess. Sometimes, that’s exactly where it begins.