Joel Galarza

I run Rivanna Cleaning in Charlottesville, Virginia, and market it myself. I'm doing the same for free right now for a friend's business and my mom's practice, until I have real numbers to point to.

I was born in Brooklyn to 1.5 generation immigrant parents who split when I was young. One of them went into the military, so I moved constantly as a kid, and as an adult I have lived in Miami, Phoenix, and now Charlottesville.

I have started more businesses than I have finished. Video editing on Fiverr in 2020. Sports photography in 2022 and 2023. Home services, door to door, and social media management in 2024. Sealcoating and info product marketing in 2025 and 2026. Most of them died the same way. I ran out of cash runway before the model had time to work.

Rivanna Cleaning is the current one, and it is just starting: zero clients so far. It is meant to solve two problems at the same time: it gives me a cash floor, and it gives me results I can point at. Nobody should hand me their marketing budget on the strength of a pitch.

While that gets off the ground I am running marketing for free for a friend's masonry business and for my mom's telehealth practice. Once I have numbers and testimonials from those, I move to base plus performance with a different company.

I did more than ten hackathons across 2024 and 2025.

Email me at contact@joelgalarza.com. I am also on X and Instagram as joellations, and LinkedIn as joel galarza.