From Cleaning to Wellness, One Cleveland

Woman’s Successful Tale of How She Got

Where She is Today
Small business owner Lola Hocking talks business, cleaning, and her journey from
cleaning to breath and movement.

Photo Courtesy of Lola Hocking of Komotus

As Deepak Chopra once said, “In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside

of you.” This is something that Lola Hocking of Komotus strives to bring to others in her latest

business endeavor. Movement and stillness, all at the same time. A previous cleaner, turned

business owner, turned boss lady, all the way to building a wellness company from the ground up

—Lola has done it all. Hours upon hours spent cleaning turned into an environmentally friendly

cleaning company, and now, her hours are being transformed into a new endeavor that is a

reflection of her life now.

As a young girl, Lola would spend many weekends at her father’s house. She was never

allowed to leave the house until her chores were done, with many of these chores involving

cleaning of sorts. This is where she claims that she learned to clean properly. Coming from a not

so structured household with her mother, she believes that the cleaning methods her stepmother
instilled in her when she was young were beneficial to her later on in life, although she hated

them at the time.

The idea of cleaning for others came to her when she had the realization in her early adult

life that people really underestimate the feeling of coming home to a clean, tidy house. “Your

home is like your sanctuary. I wanted to be able to add value to people’s lives by coming back

from work or a long stressful day to a clean home,” she said.

Lola started her cleaning business in 2013, when she was 22, after being fed up from a job

in the life insurance industry that stressed her out. She would come home and clean her house top

to bottom almost every day and one day said, “I should get paid for this.” After letting that sit,

the next day she came home and decided, why not? Never expecting it to become a business that

would last, but at least a way to segue out of the job she really didn’t like.

She began her cleaning journey with mostly friends, where both husband and wife were

working while raising kids took her up on cleaning and realized she was good. None of her

cleanings were really locked into any kind of schedule, so most clients were here and there. A

friend that she worked with in the insurance business said that if she was not going to come back

to work there, that her mom needed a new cleaner. That was her first regular job which led to

many other referrals. “Most of my business came from referrals in the early stages,” she said.

Lola has always been a hustler, especially in the first forming years. “I was cleaning houses

by myself, 60 to sometimes 70 hours a week. It was extremely tiring,” she stated. That’s when

she realized she needed help. Looking towards friends and family was not the kind of help she

was looking for and it wasn’t until about three years later that Lola decided to hire employees.

This is when Environments came to be. Environments became officially registered as an LLC in

2016, expanding her services throughout greater Cleveland, including downtown, Ohio City,
Tremont, Lakewood, and the greater west side. The number of regular clients has fluctuated

throughout the years, cleaning for as many as 100 regular customers.

In 2019, Lola began to transition her business so that she could begin working on another

business endeavor she had in mind. This meant restructuring her business to a smaller cleaning

team and a smaller number of regular clients. “It’s hard to find good and trustworthy cleaners. It

is very hard work that many people can’t understand until they’ve done it and it can be very

exhausting,” she said. She has a much smaller team now, but it is more solid than it has ever

been. She feels like she has people she can trust to do the job that she would do herself, now that

she has completely stepped away from the cleaning aspect of Environments.

Lola’s transition from cleaning to becoming strictly just the business owner was not an

easy one. In the beginning of 2019 while she was traveling in Thailand with two of her closest

friends, she became certified in Thai Massage. During this trip, she also found herself at an

ecstatic dance festival that seemed to speak to her soul. When they returned home, her and her

future business partner, Cary, were eager to bring back what they discovered on their journey

and try to recreate similar experiences that they found to be life changing!

Photos Courtesy of Komotus

Feeling an overwhelming disconnect with her cleaning business for quite a while, this trip to

Thailand sparked a much-needed wakeup call in her life. The transition from the cleaning

business started when she began to feel as if the cleaning wasn’t who she really was anymore at

this stage in her life. Wanting to make people happy on a deeper level, and having this spark of

new energy, skills, and knowledge, thus began the idea of Komotus. Komotus is what you get

when two movement enthusiasts come together with a mission to curate experiences that initiate

and enrich deeper connection to oneself and community through heart opening ceremonies,

breath workshops, and body movement.

With Komotus, Lola and Cary want to empower individuals by educating them on the

importance of breath and how to maximize breath while moving while encouraging and inspiring

those to find their own unique expression through movement. Lola says, “Breathing is something

we do naturally, but when you put your awareness on it, it can be a really powerful tool.”

They do this by creating ceremonies and experiences like cacao ceremonies and ecstatic dances

and connecting people in a safe space. Bringing a community of people together to support and

better understand one another, and to express themselves amongst others breaks down walls and

creates space for people to process or grieve, or just experience complete bliss.

Currently, Komotus is working towards introducing people to experience Ecstatic Dance

and Acro Yoga and are currently working towards hosting a movement festival with The Studio

Cleveland in the Flats of Cleveland this summer. Movement and wellness services are something

that Cleveland is lacking in, making it the perfect market for the services they are trying to offer.

In the future they plan to create online courses for acro yoga, breath workshops, and other

movement related courses. Their Instagram is in the works, but will soon be filled with more

information about who they are and what they can offer this world.
 When asked about the transformation from her cleaning business to her current business

endeavor, Lola says that she loves every part of it because it’s a reflection of who she is now.

She loves that Komotus allows her to work on her creative side that she never really got to

expand on in the past. The best part of doing what she does now is that she loves being able to

see people do things they never thought they could do. “It’s really amazing what people can do

when they put their minds to it,” she says.

It really is amazing what people can do when they put their minds to it. Lola is a living,

breathing example of that.

To learn more about Lola and Komotus, visit www.komotus.com.

Photo Courtesy of Komotus