Latest / Cleaning Business Life / EP 237 | Five-Star Results Require a Five-Star Operation

Transcript

EP 237 | Five-Star Results Require a Five-Star Operation · Cleaning Business Life

1:08
SPEAKER_00: If you keep telling yourself you'll finally get serious about your cleaning business when things calm down, I need you to hear me.
1:17
SPEAKER_00: Things are not going to magically calm down ever unless you do something.
1:23
SPEAKER_00: The clients will keep calling, employees will keep needing answers, fires will keep popping up.
1:29
SPEAKER_00: And if your business doesn't have the structure, every new opportunity will feel like one more thing that you have to carry.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: That is exactly what the Structure Scale and Profit Cleaning Business Academy is designed to change.
1:45
SPEAKER_00: Over 400 businesses have gone through the program.
1:48
SPEAKER_00: This scholarship isn't for the person with the saddest story or the most perfect application.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: It's for the cleaning business owner who is ready to stop winging it, start implementing, and build a company that can actually support the life that you want.
2:04
SPEAKER_00: You do not need to have everything figured out before you apply.
2:09
SPEAKER_00: That's the whole damn point.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: The scholarship application is officially open on my website, Clean Freaks University.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: Applications close on Veterans Day, November 11th, and the recipient will be announced on Black Friday.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: Stop deciding for me that you won't be chosen.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: Fill out the application.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: Tell me where you are, where you want to go, and why you're ready to do the work.
2:42
SPEAKER_00: Talk to you soon.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: And today we're gonna talk a little bit about five-star results without investing in a five-star operation.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: And admittedly, there is a lot of how much should I invest?
3:12
SPEAKER_00: How much should I not invest?
3:13
SPEAKER_00: Should I invest at all?
3:14
SPEAKER_00: Should I DIY it?
3:16
SPEAKER_00: We even have a five-star cleaning company in Mesa by um what's his face from Montana?
3:21
SPEAKER_00: And everybody really does want a five-star company.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: Eventually, that's a great way to market.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: They want five-star reviews, they want five-star employees.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: We're always looking for those.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: They want five-star customer service.
3:34
SPEAKER_00: Whew, that's a hard one, especially in today's economy in the workforce.
3:38
SPEAKER_00: So you want their cleaners to arrive on time.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: Woohoo! Look professional, follow the checklist, communicate beautifully, never break anything, never miss anything, never leave a customer, and leave every customer absolutely thrilled.
3:50
SPEAKER_00: But there is a problem.
3:51
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of variables, right?
3:53
SPEAKER_00: They want a five-star result without investing in the actual system that goes with it.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: So you cannot build a premium company embargo and basement pricing, rushed schedules, exhausted employees, cheap equipment and consistent training, and an owner who's trying to hold the entire operation together with duct tape, caffeine, and sheer determination.
4:15
SPEAKER_00: At some point, the operation underneath the service has to match the results you are expecting.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: And the customer only sees the finished clean.
4:23
SPEAKER_00: They don't see all of the stuff that goes behind it.
4:25
SPEAKER_00: They see the counters are wiped down, that the pillows are karate chopped, whether the floors look shiny and clean, whether the bathroom sparkles, hopefully it does.
4:36
SPEAKER_00: Whether the cleaning technician arrived on time or behaved professionally.
4:41
SPEAKER_00: Keeping my fingers crossed.
4:43
SPEAKER_00: But the customer does not necessarily see everything that had to happen behind the scene to produce that result.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: And of course they don't see the recruiting, the interviewing, the onboarding, the background checks.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: It gets expensive to onboard everybody.
4:58
SPEAKER_00: The training, the payroll taxes for the privilege of having employees, the workers' compensation insurance, the liability.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: I often refer to it as general liability, the scheduling, the software that goes into making it all work, the equipment, the supplies, the drive time, the PTO time, quality control inspections if you have them, the callbacks, the continuing education, the hours the owner spends managing all of it.
5:28
SPEAKER_00: That five-star cleaning did not magically appear at the customer's front door.
5:33
SPEAKER_00: And let me have this caveat with you.
5:36
SPEAKER_00: When I had Castle Keeper Cleaning, I cannot tell you how many times I would bring in someone from another cleaning business.
5:42
SPEAKER_00: And at the end of the day, they would say it every single time, My God, this is the smoothest running cleaning business I've ever worked for.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: And I'd always say, Well, I forgot, how many cleaning businesses did you work for?
5:53
SPEAKER_00: And they would be like, Oh, nine or ten.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, You work for nine or ten?
5:57
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm like, you know, and I immediately would go back to their, you know, their application to see what they had listed, right?
6:03
SPEAKER_00: Are you lying on the back of my head?
6:05
SPEAKER_00: But in the same reality, they had worked for some of them had worked for five, some of them had been three or four, a couple of them had been for nine.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: And nine out of ten were a bad experience.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: Something to think about.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: And when they worked for me, they're like, wow, this runs smoothly.
6:19
SPEAKER_00: Is this what it's supposed to be like?
6:20
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, yes.
6:23
SPEAKER_00: And an entire business operation had to produce the five-star results.
6:27
SPEAKER_00: And having a business cost money.
6:30
SPEAKER_00: Flat out.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: It costs money to operate a business.
6:32
SPEAKER_00: There is no free in anything.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: And you can't charge bargain prices and then be shocked when you can't afford premium operations.
6:40
SPEAKER_00: And I constantly, you help me on my subbox.
6:43
SPEAKER_00: If you're undercharging your services, something eventually has to give, or you'll bankrupt yourself.
6:47
SPEAKER_00: You'll shorten the amount of time the cleaners have inside the home, which stresses them out.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you buy the cheapest products and equipment you can find and the stuff that's really toxic.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you stop replacing worn-out vacuums.
6:59
SPEAKER_00: I see this all the time.
7:00
SPEAKER_00: They leave vacuums, just never come back for them.
7:02
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you can't afford to send someone back when there's a complaint.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you can't afford proper training.
7:09
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you just keep hiring the first person who applies because they're a warm body and you're desperate to fill your schedule.
7:15
SPEAKER_00: Guilty as charged.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: I've done that before in the past.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you simply do everything yourself.
7:19
SPEAKER_00: I hope not, unless that's what you choose to do.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: And that may work temporarily, but it's not a five-star operation.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: It is survival mode, ladies and gentlemen.
7:28
SPEAKER_00: And the real cost attached to delivering exceptional service, profit is not greed.
7:34
SPEAKER_00: Remember, my 11-year-old wears that shirt.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: Profit allows for you to build the operation that your customers and employees expect you to provide.
7:40
SPEAKER_00: And you also can't rush people and demand perfection.
7:45
SPEAKER_00: It's just not going to happen.
7:46
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't, it's not in the same sentence, it doesn't work.
7:48
SPEAKER_00: One of the biggest contradictions in the cleaning industry is expecting flawless work while giving the cleaners an unrealistic amount of time to complete it.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: They'll walk off the job.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: What's the whole point?
7:58
SPEAKER_00: Your golden unicorn that generates 100 grand for you a year is just gone.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: So make sure you don't miss anything.
8:04
SPEAKER_00: Pay attention to all the details, the entire checklist.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: Make the customer happy.
8:08
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, you need to finish this house 30 minutes faster because we have another job waiting.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: That's poor scheduling and that's poor management and that's poor ownership.
8:18
SPEAKER_00: It's stressful enough when a cleaning tech is there trying to finesse everything by themselves and figure out the flow of the house, whether the customer picked up or not picked up, putting the fluffy away, not putting the fluffy away, not getting bit by the dog.
8:33
SPEAKER_00: I mean, do what do I do with a cat letter?
