Ron Holt's company made its first million doing the dirty work you hate: washing floors, dusting living rooms and scrubbing tubs.
The 43-year-old is the founder and CEO of Two Maids & A Mop, a Birmingham, Alabama-based home-cleaning service that operates in 55 locations and employs 500 workers.
The 14-year-old firm is expected to rack up $11 million in sales this year.
But it wasn't all that long ago when Holt had to scrape together $150,000 in order to start his business.
At the time, he left a job as the director of a lab that specialized in the science of small particles — so that he could tidy homes and be his own boss.