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March to a Million #1: The Messy Middle · Cleaning Business Life

• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back, everybody.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: This is Shannon Miller, and I'm with Miss Jamie Runco of Cleaning Business Life.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: And we're starting a new segmented series called March to a Million.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: And we want to thank Miss Holly Moore from Maids and More for giving us this brilliant idea.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: We're just kind of taking the ball and running with it.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: And uh we wanted to give you what it's like to be in the messy middle and what it's like to start from scratch and what it's like to do like real life stuff.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, we talk about experiences, we both share a lot of stories, but we thought that we would just bring you guys along on this journey.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll be doing two of these a month for until the end of the year.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: And Jamie, why don't you fill us in on your take?
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, no problem.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because right now I am in the thick of it.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: We both thought this was a great idea.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I again, like Shannon just said, we got Holly Moore.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: I talked to her and it just clicked for me one day.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, that is almost every one of our dreams.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a million is not that far off.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: I know everybody's like, gosh, no, don't come at me.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you are still trying to get to a hundred thousand, but I remember what that looked like and how that was.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: So now I am over those humps, and now I want to show you what my messy, my messiness that I am in, and I want to take you guys super along with me and show you what has been working, what have you what I've been failing at, let me tell you, I've told Shannon we haven't even really talked because I've been just been too busy.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: So my no I have stepped into a completely season, different season not only in my life, but in my business.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: If you guys see me, I am dressed different.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Just my mind shift has stepped over to from just a cleaning business owner, and not just a cleaning business owner, but a cleaning business owner to I'm stepping into a role of a CEO.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: And am I scared?
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Fuck yes, I am.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: I am scared to death, but I know that there's so many people that have their hands in this helping me along the way, holding me accountable.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's no reason why we shouldn't fail.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: I might take a little longer to get to this March to a million, but it is starting to implement.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to show you guys some things like what we are working on.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: I literally have roadmaps that I am working on every season.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And for those that are just listening, these are law literally my above all cleaning comp.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: I forgot to tell you guys, I became an LLC.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yay! Okay, so that's one thing.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: So this month is August, and we're doing August Transition Command Center.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: I am transitioning and literally check marking things off of my own roadmap that I mapped out.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm messy.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm literally it looks it.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is my brain dump, but I'm actually, if you if you can see this, you can literally see that I'm starting to start scratching things off.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: But I also have a whiteboard that I want to share with you guys.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it's literally on a whiteboard that's facing me, that I see every day.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And these are just some of the things that I implement.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: And this is for obviously a to-do, but it's more for visualization as well.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's my motivation, it's my why.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's my gotta figure those things out.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And whenever you hear people say stuff like systems, and I never understood what the hell that meant.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, what systems?
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Or what about core values?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and hiring a base on that, you know, I was just like taking somebody else's core values and was like, there they are, that's good for me.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: No, I ended up revamping, redoing.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: We'll do another episode on something like that right now.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is just showing you guys the start of March to a million.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: But this is my whiteboard.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Can you see this?
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you're looking, I have our mission statement on there.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: I literally have March to a million, our growth engine.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: What I need to focus on every week, which is Monday, I am Mondays are commercial outreaches, go Tuesdays, Google Business Profile Day, uploading, reaching out to other business owners.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Wednesday is a referral and appreciation.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Thursday, I have a whole thing, and this might not look the same.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Don't stop.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get Thursday and Friday.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Thursday is education and building trust day.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Fridays is reviews and collaborations.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Saturday is job showcase.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's for Sarah.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: I have her a whole playbook book on what my vision is and how she can best implement that over on my business page.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I've literally given her, I've hired her, and she's taken it and ran as my all unwilling and unknowing, she's become my blogger and my SEO and me explaining stuff, and that is like the long-term goal.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so she has her own playbook.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Sunday is called Community Connection.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: I also have Marketing Sunday.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: The reason why I picked Sunday for marketing is there's only so many people in our area.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I'm very rural.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: And some of these groups will only allow you.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why I was like, well, we'll just get at it and just start going down the list.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing is, is I am still doing it all myself.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm implementing it, but I'm also I'm making so to my binders.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: How you came let let's finish up this little how you came up with your calendar of things to do.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: How did did you how did you conceptualize?
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: How did you come up with marketing Sundays in the thing for Sarah on Saturdays?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: What did you do?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: Did you just throw tickets in a hat and said I'm doing this to this day?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: No, actually it started because of Marketing Sunday.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, okay, I'm gonna call this Marketing Sunday.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, I was like, and I'm like, I I remember Holly, she told me that it was a bunch of micro plays.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: You have to set goals, right?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then you need to fill in, like, okay, how are we going to actually implement this and fill like how are we going to achieve that goal?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: So with that, I was like, you know what?