8:35
SPEAKER_00: There's all of these decisions.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: God forbid you have to make a bed.
8:37
SPEAKER_00: There's 52 decisions with making a bed because everybody has a different nuance on preferences.
8:44
SPEAKER_00: Tucked, untucked, overlay, tucked again, karate chop, non-crawty chop, first layer, second layer, third layer of pillows, stuffed animals.
8:53
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's so many decisions that people don't think, they just don't see it because they don't un they're not doing it over and over and over again.
9:00
SPEAKER_00: And we start to count, right?
9:01
SPEAKER_00: In layers, we watch the patterns.
9:03
SPEAKER_00: And speed and quality can coexist when the cleaners are experienced and the home is maintained.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: The scope is clear and the allotted time is realistic.
9:15
SPEAKER_00: So hopefully you're doing that.
9:16
SPEAKER_00: But speed cannot continuously replace proper staffing and proper scheduling, giving your schedule, your cleaning tax enough time.
9:23
SPEAKER_00: If every day is overbooked, if every house is rushed, if employees are constantly running behind, mistakes are not surprising.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: They are predictable.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
9:33
SPEAKER_00: Nobody's gonna want to hire you if you constantly have mistakes because your mistakes are predictable.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: There was a situation I had in a restaurant.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: It was a corporate chain.
9:45
SPEAKER_00: My daughter loves to go there.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I don't mind indulging in pasta.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: If you see the commercials, they always have coupons.
9:52
SPEAKER_00: It's not my favorite kind of food, but I figure a corporate franchise is perfect, right?
9:57
SPEAKER_00: That there shouldn't be any mistakes because there's a follow-through.
10:00
SPEAKER_00: I worked for a comp a corporate franchise for many years.
10:03
SPEAKER_00: It was called TGI Fridays.
10:04
SPEAKER_00: This one I'm not gonna name because they ended up giving me free lunch, and I don't think it's fair to bash them after they gave me lunch.
10:10
SPEAKER_00: But what had happened is my daughter sat down, I sat down, and this is right after I got skunked by my dog who got skunked at like 3:30 in the morning.
10:20
SPEAKER_00: My house just now is starting to aerate.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: We had to get these little odorizers.
10:24
SPEAKER_00: It was awful.
10:24
SPEAKER_00: She's had three treatments on her face.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: And my daughter noticed that the menu was squished.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: There was a squished bug in the menu.
10:34
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, ew, gross, squished bug.
10:36
SPEAKER_00: Not thinking anything of it as we're ordering.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: I'm handing this squished bug menu to the waitress who is very young.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Hey, would you mind grabbing this squished bug?
10:45
SPEAKER_00: So I figured she would put it away and that would be that, right?
10:49
SPEAKER_00: Then we could go on with our meal, but instead she gave me eye contact.
10:53
SPEAKER_00: For those of you who are not watching, I'm doing the whole ICU with my two fingers.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: And she stared right to my face, took that menu that I asked her to take away and put it on the partition in between.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: You know how some restaurants have a partition in between, like plants.
11:07
SPEAKER_00: She left it there the entire time I ate my lunch.
11:10
SPEAKER_00: So I didn't say anything.
11:12
SPEAKER_00: I saw her several times throughout the meal.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: And at the end of the meal, after I paid, I was getting ready to pay and give her the$8 tip for lunch.
11:20
SPEAKER_00: I said, you know, just so you know, the reason why I asked you to take the menu away is because I didn't want to sit next to a squish bug or see a squish bug during my dining experience.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: And she said, I know, I forgot.
11:33
SPEAKER_00: And walked away.
11:35
SPEAKER_00: I paid cash for my lunch because I'm still doing cash and no credit and left$8 tip.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: And I was walking out, and the restaurant manager, ironically, I don't know what the odds of that are.
11:46
SPEAKER_00: As I'm walking out to the main foyer where the wine is, I can hear her talk about me to her teammates about how much of a Karen I am and how demanding I was.
11:56
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, dude, I just tipped you eight bucks for lunch.
12:01
SPEAKER_00: Like, okay, but but when I heard the word Karen, I just snapped.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: And then I caught the manager next.
12:06
SPEAKER_00: He's like, hey, how was lunch?
12:07
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, as a matter of fact, this was my lunch experience.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: And I proceeded to tell him how he didn't spend any time training, that he didn't spend any time coaching them and developing them as human beings.
12:19
SPEAKER_00: They don't have the eye contact.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: They have absolutely no personality, none, zero.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: And I go, how I'm sick of coming here.
12:26
SPEAKER_00: The only reason why I come is because my 11-year-old likes it.
12:29
SPEAKER_00: And I go, it's like torture.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: So at this point, he's starting to get nervous and he's hopping back and forth from foot to foot, right?
12:35
SPEAKER_00: My story is, I know I'm getting to my point.
12:37
SPEAKER_00: And um, he's wanting my receipt because I pay cash.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I don't want a refund.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you how my experience was and I'm leaving.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: So eventually he coerced me to give me the receipt so he could give me a refund.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: And I said, I don't know if I'll be back.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: I'm just sick of it.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: So I left and then I made a post on social media.
12:55
SPEAKER_00: I did not name the name of the restaurant because I got a free lunch out of it.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: I felt that that was compensation, but I still felt that this could have been prevented.
13:04
SPEAKER_00: And that is my whole point.
13:06
SPEAKER_00: It's a lot of mistakes that happen with cleaning techs can be prevented.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: If you have good training techniques, if you have good follow-up, if you do quarterly meetings or monthly meetings, and in some instances, if you're a$5 million company, you probably do weekly meetings in your little Mercedes vans.
13:24
SPEAKER_00: It's it's not when you get the service, you want it to be predictable.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: You want it to be the same.
13:29
SPEAKER_00: You guys always hear me talk about McDonald's, and a corporate franchise restaurant should be like McDonald's, but it's not.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: I'm noticing there's a rift in the community of the restaurant industry, and people are sharing waitresses.
13:42
SPEAKER_00: I know one waitress who works at four restaurants here in town.
13:45
SPEAKER_00: But I love seeing her because I know to pick her every single time because her service is consistent.
13:52
SPEAKER_00: Her performance is never a problem.
13:54
SPEAKER_00: It's the young ones, they send them out on one shift.
13:57
SPEAKER_00: It's trial by fire, and no one really likes that.
13:59
SPEAKER_00: And that was the end result.
14:00
SPEAKER_00: I got to eat next to a squish bug, and they made like I was making a big deal out of it.
14:06
SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't a big deal per se, except for the fact that I requested for something and she flat out refused to do it.
14:12
SPEAKER_00: So that's my point.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: So the employee is not the performance problem.
14:17
SPEAKER_00: It's actually an operation systems problem.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: And training is an investment.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: When you're training your cleaning techs, it's an investment.
14:25
SPEAKER_00: You can't hand somebody a vacuum and give them a checklist and expect a five-star performance on day one.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: They just don't have it.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: They don't know that they have to leave lines because psychologically in the carpet, when you see lines, you know that someone vacuumed.
14:38
SPEAKER_00: Even though they vacuumed already, but if they don't see the lines, it's more of a psychological like, did they vacuum?
14:44
SPEAKER_00: Did they not vacuum?
14:45
SPEAKER_00: Berber carpeting.
14:46
SPEAKER_00: I hate burber carpeting because you can never leave lines in it.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: But it was popular all in the 80s and 2000s.
14:54
SPEAKER_00: Continuously.
14:55
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's uh it's everywhere in a lot of because we had a huge building boom in my town in the 90s.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: So you still see it, right?
15:02
SPEAKER_00: Cleaning is a professional skill, and people need to be taught what to do in the correct order for cleaning the room, right?
