More than a decade ago, Anna Tsantir, decided to bag a nonprofit-arts management job that was burning her out in favor of cleaning up.
Tsantir and a partner, inspired by a friend they knew at an art school in Memphis, Tenn., started cleaning a few houses.
She discovered a career that left room for her own art.
“I figured out, with all the hours that I was putting in, that my real nonprofit-business wage was about $8 or $9 per hour,” Tsantir recalled. “I could pay myself almost triple that and work hard for three days and then have my time with my own. And I was a cleaner for years.”
She now works a lot more than three days a week, and employs a lot of otherwise-starving artists as owner of Two Bettys Green Cleaning Co. of Minneapolis.