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: On Mondays, I reach out to five commercial companies.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Whether that's just like, hey, I you know, I find out who the person is that I need to email, and I email them introducing who I am.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Or I go to networking events.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: When is that whenever I can.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: I go to networking events whenever I can so that I can just talk to other business owners.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm looking into B and I.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: There is a new chapter here which are some people that I actually m uh mush well with versus another chapter and they've taken me under like their wing with open arms, and I'm just I haven't even had to pay for anything yet, so thank you for that.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: But that's how that all began.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I was just thinking when Holly told me you have to have a goal, and then you have to make how are you gonna achieve that goal?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I started laying out.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like, look at the amount of sticky notes that I have going around me.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: We have everything.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: I I got really serious about it.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: I just really got serious about it, and it all also started whenever I got this off it.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: The storefront, it changed everything for me.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: And and the storefront was a big step.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: I remember how apprehensive you were about everything that went along with it.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: But you had also been looking for quite some time for a brick and mortar because you wanted to get out of the storage unit, correct?
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: I and I I didn't even have a garage or a house to run it out of.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: I had to run it.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: We literally ran out of a storage unit for years.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: And there's nothing wrong with that.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: You start with a small storage unit and then expand it to a bigger one.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think you might have to get away from the city.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I tell you, but and I documented that too.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: If you look in past previous posts very long time ago, you'll see that I I documented and every step of the way has been exciting, a little nerve nerve-wracking.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna say this is a cakewalk because it definitely is not.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: And trying trying to get all of this out of your head and into something so that I'm not the only one doing this is really hard.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: So knowing when to delegate and offload, believe it or not, Chris.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Shout out to Chris.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: He is my employee, and um, he uh is actually he's right, he's like, let's grow it.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, I became one of my right-hand men.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: I am I am getting to where I need an office person.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: And and you're that was a first for you with Chris.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like before she just had had employees and they would come and go.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: And Chris is like, I want to partner with you, not as in partner and be a business partner.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: He wanted to help grow because he saw the potential of what Jamie was creating.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: No, and then and it was yeah, it was a great partnership, let's put it that way.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I never looked at and no offense, but it just more women dominated business, right?
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Not a whole lot, not a whole lot of people.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: I know that he gets a little bit of slack over at his job about being a male at above all cleaning.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, No, man, you don't get it.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: I do all the commercial stuff, so but whenever it comes to starting to think, okay, I can start delegating payroll.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Payroll is gonna be huge.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's probably one of the more easier things right now that is to learn.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I just he sees the potential in it.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: And he he wants to grow with it and grow he wants to help grow this business.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: And they all do, all of my employees do.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's I believe that's one of my core values.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: If you know you you want to grow, you want to not just grow this business, but you want to grow as a person and an individual.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because if not, then I just don't have, I don't have, we're not the right fit for you, right?
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I I think it's awesome because in the past she she only legitimately didn't have anyone who was interested in helping her grow.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I think Chris is really gonna take the commercial aspect of her business and build it into bigger than it already is.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: And you can see the path because Jamie is really rural.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: There's opportunity in other markets.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna, you know, she's gonna expand probably in 2027.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm guessing.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just we had talked about it in the past.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not throwing it, I don't want to throw you underneath the bus when I say, well, she's gonna do this, and you know, I'm not ready to do that.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: But um, I'm gonna do it.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: No, yeah.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: Then there's pressure, right?
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: I have to dice it on the podcast.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: So there's those types of moments, and and there's a lot of things.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of structure that Jamie put in place.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: She had structure, but she outgrew the structure.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: So now she's making more structure.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: And this time that structure is getting it out of her head and onto a physical entity, whether it's and or digital, and on paper, everybody is using AI for those tools.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: So hopefully you are too.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then you're starting to format things so that you have what happens when it snows and we're on a two-hour delay.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: What does my cleaning tech do if they're going to be late?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: What happens if I get a flat tire?
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: What happens if we find a dead body?
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: We talked about that in a podcast episode down in Phoenix.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of what what to do if this, what to do if that.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it's because we've kind of come across these little things and we're starting to get them and make them into SOPs.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: I spoke to another person who's also in the messy middle as well.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: And it's always exciting for me to see everyone grow.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's just, it's, I feel privileged to be part of the process.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you're a huge part of the process.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, this is absolutely huge.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure that you resonate with so many people out there because you've been here.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: You've been a million-dollar cleaning company.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: You've been there and didn't you didn't you sell and then you got into this?