15:12
SPEAKER_00: How to prevent cross-contamination, super importante.
15:16
SPEAKER_00: Which products are safe for which surfaces, how to efficiently work without cutting corners, what clean actually means according to your company's standards.
15:26
SPEAKER_00: How to communicate with a customer.
15:28
SPEAKER_00: Smile.
15:29
SPEAKER_00: How to handle pets, alarms, keys, damages, and unusual situations.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: And let me have a quick word with pets.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: We're starting to see an increase in dog bites.
15:39
SPEAKER_00: So I am a dog lover.
15:41
SPEAKER_00: If you are my Facebook friend, you are subjected to me sharing hundreds of dogs every single year, if not thousands.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: But I'm at the point now where I think that pets should be put away.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: There's a disruption that happens.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: I've I can think of five people off the top of my head who have had to get extra care because of a dog bite situation.
16:03
SPEAKER_00: So your pet policy going forward should be that they put their pets away, um, just to prevent cleaning text from getting bit.
16:10
SPEAKER_00: You know, because then it creates this awkward situation.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: The homeowner's like, well, it's your fault.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: And they're like, no, it's not.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: The only person who got bit when they shouldn't have got, they should have, the only person who was bit was someone who did something that she shouldn't have done, and she went in an outside area for whatever reason where the dog was and he bit her.
16:28
SPEAKER_00: That's very much her fault.
16:31
SPEAKER_00: If you're going in the house and you're just doing your thing and you bend over and the dog bites you in the ass, that's not your fault, right?
16:38
SPEAKER_00: And it hurts.
16:39
SPEAKER_00: It hurts to be bit by a dog.
16:41
SPEAKER_00: It hurts for weeks.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: So, um, how to reorganize something that they should not touch or attempt to clean.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: You also have to inspect what you expect out of them.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: Training is not saying something once and assuming that it has permanently been absorbed.
16:56
SPEAKER_00: It takes several times for us as entrepreneurs to learn things.
17:01
SPEAKER_00: You cannot give it once to a cleaning tech and go, you better remember this.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: I've seen it happen.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, too much talking.
17:07
SPEAKER_00: You get to listen to me slobber.
17:09
SPEAKER_00: So a lot of five-star companies are they train, observe, correct, document, reinforce.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: And this is this is changing a lot.
17:18
SPEAKER_00: I what I see coming on into fruition in the next year is actually training multiple.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: So it won't be like six people at once unless there's a training facility, something I'm working on.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: But it's gonna cut down on the amount of time that it requires for them to be physical.
17:33
SPEAKER_00: And it is gonna expand it.
17:35
SPEAKER_00: So you're not doing training one-on-one, you're doing multiple.
17:37
SPEAKER_00: So you're maybe you're training three, depending on the size and the scope of the house or the training facility that you pick.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: And then a lot of that stuff's gonna be video.
17:44
SPEAKER_00: So I think it in the next year, we're gonna see 50% video and 50% hands-on.
17:49
SPEAKER_00: We'll see.
17:49
SPEAKER_00: I'll be able to tell you more once I go to ISSA.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: And all that stuff requires time, materials, and management.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: And a five-star results require an investment.
18:00
SPEAKER_00: Constant.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: It's constant training, constant grooming, constant, this is what you do here, this is what you do there.
18:06
SPEAKER_00: Um, business owners sometimes say, I cannot find good people.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: I hear it all the time, but there are good people out there.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: And um, what are the good people walking into, right?
18:15
SPEAKER_00: Are they working into total chaos?
18:17
SPEAKER_00: Is it disorganized?
18:18
SPEAKER_00: Are there no supplies?
18:20
SPEAKER_00: When I worked at the MGM casino before I quit, that was a story I think I shared in another podcast.
18:26
SPEAKER_00: I was a waiter at the MGM.
18:28
SPEAKER_00: I won't go into all the details, but it was a really large restaurant at the time.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: It sat 691 people.
18:34
SPEAKER_00: They had the cups in one station, the saucers to go with the cup in another station.
18:38
SPEAKER_00: And if you want a coffee, it would be in the third side station.
18:42
SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't realistic.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: You were you spent all your time walking around.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: I legitimately would have trainees come up to me who got like one shift of training, trial by fire, and they would have tears running down their eyes.
19:20
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, dude, I have my own station.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: Please don't make me take yours.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: It was a chaotic environment and wasn't something I would recommend, but that's what it was in my 20s.
19:29
SPEAKER_00: So that's what I mean.
19:30
SPEAKER_00: Do they know what is expected of them?
19:32
SPEAKER_00: You have to communicate what is expected.
19:34
SPEAKER_00: I expect you to give eye contact.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: I treat my littles all the time.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: When we go out to dinner, I'm like, you need to order your own food.
19:40
SPEAKER_00: They're like, what?
19:42
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, look at the waitress.
19:44
SPEAKER_00: Say, I would like to have a lemonade, please, and give them eye contact.
19:47
SPEAKER_00: Teaching my littles how to count cash.
19:49
SPEAKER_00: We know how to count cash.
19:51
SPEAKER_00: Teaching them to read and write, counting cash, reading and writing, doing basic math and learning how to swim are the five important life skills that you need to have to at least get to adulthood.
20:02
SPEAKER_00: But these are things I'm training them because it's important to me for them to be able to communicate and articulate what they want so they're not disappointed.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: Is the schedule reasonably accurate?
20:12
SPEAKER_00: I can tell you that this is a really big thing.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: When I worked in Lake Tahoe, I was a cocktail waitress and my schedule would not come.
20:22
SPEAKER_00: I've had this happen twice in my life, once at TGI Fridays when I was assistant general manager and I could not control my own schedule.
20:29
SPEAKER_00: And prior to that, it happened in Lake Tahoe when I lived there many moons ago.
20:34
SPEAKER_00: The waitress, the cocktail waitress schedule would not come out until Sunday at 12 a.m.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: Well, if you had to be to work at Monday at 6 a.m., you had to go to work because you couldn't call and figure out if you were supposed to show up at 6 a.m.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: or not.
20:49
SPEAKER_00: Or if you went and you looked at your schedule and you wrote it down because there was no copies back in back in the day, your schedule could change and they wouldn't call and tell you.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: It was your responsibility to check the schedule every day.
20:58
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine that madness and how unfair it was to me as an employee?
21:02
SPEAKER_00: So don't do what they did to me to your cleaning decks.
21:05
SPEAKER_00: Are the job notes complete or they're just parcels and you're supposed to know?
21:09
SPEAKER_00: Do they have working equipment?
21:11
SPEAKER_00: Or are all of their toilet brushes broken, right?
21:14
SPEAKER_00: What about the crevice tool?
21:16
SPEAKER_00: Does it have a big crack and it catches the seam of the couch every single time and potentially could rip a client's couch?
21:23
SPEAKER_00: What about the mop?
21:24
SPEAKER_00: Are you using flat mops or is the Velcro all covered in debris?
21:28
SPEAKER_00: Do the mop heads work or are they all we worn out too?
21:31
SPEAKER_00: We all know that microfibers wear out, right?
21:33
SPEAKER_00: Are their paychecks correct?
21:35
SPEAKER_00: That's super duper important.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: Don't mess up anyone's checks.
21:38
SPEAKER_00: Do they know who to call when there's a problem?
21:41
SPEAKER_00: Are policies applied consistently or on a one-off basis?
21:45
SPEAKER_00: And what I mean for that is for customers A, the policy applies.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna show up at 9 a.m.
21:51
SPEAKER_00: and she likes to have her pillows karate chopped.