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and so timing is all relative.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: You have to look about, you know, when someone first and I had an unusual selling experience.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's not the traditional thing that everyone does now, but you have to remember the the I was in a different place in my life.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: My brother was dying from early onset Parkinson's.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: I had a lot going on personally.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: I had had the theft of$372,000 from a five-year employee and my own cousin.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: I had a lot of things in the air.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: And when the person approached me, and we won't get into all the nitty-gritty parts.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'll probably do a whole episode just on this.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: But that when that person approached me, I just started laughing.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: I hung up the phone on him.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: I was just like, screw off.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not interested.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: Blood, sweat and tears here.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not interested in the penny, your your paltry offer.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: When you come up with some real money, let me know.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it took like four or five offers.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then I was like, you know, my brother was dying.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, I just needed to have some relief from something.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: Upload.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I I wanted to be there in the end with him, and that's what my mom and I were there for.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: At the very end, I we were with him.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't get to be with him at the very, very end, obviously, because they put him in the puff.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: So he was contained in the unit.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I the psych ward, and then they pumped him full of drugs and he passed.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, it just was an interesting selling experience compared to others.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: And the selling experience is more frequent now.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: We just talked to someone in an interview who is doing a lot of acquisition.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: I spoke to another person, I believe, last week, who also does a lot of acquisition, both on separate coasts.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I see that this is how people are going to start to grow as well.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe we have a whole episode on acquisition and what that's like.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a great idea, too.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think I am very interested in that.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because everybody, every place, every area, you guys, we hear it all the time.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Every every place is saturated with people coming out of the woodwork and charging$15 for a whole house or something, or you know, it's uh there it's everywhere.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just specific to your area.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: I hear it a lot too about hiring.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Never hire again.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: You you can't you can only take on so much.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: You're stuck at 50 clients and that's really pushing it.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you if you can get 50 clients for yourself and your business, awesome.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: But I didn't want to be stuck like that.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the second that I got into here, I knew instantly, I was like, there is something to this, and I think I want to be big.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: And you just I I don't know, as we've grown through with this through the podcast, it just kind of morphed into well, let's just showcase of my wins and losses in real time while you know Shannon was coaching me.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: And and then we weren't she wasn't, and then we just became really like business besties.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we work really well together, and we it's because I can talk to she's my tribe, so I can talk to somebody constantly and bounce idles off of, and she never tells me oh that's silly or whatever.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: I do say no a lot.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: No, I well, she'll steer the direction, don't say no, but she does steer the direction and like well maybe this way.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: You can do what you want, but I wouldn't do it.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: I do it this way, so yeah, yeah.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: So and I I made a post maybe a week or two ago talking about build your business or build your systems for your business for tomorrow.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: Meaning build your do it now.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: Do it right now.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: Don't wait till you're years down the road like I am, where you're steering the plane and trying to build it as you're up in the the air right now, flying this plane, and you're like, here, let's patch this, let's patch that.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: I really had to slow down and start building this differently, brick by brick.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: And and made some hard, some hard decisions, not decisions, but I did a lot of hard talks with my team.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: Right here is like a mandatory meeting list that I had to go over.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: And but I have my team also buying into this idea.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you have to have the buy-in from everybody, whether you think you do or not.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: The only way to be successful is to have your tribe and collaborate with others, and it's super important that you surround yourself with your circle of influence, whoever that is.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: And everybody has a different circle of influence, and then that circle of influence actually changes over time.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: Then, you know, the circle of influence becomes a different circle of influence, right?
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so those are the dynamics of what you should be thinking about if you really want to grow and scale.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't want to grow and scale, I still love you.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: Jamie still loves you.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't bother us either way, what you decide to do, because this industry, as you know, and I've spoken about this 101 times.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: I guess I'll talk about it a little bit more.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody is stepping into the cleaning industry because it's a low threshold of buy-in and they think it's going to be easy.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: And we were just interviewing someone, and he was reminding us that 52% of the cleaning business owners that start off fail within the first, what did he say?
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: Five years?
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: Five years.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: First five years.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: So you want to be you don't want to be a statistic, you want to be the person who's expecting.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: So we thought it would be great to share our insights on the March to a million to get Jamie up to a million dollars.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of little baby steps we're gonna start to implement that you're gonna hear about.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm super excited to share with you.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the timing's right on this one.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it just became a s I it's I don't know what happened.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: There was a shift in my mind.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't know.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: I I really there was never one moment where it was like, oh, there it was.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: It was little bitty steps.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I think if I look back on it, I really believe it's whenever I got this office, and it was like I got excited.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's changed her immensely.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: I am drooling like fangs coming out, like I got this.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh totally different season in business in my life.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I'm so I'm an open book.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_02: To a point.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_02: To a point, right?