21:56
SPEAKER_00: But customer B, we get there and we karate chop their pillows, and then they're like, no, we don't want you to karate chop our pillows.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: We want you to push them to fluff them, right?
22:05
SPEAKER_00: So that's what I mean are all policies applied.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: You have to be, if you have to do for one, you have to do for all.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: Does the owner communicate respectfully?
22:12
SPEAKER_00: I have a really good friend who owns a restaurant and she talks down to her employees and she can't figure out why they don't hang out.
22:24
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I I don't have the heart to tell her, but eventually she'll figure it out.
22:27
SPEAKER_00: You know, does the owner communicate respectfully?
22:30
SPEAKER_00: Are you you guys, the cleaning techs are my golden unicorns?
22:34
SPEAKER_00: I don't want, they're my salespeople.
22:36
SPEAKER_00: They're the ones who make it all happen for me.
22:38
SPEAKER_00: They're the ones that do all the hard work.
22:40
SPEAKER_00: And then here's another big one is is good performance recognized?
22:44
SPEAKER_00: I learned how to reward good performance at TGA Fridays.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: I got 50 points of lair.
22:50
SPEAKER_00: For those of you who know who that is, go ahead and tell me.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: And with the suspenders and the striped shirt before they change the outfits.
22:58
SPEAKER_00: Do you employees have the opportunity to grow?
23:00
SPEAKER_00: What is the growth?
23:01
SPEAKER_00: What does that growth chart look like in your business?
23:05
SPEAKER_00: Are they forever going to be cleaning techs or do they have an opportunity to maybe grow and develop themselves and become into management?
23:12
SPEAKER_00: You never know.
23:13
SPEAKER_00: I know that someone who does$3 million a year, her operations manager was a cleaning tech and grew through the ranks.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: Super important.
23:22
SPEAKER_00: It's been there like 35 years.
23:24
SPEAKER_00: Great employees are not simply looking for a paycheck.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: They're evaluating the operation as well.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: And if it's total chaos every day, they're not going to want to come in.
23:32
SPEAKER_00: You can't expect them to treat your company like a five-star business when the company is treating them like disposable labor.
23:38
SPEAKER_00: Again, and go back to my friend who owns a restaurant.
23:42
SPEAKER_00: You do not have to offer everything a giant corporation offers.
23:46
SPEAKER_00: And but you do have to build a workplace that is organized, respectful, safe, and reliable.
23:52
SPEAKER_00: And that's super important.
23:54
SPEAKER_00: If you don't have a safe working environment, there's it's not fun working for you ever.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: I've worked for a lot of small businesses in my working career, and there have been really great businesses, and then there's been a lot of really bad businesses.
24:08
SPEAKER_00: So your employees can't produce premium results if using broken or unreliable or inappropriate equipment, like the vacuum broke, or you have to use the vacuum this one way, but it doesn't go the other way.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: So you have to constantly like combing hair, right?
24:24
SPEAKER_00: You gotta love those shag carpets.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: If the vacuum barely has any suction that matters, it makes more labor for you, right?
24:31
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna take them twice as long to vacuum.
24:33
SPEAKER_00: It's like I saw someone who had purchased a Kirby vacuum, she's gonna use it in her home.
24:38
SPEAKER_00: And the Kirby vacuums have their own era in the cleaning industry, but they're heavy if they don't know how to use them right.
24:44
SPEAKER_00: And I refute that in rainbows.
24:46
SPEAKER_00: We just don't use them because I don't want anyone to throw their back out and then they can't work.
24:50
SPEAKER_00: If the mop pads are worn out, that matters.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: If bottles are leaking inside someone's car, that matters.
24:57
SPEAKER_00: Nobody wants that inside their car.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: If employees are constantly running out of supplies, that matters.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: There has to be a system for that, right?
25:04
SPEAKER_00: Do they come in once a week?
25:05
SPEAKER_00: Do you drop ship them Amazon?
25:07
SPEAKER_00: How does that work for you?
25:09
SPEAKER_00: If you are asking cleaners to bring random products from home and everybody is using something different, there's no consistency and that matters.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: Then they don't get the same results, just like using the customer's product.
25:19
SPEAKER_00: I have all this product I want you to use.
25:21
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, well, we can't guarantee results, right?
25:24
SPEAKER_00: Customers may never see the supply room, but they will see the results produced by what came out of it.
25:31
SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
25:33
SPEAKER_00: Investing in good equipment does not mean buying the most expensive product available, especially vacuums, because I've watched cleaning techs destroy vacuums, just drop them on the ground from the from the trunk.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, you know, that was a$400 vacuum.
25:50
SPEAKER_00: Or they rip them the cord out of the wall and it whips around, it hits an antique lamp, and then it hits something else and it ruins the cord.
25:56
SPEAKER_00: Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.
25:58
SPEAKER_00: These are all things to think about.
26:00
SPEAKER_00: But it does mean providing professional tools that are safe, effective, maintained, and appropriate for the work that needs to be provided.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: And systems also create consistency.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: Five-star results cannot depend entirely on whether the owner personally remembered everything that day.
26:17
SPEAKER_00: I hope not.
26:18
SPEAKER_00: You need systems and a consistent quoting process comes to mind.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: Accurate job notes come to mind, cleaning procedures top to bottom, left to right.
26:28
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Jeff Campbell.
26:30
SPEAKER_00: You need checklists, you need cancellation and lockout policies.
26:34
SPEAKER_00: Super important.
26:35
SPEAKER_00: You need a process for damages and complaints.
26:38
SPEAKER_00: You need a way to document customer preferences, and you need a system for collecting payment.
26:44
SPEAKER_00: That is the most important.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: And then the follow-up, all of the follow-up procedures.
26:48
SPEAKER_00: You definitely need quality control, whether that is they provide their own quality control, or you have a quality control person that does quality control.
26:58
SPEAKER_00: We typically don't do quality control or have a person that specifically does that.
27:04
SPEAKER_00: However, there are opportunities that you can provide quality control should you need it.
27:09
SPEAKER_00: And systems do not remove the human element from the company.
27:13
SPEAKER_00: They actually support it.
27:14
SPEAKER_00: It makes things run smoothly.
27:17
SPEAKER_00: They get people good structure and what they can work for consistently without system, the owner becomes the system.
27:24
SPEAKER_00: And trust me, you don't want to be your own bottleneck.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to be the system.
27:28
SPEAKER_00: You want the system to work by itself, or you'll never be able to go on vacation in Tahiti.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: I'll never get to see those photos when you're waving to me.
27:35
SPEAKER_00: When the owner becomes overloaded, the entire company becomes unpredictable.
27:41
SPEAKER_00: And what's that saying?
27:42
SPEAKER_00: If you go down, the whole ship goes down with you.
27:45
SPEAKER_00: Don't be one of those.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: Chaos is expensive and it creates mistakes, refunds, callbacks, employee turnover, bad reviews, and burnt out owners.
27:55
SPEAKER_00: And you don't want to be an owner that subsidizes the business either.
27:58
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes a company appears to be delivering five-star service only because the owner is secretly subsidizing it with unpaid labor.
28:06
SPEAKER_00: Don't be that person.
28:07
SPEAKER_00: I'm guilty of doing it way back in the day.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: Don't let it happen to you.
28:12
SPEAKER_00: Pay yourself.
28:13
SPEAKER_00: Pay yourself first with profit first.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: If the owner answers customer messages at night, the owner fixes every mistake, the owner delivers forgotten supplies.
28:24
SPEAKER_00: What else?
28:25
SPEAKER_00: Rearranges the schedule.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: The owner performs free callbacks.
28:30
SPEAKER_00: The owner fills every staffing gap.
28:33
SPEAKER_00: Don't do that either.