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: So you didn't want to hear about the journey stuff.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, well, I I did, I paid a lot of money to be able to get here.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that is it's the money is the money that I put out for this, it has come back to me times three.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Times three.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Every every time, and it's something that I believe that I will always have.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: Whether it's the same person or not, I don't know.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: But there's nothing wrong with that.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and there's nothing wrong with that either.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's I just you know, uh, there you all once you get that that mindset of especially with coaching and realize how much it helps, how much it it makes you into a room with your people and you can talk about these kinds of things with other people that are going through the same thing that you are right then and there in your business.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: It is I'll I don't think I'll ever not have a coach.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it and just for different areas too, you know, definitely different areas.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I have found that, and we see this a lot in our industry, and we see it in other industries, it's people talk about when they made it, right?
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: They don't say anything and they're like, I'm successful, and then you know, then they come all over social media and like I'm successful, and they show like all this thing, but they don't they don't show you the messy middle.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we're gonna show you in this series, is all of the like twists and turns and the ups and downs, and like my gosh, I blundered it, or this was we pivoted this way because we learned this type of thing.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of success stories were edited after the fact.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: They they're the timeline changes, they don't tell you all the nitty-gritty stuff.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: And we're gonna we're gonna tell you and we're gonna share with you all the nitty-gritty.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, I'm gonna tell you just this past the past two days.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: Not today, but as soon as we get off of this, I am right back at it.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: The past two days have been, I mentally I'm spent.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I told Erica, Erica Painter with my virtual bookkeeper, or my VB, whatever.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think so.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think you're right.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, my VB, I my VBK.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: She has an interview in the in the podcast.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: You guys can look her up.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yes.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: I actually hired her from that just as my bookkeeper, but now she is more like a CFO, a fractal CFO coach with some mapping, and we're implementing so much because I didn't understand my numbers.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't I did not understand what KPIs and what I needed to be tracking.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: And you guys, there's a lot to track.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the past two days, back to my story.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: The past two days, I have been knee deep, neck deep in doing a huge monumental change from a personal like my local bank.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: I am changing over to banks the whole business using the profit first method.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: And you made a huge transition, and it was scary.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: I made sure.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: I was looking at all these accounts.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: I was I it's very scary to somebody has like you you feel like you're blindfolded and you're like, I'm trusting you with everything right now.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trusting, and I keep telling Erica, I'm really trusting the process.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: She said, Trust the process.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: I promise you, trust the process.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to get emotional.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, but the last with changing banks, you know, you gotta change everything.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: All those auto pays and things that you forgot about the subscriptions, things bouncing, resign these documents, doc you sign.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, this everything isn't uploading correctly.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: And am I forgetting anything?
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: Am I forgetting anything?
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just I wanted to throw my phone because while that's going on, you still have I still have a company to run.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: I still have clients that want services, I still have employees calling me, you know.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: I have all that still every day doing a check-in.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to throw my phone yesterday, and I told her I was I was absolutely mentally spent.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: This was two o'clock in the afternoon.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I'm done for today.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: And she goes, you know what?
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: Walk away.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: We'll talk, we'll talk tomorrow.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: Small setbacks can feel huge too when you're going through the messy middle.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: Really, really messy.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: I you you I remember in the beginning whenever we were working together, Shannon, that I always felt like I was up in New York on a tight wire, trying to cross all these huge buildings with this pole holding, and it's like, please don't look down, and you're balancing and you have some wind blowing, and you're trying to maintain your balance walking across that tight tight rope.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of how it feels a little bit, a little bit, but it's so much more confidence.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: Even though it's hard, it's like I know this is gonna pay off in about six months.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: This I'm gonna see some sort of result.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it don't feel like it right now, but if I keep working it, I'm trusting the process, I'm trusting the amount of people that are holding me accountable and and they're not telling me what to do or how to do it.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: I at the end of the day am making the decisions and I am implementing what I'm learning, and that's huge.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people take in the information and they just sit there with it.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: We call it analysis paralysis.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: You'll analyze it over and over and you never implemented it.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta stop.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: Don't read another book, don't listen to another podcast.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: What you have learned, stop and take it and implement it.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: The little golden nuggets that you got out of each thing.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, you just get kind of stuck implementing or not implementing.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I think a lot of people talk about experimentation.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: You get to a certain point in your business, and it's like the wild, wild west in a little bit of a way, where like you're experimenting.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, well, this worked, and then you had to tweak it, and then it no longer works.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: But if you add in this third piece over here, now it works again.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: And there's this constant tweaking that we do as entrepreneurs and cleaning business owners that are necessary as our industry grows and evolves.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: For example, with the podcast growth, we we've changed our cover.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: You no longer see Jamie and and me.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: We see, you know, a goal to 150k downloads.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: And that's been a goal of ours for a while.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: Hopefully, we'll make it by the end of the year.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'm pretty sure I looked at the numbers the other day.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: It looks like we're right on track.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: So and it's amazing to me to think that we just took this little conversation that we're having, and now, you know, we have this.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: We have 400 and I think it was like eight, four hundred and four thousand eight hundred and like twenty four different cities all over the world have listened to the podcast.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: We have, I don't know how many different towns and countries.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: There's anywhere from a like 190 different countries have all plugged in to the Cleaning Business Life podcast.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, wow.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: And you guys, thank you.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much from the bottom of our hearts.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: That guy We see you.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it it it fuels me.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, okay, maybe at first I thought nobody would be interested in anything that I was saying, especially in the beginning, whenever I just go off on my tangents and and talk, but it it worked.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: And and you've you've probably watched me evolve a little bit and and got a little more not so much a squirrel, and I you know, off to the race as I go.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: But thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that if you guys find some value of it, continue to share this with people so that it can reach more cleaning business owners.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: What what is the quote about holding something, holding the information to yourself?