28:34
SPEAKER_00: The owner takes work home and spends the weekend solving problems that the company's pricing and system should be paying someone to solve.
28:42
SPEAKER_00: Don't be that person either.
28:44
SPEAKER_00: The customer may be receiving five-star service, but it doesn't mean you have built a five-star operation.
28:50
SPEAKER_00: It may mean that the owner is personally absorbing the true cost of delivering the service.
28:55
SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
28:57
SPEAKER_00: It may mean that the owner is personally absorbing the true cost of delivering the service.
29:04
SPEAKER_00: Is that you?
29:05
SPEAKER_00: Are you the fill-in for everything that breaks and everything that doesn't work?
29:09
SPEAKER_00: Are you the call person when everything has a crisis?
29:13
SPEAKER_00: You'll never be able to step away from your business.
29:15
SPEAKER_00: Never.
29:16
SPEAKER_00: So are you that person?
29:19
SPEAKER_00: I would really ponder that statement alone.
29:22
SPEAKER_00: I would take a piece of paper and say, Am I personally absorbing the true cost of my business?
29:29
SPEAKER_00: Are you doing all the things that I just mentioned above?
29:32
SPEAKER_00: If you check the boxes and most of them are yes, then you are working for free labor, right?
29:37
SPEAKER_00: So you gotta figure out how you're gonna fix that piece of the uh all of the systems that you have so that you're not the free laborer that fixes the end all be all, right?
29:48
SPEAKER_00: And if your company can only maintain its reputation because you were working unpaid hours, sacrificing your weekends, answering every question and saving the job, then your current pricing is not paying for a five-star operation.
30:01
SPEAKER_00: It's a three-star operation or a two-star operation.
30:05
SPEAKER_00: Because that shouldn't happen.
30:06
SPEAKER_00: Don't do that.
30:07
SPEAKER_00: You'll burn yourself out and you'll never get out.
30:10
SPEAKER_00: You'll always be, you'll, you won't be mop-free.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: So if paying for an operation that works only because you continue to donate your own life to it, that's not sustainable.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: It's just not.
30:21
SPEAKER_00: So don't be that person.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: Back in the day, when I didn't know how to structure my schedule and I didn't know how to tell people no, and I didn't know how to do a price increase.
30:32
SPEAKER_00: I worked, I want to say it was like 42 or 47 days in a row on top of raising two of my now adult children.
30:41
SPEAKER_00: And I worked so many days in a row that I exhausted myself and I almost had to go to the ER.
30:47
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't, I was inert for like three or four days.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: I all I could do was just sleep because I had worked so many days in a row.
30:54
SPEAKER_00: So don't do what I did.
30:57
SPEAKER_00: It's crazy for me to think that over a decade ago that I did something so silly that I preached that you shouldn't do, right?
31:03
SPEAKER_00: But I was like trying to people please.
31:05
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I had all kinds of, I had monthlies, I didn't have them on a certain day.
31:09
SPEAKER_00: Then I had three-week schedules.
31:11
SPEAKER_00: I never told anybody no, I was a people pleaser, people pleaser anonymous.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: And I brought myself out.
31:17
SPEAKER_00: And then I realized when I was in the three days of trying to recover from my stupidity, I was just like, this cannot go on anymore.
31:24
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna have to, and I sat and I looked at which customers were paying me the most money and which weren't, and I started to drop clients off.
31:31
SPEAKER_00: I gave them a price increase, knowing that they were gonna drop me, and I was perfectly fine with that.
31:35
SPEAKER_00: I also rearranged my schedule so that monthlies were only on Mondays and that I didn't do three weeks' rotations anymore, and that commercials, if they were I wouldn't take on commercials unless I had a specific person because some days I worked during the day and then I picked up a commercial at night, right?
31:52
SPEAKER_00: And then because you obligated yourself, you don't want to be the one that doesn't show up.
31:55
SPEAKER_00: So that don't do what I did.
31:57
SPEAKER_00: Learn from me so you don't make my mistakes.
32:01
SPEAKER_00: And that was a long time ago.
32:02
SPEAKER_00: So I had a schedule that didn't allow enough time for the work.
32:05
SPEAKER_00: I probably had equipment that didn't work.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know how to use the equipment.
32:09
SPEAKER_00: That's actually the most important thing.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: When I see a lot of you newbies out there and you are in the bathroom and I'm like, it should take you half hour.
32:17
SPEAKER_00: And they're like, What?
32:18
SPEAKER_00: There's no way to clean this for half hour.
32:20
SPEAKER_00: I go if it's relatively clean and you're just picking up a toilet paper dust and hair.
32:25
SPEAKER_00: It shouldn't take you longer than a half hour if you do the bathroom the right way, right?
32:29
SPEAKER_00: You have to learn how to use your products.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: If you don't know how to use them in what order to use them, then you need more training.
32:35
SPEAKER_00: There have been many times where I've rescued the customer behind the scenes.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: You know, you guys have all heard a lot of the stories where, you know, we got there it really early in the morning and one of them had passed away.
32:46
SPEAKER_00: There have been many, many situations like that.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: So you have to decide what the boundaries are going to be so that you're not, excuse me, putting yourself in the same situation as I did.
32:56
SPEAKER_00: And then there was a period of time where it was just me before I transitioned to them, right?
33:02
SPEAKER_00: The cleaning tech.
33:03
SPEAKER_00: So they received excellent service from you only because you're constantly working to hold everything together.
33:08
SPEAKER_00: So I did that too.
33:10
SPEAKER_00: I it constantly, I would tweak it here, I'd come and tweak it there, and that's how I ended up working like 47 days in a row.
33:15
SPEAKER_00: So don't do that.
33:17
SPEAKER_00: And that taught me a lot about pricing in my training and leaderships, and I wasn't holding people accountable.
33:24
SPEAKER_00: I didn't, I wasn't charging enough.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was talking to someone the other day, one of my very first, I think probably my first 20 or 30 move out cleanings, there was a woman who lived in a 3,400 square foot home who was a cleaning business owner who had pygmy pigs, and I did the whole house, pig poop included, for like 225 bucks.
33:48
SPEAKER_00: In retrospect, that move out cleaning today would have been over a grand.
33:53
SPEAKER_00: It's just silly for me to think about it, but I did it.
33:56
SPEAKER_00: I was like, okay, no problem.
33:57
SPEAKER_00: I'll do it for$225 because I was charging$25 an hour, right?
34:01
SPEAKER_00: I was charging regular maintenance prices for an awful mess picking up pig shit.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: So something to think about, definitely.
34:11
SPEAKER_00: And you really can't market one experience and then deliver another.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: If your market says you are a premium professional, detail-oriented company, you need to support that promise, right?
34:24
SPEAKER_00: So if you show up on a job and the job is way beyond the scope and you don't renegotiate the price and you run out of chemical, and the homeowner's on a time schedule because they've scheduled 15 vendors all in the same time, you gotta say, I'm gonna go back and get some more supplies.
34:38
SPEAKER_00: I already ran through, like, you know, we typically only carry enough supplies for one house, and this house is gonna take five kits instead of one, right?
34:46
SPEAKER_00: They're not gonna see that as the most professional manner.
34:48
SPEAKER_00: That's why you always carry extra supplies in your car when you're doing move out cleanings, right?
34:52
SPEAKER_00: And your website can literally say anything.
34:55
SPEAKER_00: Your social media can look beautiful.
34:57
SPEAKER_00: You can use all of the right words, the bells and whistles, but the actual customer's experience is what determines if those claims are true and they'll see it in your reviews.
35:08
SPEAKER_00: God, customers can be brutal.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: Does someone answer the phone when called?
35:12
SPEAKER_00: I answer the phone, I don't care where I am.
35:14
SPEAKER_00: Are estimates delivered when promised?
35:17
SPEAKER_00: And if I'm not answering the phone, someone else is answering the phone for me, right?
35:20
SPEAKER_00: Does the confirmation contain the correct information?
35:23
SPEAKER_00: Make sure you audit that every once in a while.
35:24
SPEAKER_00: Does the cleaner know what the customer purchased?
35:28
SPEAKER_00: There's a big difference between regular maintenance and top to bottom.
35:31
SPEAKER_00: Does the team arrive within the promised window?
35:33
SPEAKER_00: Does the invoice match the quote?
35:36
SPEAKER_00: Does the company respond appropriately when something goes wrong?
35:41
SPEAKER_00: Something to think about.
35:43
SPEAKER_00: The five-star experience begins long before anyone starts to clean.
35:47
SPEAKER_00: It begins with the first interaction and continues to the final follow-up.
35:52
SPEAKER_00: You cannot market luxury and operate in chaos.
35:54
SPEAKER_00: It just doesn't work.
35:55
SPEAKER_00: It ends up being a shit show.
35:57
SPEAKER_00: So the owner is gonna have to invest in themselves, invest in their cleaning techs, invest in your products that you're using.
36:05
SPEAKER_00: Um you it's an investment, right?
36:07
SPEAKER_00: Long-term investment is someone who works for you for 10 years or longer.
36:12
SPEAKER_00: You cannot expect your company to become more organized while refusing to learn how to lead.
36:16
SPEAKER_00: That's actually a really hard skill to learn.
36:18
SPEAKER_00: You cannot expect your employees to communicate better if you avoid difficult conversations.
36:23
SPEAKER_00: And some of the difficult conversations are like, what were you thinking when you did this?
36:27
SPEAKER_00: Or having to have the difficult conversation of letting someone go.
36:30
SPEAKER_00: That's never fun.
36:31
SPEAKER_00: And you cannot expect your numbers to improve if you refuse to look at them, right?
36:36
SPEAKER_00: What I ask people all the time, hey, do you know what you're gross last year?
36:40
SPEAKER_00: And people still to this day will tell me, I don't know.
36:43
SPEAKER_00: So don't be that person, be the person who has a rough idea at least.
36:48
SPEAKER_00: And we usually guesstimate when I get them on the phone, but you have to kind of know what you're doing, or you're not going to be able to take advantage of an opportunity if it lands in your lap, right?
36:57
SPEAKER_00: So these are some of the concerns and observations I have made, like what to do in the middle of emergency.
37:04
SPEAKER_00: If you, you know, I we I believe we did a podcast on what to do if you found a dead body, right?
37:09
SPEAKER_00: I believe that was down in Phoenix last year.
37:12
SPEAKER_00: I think it was 2025.
37:13
SPEAKER_00: Like there was a woman, she was a bank employee, and no one went to check on her, which was really sad and unfortunate.
37:19
SPEAKER_00: They ended up finding her after three days, and it was the cleaning crew who found her.
37:23
SPEAKER_00: It was awful.
37:24
SPEAKER_00: You know, what to do in an emergency?
37:26
SPEAKER_00: What do we do if we have an earthquake?
37:28
SPEAKER_00: What to do if there's a fire?
37:29
SPEAKER_00: What to do if it snows, what to do if I get two flat tires, what to do if I get in a car accident, you know, what to what to do if my uh cleaning partner arrives and they have a heart attack.
37:40
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's all of these things that happen because we are a very human industry, right?
37:46
SPEAKER_00: And it's the next investment is really considered education.
37:50
SPEAKER_00: I spend on average about 10 grand a year just developing myself, learning new things, keeping on top of what's going on here with you guys, because I want to be on top of my game too.
38:01
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to like fall behind.
38:03
SPEAKER_00: AI is going so fast that we got to keep up, right?
38:07
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it's coaching and sometimes it's software that I buy, and then other times it's just hiring help for a certain period of time.
38:15
SPEAKER_00: And then it really is finally sitting down and building the policy, the checklist, the training system that you've been putting off.
38:21
SPEAKER_00: You need to have something.
38:23
SPEAKER_00: And admitting that the price you are charging cannot support the company you are trying to build.
38:30
SPEAKER_00: Let me read that.
38:31
SPEAKER_00: It says the price that you are charging cannot support the company you are trying to build.
38:38
SPEAKER_00: If you're not charging enough, you're gonna bankrupt yourself and you're not gonna go anywhere and you're just gonna spend your wheels.
38:43
SPEAKER_00: And I don't want to see you fail because the whole point is I want to see everyone become a millionaire so you can create other assets to generate more wealth, generational wealth that, or you can sell this and gift it to family.
38:55
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's so many options now that there never were before.
38:59
SPEAKER_00: And this same conversation also applies to customers.
39:02
SPEAKER_00: So if customers expect a five-star result while refusing to pay for the time or scope required to produce them, that's not your client, right?
39:11
SPEAKER_00: They want a deep clean.
39:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you see it all the time in the mom's groups, right?
39:14
SPEAKER_00: I'm looking for a monthly deep clean and it's like the laundry list of the 50 fucking hardest things to do in someone's house.
39:21
SPEAKER_00: I want the baseboards wet wiped, I want the 57 sets of blinds vacuum wet wiped and dried.
39:27
SPEAKER_00: It's not that big deal.
39:29
SPEAKER_00: I just need you to broom sweep it.
39:30
SPEAKER_00: I'm I want all of the, I want my five bathrooms detailed explicitly, and then, you know, then they don't want to pay, they want to pay like 200 bucks.
39:38
SPEAKER_00: So don't be that person.
39:40
SPEAKER_00: And you have to kind of gently put them in their place without saying, you know, hey, I'm gonna put you in your place, right?
39:45
SPEAKER_00: So think about what you're doing before you do it and don't take on clients like that.
39:49
SPEAKER_00: They have to learn, and it's gotten better over time, that cleaning is no longer 1990 prices.
39:56
SPEAKER_00: It's super important because if you don't, then they're gonna expect it, right?
39:59
SPEAKER_00: They're gonna want the windows done, the outside of the cabinets detailed, they're gonna want to pay for only they only want to pay for two hours.
40:07
SPEAKER_00: I see that in the what is that, that dazzle Facebook page.
40:13
SPEAKER_00: I feel sorry for any girl that has been in that.
40:16
SPEAKER_00: I'm not allowed, I'm still not allowed to post anything.
40:20
SPEAKER_00: I'm not allowed to comment, but I get a lot of really good content out of those girls.
40:24
SPEAKER_00: Those poor girls have it rough.
40:26
SPEAKER_00: Those customers take advantage of every opportunity to take advantage of somebody.
40:31
SPEAKER_00: It's awful.
40:33
SPEAKER_00: It's like being an indentured slave.
40:35
SPEAKER_00: And if you're making it happen in Dazzle, reach out.
40:38
SPEAKER_00: I'd love to give you an interview, but I have not yet found one out of the thousands who are on that Facebook page.
40:45
SPEAKER_00: Um, they want immediate availability, uh, last-minute clean.
40:48
SPEAKER_00: They want your best team and or they want perfection.
40:51
SPEAKER_00: Then they want a discount because suddenly they found a random hair that was floating around in the sky.
40:57
SPEAKER_00: And it's really not realistic, right?
40:59
SPEAKER_00: It's not a realistic transaction.
41:01
SPEAKER_00: That's why we don't do last-minute cleanings.
41:03
SPEAKER_00: Professional cleaning companies should clearly explain what's included, the time that's required, and what the service costs.
41:08
SPEAKER_00: Because you're you're selling the scope of the job, right?
41:11
SPEAKER_00: We should not overpromise, overpromise simply because we are afraid of losing the sale and we're gonna lose sales.
41:17
SPEAKER_00: It's okay.
41:18
SPEAKER_00: It's better to lose a job that was never properly priced and accept it, rush through it, disappoint the customer, exhaust the cleaners, and then get a bad review because that's the cycle.
41:28
SPEAKER_00: It happens every single time.
41:30
SPEAKER_00: The customer does not get to purchase a two-star scope and demand five-star transformation, just something to think about.
41:37
SPEAKER_00: Because we do offer like cleaning packages, but they're very basic.
41:41
SPEAKER_00: You can look on my website.
41:42
SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of things that go along to adding in the price.
41:47
SPEAKER_00: So almost all small business owners can't fix everything at once.
41:52
SPEAKER_00: You just have to do a little bit at a time.
41:54
SPEAKER_00: Or you may not have thousands of dollars sitting around for new equipment, technology, complete training department, yada, yada, yada.
42:00
SPEAKER_00: But that doesn't mean that you should give up.
42:02
SPEAKER_00: You should take small steps.
42:03
SPEAKER_00: When I first got into coaching, I had another coach say to me, Well, if you take small steps, you'll eventually get there.
42:09
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, huh?
42:10
SPEAKER_00: What do you mean?
42:11
SPEAKER_00: Right?
42:11
SPEAKER_00: But it's actually true now that I'm older and wiser, more seasoned.
42:14
SPEAKER_00: If you have a goal and you do one through 20 of the steps, and every day you chug along at step one until you've completed step one, then you can move to step two and you do the same thing.
42:25
SPEAKER_00: Eventually you'll get to step 20 and you will have made and accomplished something big.
42:30
SPEAKER_00: But it takes tenacity.
42:31
SPEAKER_00: You gotta have it.
42:32
SPEAKER_00: If you don't have tenacity, you'll get all over the place.
42:34
SPEAKER_00: Squirrel, right?
42:36
SPEAKER_00: It means investing intentionally.
42:38
SPEAKER_00: So make sure that you're investing in your crew, make sure you're investing in your equipment, make sure you're investing in what you do, like what complaints and mistakes keep repeating themselves.
42:50
SPEAKER_00: That's a big one.
42:52
SPEAKER_00: Because you'll have the same mistakes happen over and over again.
42:54
SPEAKER_00: What's creating the most stress for the team?
42:56
SPEAKER_00: What's causing the most friction?
42:58
SPEAKER_00: Is it one individual?
42:59
SPEAKER_00: Or is it because the schedule isn't coming out until the last minute, like the example I gave earlier?
43:05
SPEAKER_00: What's costing the most money?
43:07
SPEAKER_00: Usually that's scope creep, right?
43:09
SPEAKER_00: Hey, can you just hit this floor?
43:11
SPEAKER_00: Can you do this inside the China cabinet?
43:13
SPEAKER_00: And then they end up breaking a Hubble that was like 3,000 bucks, and then the homeowner gets mad, and you're like, what were you doing in that carrio cabinet, right?
43:22
SPEAKER_00: Which improvement would make the biggest difference right now?
43:25
SPEAKER_00: Prioritize.
43:26
SPEAKER_00: Is it your pricing?
43:27
SPEAKER_00: Pricing can be scary the first time you do it.
43:30
SPEAKER_00: If you go to my website and you sign up for my email, you get the pricing price increase boot camp for free.
43:36
SPEAKER_00: There's a commitment of 52 emails that are attached with it that comes once a week.
43:41
SPEAKER_00: No big deal.
43:41
SPEAKER_00: It's pretty painless, but you get it for free.
43:43
SPEAKER_00: Um, if you don't want to get it for free, you can just buy it.
43:46
SPEAKER_00: I believe it's 10 bucks.
43:47
SPEAKER_00: Uh, so that's something to think about.
43:49
SPEAKER_00: And it goes over how to do a price increase if you've never done one.
43:53
SPEAKER_00: And maybe the first investment really is raising your prices so that you can make more profit, right?
43:59
SPEAKER_00: Once you, and it's amazing when you increase your pricing, the same 12 clients after you complete it, you're automatically giving yourself a raise, right?
44:08
SPEAKER_00: So if you increase your prices, you're automatically making an extra 500 bucks on top of what you already were making by doing the exact same thing.
44:18
SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
44:19
SPEAKER_00: Something to really consider.
44:21
SPEAKER_00: Like, and then you're like, well, gosh, if I'm making 500 bucks, then again, when's the next time I can raise their prices, right?
44:27
SPEAKER_00: And someone was talking the other day and they were talking about how they audit every month how much they're increasing the prices.
44:34
SPEAKER_00: And then other people say, no, you should increase your prices every um, you know, 12 to 18 months.
44:39
SPEAKER_00: So decide what works best for you.
44:41
SPEAKER_00: Do them in person.
44:42
SPEAKER_00: But definitely if you want the price increase boot camp, you get it absolutely free if you sign up for my email list.
44:47
SPEAKER_00: And that's cleanfreaksuniversity.com.
44:50
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes, you know, you could just replace the easy thing is to go to Black Friday and buy vacuums, right?
44:57
SPEAKER_00: Oh my God, the cleaning crew loves you because you just got 10 new vacuums, right?
45:01
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's a first week training plan, maybe improving your job notes.
45:06
SPEAKER_00: And that's tenacious and tedious and not my forte, but someone else can do it for me.
45:12
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's fixing the payroll errors, right?
45:14
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the PTO is not adding up the rate it's supposed to.
45:16
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's giving one employee the authority to handle certain field issues, right?
45:21
SPEAKER_00: Um, you don't have to become a five star operational.
45:23
SPEAKER_00: Overnight, but the intention is there.
45:25
SPEAKER_00: As long as you have the intention, that's what actually matters.
45:28
SPEAKER_00: And then you'll be able to see which systems are broken, right?
45:31
SPEAKER_00: And here is a basic audit, operation audit, so that you can kind of figure that out for yourself.
45:37
SPEAKER_00: So you don't need to come a complicated spreadsheet.
45:40
SPEAKER_00: Just get out your notebook and work through these categories honestly.
45:46
SPEAKER_00: Did you not rate your company based on what you intend to create?
45:50
SPEAKER_00: Rate it based on what is actually happening.
45:54
SPEAKER_00: Step one, review your pricing.
45:56
SPEAKER_00: We were just talking about that.
45:57
SPEAKER_00: Ask yourself: are your prices paying for the actual amount of labor required?
46:02
SPEAKER_00: Are supplies, equipment, drive time, software, insurance, payroll expenses, and the management time included in our pricing?
46:11
SPEAKER_00: Can we afford to correct a mistake without destroying the profit from the job?
46:17
SPEAKER_00: Can we afford to train people properly?
46:20
SPEAKER_00: Is the owner being paid for the work they perform?
46:24
SPEAKER_00: After everything is paid, is there still profit or some profit or no profit, a lot of profit?
46:30
SPEAKER_00: If the answer is no, you do not merely have a pricing problem, you have an operation problem because the company does not have enough money to support the experience it is promising.
46:41
SPEAKER_00: Step two, review your scheduling.
46:44
SPEAKER_00: Ask yourself, ask.
46:46
SPEAKER_00: It's really easy to look and ask.
46:47
SPEAKER_00: Are cleaners consistently given enough time to complete the scope promised?
46:51
SPEAKER_00: Are teams rushing from one home to another?
46:53
SPEAKER_00: Don't do that to them.
46:54
SPEAKER_00: It's stressful.
46:55
SPEAKER_00: Have we allowed for realistic drive time?
46:58
SPEAKER_00: Are we accepting work that does not fit the schedule because we are afraid to say no?
47:02
SPEAKER_00: Don't do what I did.
47:04
SPEAKER_00: Are late arrivals and unfinished tasks becoming the norm?
47:08
SPEAKER_00: Are employees skipping breaks or regularly working later than planned?
47:12
SPEAKER_00: If everybody has to rush every day for the schedule to work, the schedule does not work.
47:18
SPEAKER_00: And then step three, review your training.
47:20
SPEAKER_00: Ask yourself, do we have a defined training process?
47:24
SPEAKER_00: That's discussed in the structure, Scale and Profit Cleaning Business Academy.
47:28
SPEAKER_00: Does everyone, does every cleaner receive the same basic instruction?
47:31
SPEAKER_00: McDonald's, I love McDonald's for that.
47:34
SPEAKER_00: Do employees know exactly what our company considers complete?
47:37
SPEAKER_00: Are they trained on services, products, equipment, safety, customer communication, dog policy?
47:44
SPEAKER_00: Do we observe their work before sending them out independently?
47:47
SPEAKER_00: I hope so.
47:48
SPEAKER_00: Is there continuing training after the first week?
47:50
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
47:51
SPEAKER_00: Are there repeated mistakes being corrected or merely complained about?
47:56
SPEAKER_00: You can't hold someone accountable for a standard that was never clearly taught.
48:01
SPEAKER_00: Step four.
48:03
SPEAKER_00: Review your equipment and supplies.
48:06
SPEAKER_00: Ask yourself, is our equipment professional, safe, and working properly?
48:11
SPEAKER_00: Are worn-out items replaced before they interfere with the work?
48:17
SPEAKER_00: Do employees have enough supplies to complete the scheduled job?
48:21
SPEAKER_00: Is there a process for reporting damage or missing equipment?
48:25
SPEAKER_00: Amazon Prime days.
48:26
SPEAKER_00: Are products labeled and used consistently?
48:30
SPEAKER_00: Are employees being forced to improvise because a company did not provide what was needed?
48:34
SPEAKER_00: Think of me in the coffee shop.
48:36
SPEAKER_00: MGM.
48:37
SPEAKER_00: Your team should not have to fight the equipment while delivering exceptional service.
48:42
SPEAKER_00: That's important.
48:43
SPEAKER_00: Step five, review the employee experience.
48:46
SPEAKER_00: This is probably should be at the top of the list right behind pricing.
48:48
SPEAKER_00: Are expectations clear?
48:51
SPEAKER_00: Are schedules communicated accurately on time?
48:54
SPEAKER_00: Are paychecks correct?
48:57
SPEAKER_00: Are policies applied consistently?
49:00
SPEAKER_00: Do employees know who has the authority to make any decision, some decisions, all decisions?
49:06
SPEAKER_00: Can they report a problem without being ignored or punished?
49:10
SPEAKER_00: Do we recognize excellent performance?
49:12
SPEAKER_00: Yes, we do.
49:13
SPEAKER_00: Are we creating an environment where good employees would want to stay?
49:18
SPEAKER_00: Your employee experience eventually becomes your customer experience.
49:22
SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
49:24
SPEAKER_00: Chaos travels.
49:26
SPEAKER_00: If an employee is confused, rash, unsupported, or resentful, the customer will eventually feel it.
49:32
SPEAKER_00: Step six, review your customer experience.
49:34
SPEAKER_00: Walk through the entire experience, the customer's point of view.
49:38
SPEAKER_00: If you have a portal, check that out.
49:41
SPEAKER_00: Is it easy to contact the company?
49:43
SPEAKER_00: Does someone answer the phone?
49:45
SPEAKER_00: Are calls and texts and emails answered within a reasonable amount of time?
49:50
SPEAKER_00: Are quotes clear?
49:52
SPEAKER_00: Does the customer understand exactly what is and is not included in their cleaning?
49:57
SPEAKER_00: Are arrival windows and expectations communicated clearly?
50:02
SPEAKER_00: Do the cleaners receive accurate information about the job?
50:07
SPEAKER_00: Does the invoice match the agreement?
50:10
SPEAKER_00: Is there a professional process for complaints, damages, and follow-up?
50:15
SPEAKER_00: The cleaning itself is the only part of the customer experience.
50:20
SPEAKER_00: Step seven.
50:21
SPEAKER_00: Review your systems.
50:22
SPEAKER_00: Ask yourself this.
50:24
SPEAKER_00: Are important procedures documented?
50:26
SPEAKER_00: I hope so.
50:27
SPEAKER_00: Are we relying on memory?
50:29
SPEAKER_00: Oh gosh, I hope not.
50:31
SPEAKER_00: Are customer preferences recorded somewhere the team can access?
50:36
SPEAKER_00: Do we have written procedures for cancellations?
50:38
SPEAKER_00: Lockouts, complaints, damages, payment collection, and quality control.
50:44
SPEAKER_00: Can the company function if the owner is unavailable for the day?
50:48
SPEAKER_00: Let me preface this.
50:50
SPEAKER_00: For those of you who don't know, a good friend of mine was in a horrible bus accident last Christmas.
50:58
SPEAKER_00: The accident was so bad that it killed his wife and his young daughter.
51:01
SPEAKER_00: Thankfully, he had a partner who was able to run the company while he was in a coma.
51:07
SPEAKER_00: So I'm telling you this not to scare you.
51:10
SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you that the situations like this can just pop in out of anywhere.
51:14
SPEAKER_00: And he had systems in place that his business was able to run without him.
51:17
SPEAKER_00: I actually honestly didn't even know if he was going to make it.
51:20
SPEAKER_00: And it's it's still to this day, I don't even know what the end result was.
51:24
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if there's a lawsuit, but 27 people died on that bus that day.
51:28
SPEAKER_00: A semi hit them head on while they were down in Mexico.
51:31
SPEAKER_00: It was a very unfortunate situation.
51:34
SPEAKER_00: When I say can the company function if the owner is unavailable for the day, the week, the month, period, long periods of time, make sure you have a contingency backup plan.
51:43
SPEAKER_00: And a five-star operation exists entirely inside the owner's head.
51:48
SPEAKER_00: So don't let it be what could have happened, right?
51:50
SPEAKER_00: And step eight, the owner absence test, that's a biggie.
51:54
SPEAKER_00: I guess I kind of jumped the dun gun.
51:56
SPEAKER_00: I was like, it's not there.
51:56
SPEAKER_00: I gotta put it in there.
51:58
SPEAKER_00: If I disappeared from the company for one week, would we still deliver the experience we advertise?
52:02
SPEAKER_00: Would estimates still go out?
52:04
SPEAKER_00: Would the schedule still function?
52:06
SPEAKER_00: Would employees know what to do, right?
52:08
SPEAKER_00: Giving them ownership.
52:09
SPEAKER_00: Would customers' concerns be handled?
52:12
SPEAKER_00: Would payments be collected?
52:14
SPEAKER_00: Would the cleaning quality remain consistent?
52:17
SPEAKER_00: That's a big one.
52:19
SPEAKER_00: If the answer is no, identify which part would fail first, pricing, scheduling, training, equipment, communication, systems, leadership.
52:33
SPEAKER_00: If that that answer actually tells you where your next investment needs to needs to be.
52:39
SPEAKER_00: So don't attempt to rebuild it all tomorrow.
52:42
SPEAKER_00: Take baby steps.
52:42
SPEAKER_00: Choose the weakest category, the easiest one, easy one for the win.
52:47
SPEAKER_00: Identify one practical improvement and take a step and jump off.
52:52
SPEAKER_00: Happy to answer questions.
52:54
SPEAKER_00: You guys take care.