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: Gatekeeping?
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, more like gatekeeping.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: Don't don't gatekeep.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's enough room for every one of us.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: I I I was looking at the statistics there's for cleaning businesses in my area.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: Again, right?
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's a couple of us.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: There's a couple there's one that I know for sure that's doing well over a million dollars in my rural area, plus all the micros.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: Plus me plus I know other bigger businesses than I am.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: We're all making the m we're we're doing it.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: There's so there's enough to go around.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I'm trying to say.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: There's enough to go around.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's fantastic that your area, as excluded as it is from the rest of the population, is still able to incrementally increase and provide jobs for people.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so that tells you if if Jamie can do it in her market, you guys can do it as well.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: We often hear when we're talking to people, I can't do that.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: I live in a small town.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: We both live in a small town.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: Jamie is just has less of a population than I do because my town and area has has grown exponentially since COVID.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: So we don't really have all the answers to everything, but we thought it would be fun to invite you guys along and experience a lot of our wins, maybe some blunders, more of our wins.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: How funny we have our wins and blunders, and and and some of the predictions will be wrong, I would imagine.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: Some of us, um, some of it were gonna be like, yeah.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then we do it, and we're like, oh, that was bad.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: We might be backpedaling a couple of times, but like this is live.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: But that's the whole point of the March to Millions.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: It it's and that's what we refer to when we're talking about the messy middle, because Jamie's in the messy middle.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm working on a large project, which I we will talk about on another episode.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then we have to ask yourself, well, what would happen if everything worked?
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: If what if my crazy idea was right?
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_01: What how could you not want to to make it right?
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: How everybody's in the cleaning industry, there's so many different types.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I was thinking about the other day, and my gosh, there's remote models.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think of Chris Schwab and how he ran out of it way before anybody else.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: He operated out of Japan.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, I'm in love with this woman, I am out of here.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: She lives in Japan.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: He left.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: And still, it ran by itself.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what isn't it, Maryland or DC?
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: I can't remember.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: Chris, you'll have to remind me we'll have to reconnect.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, there's there's a just a there's a lot of things that can create a lot more possibilities for you to create assets so that you have the income to provide yourself with financial freedom in the cleaning industry.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: And we don't want you guys to miss out because you got frustrated or someone gave you misinformation and now you don't feel like you can move forward.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: When we're we all make mistakes, trust me, my mistakes are just bigger because I experiment more, I've done a lot of things, things that works, things that didn't work.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've had a lot of things happen to me.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I have so many stories.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: But that's why we wanted to invite you to what this is for yeah, I'm excited.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited to share Yeah, the the past I don't know, this has been going on for the past couple of months now.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: I I guess whenever I first started talking to Holly about it.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: And she's kinda the little cheerleader in the back of the he got this, he got this.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: She'll she'll drop a message every now and again.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for that, Holly.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: If you ever listen to this, she's probably really busy with clean con right now.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: And we appreciate Holly.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: I have never met a more humble individual in this industry, and I absolutely love how gracious she was with her information and how they how they took the time to actually give us all the info, not once, but twice in a short amount of time.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: By the way, can you do this?
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: The most down-to-earth person ever.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and she just still she checks in on she checks in on me, you guys.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's what blows my mind.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: And and just like you said, just a very down-to-earth person.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: So there will be a little bit of a difference between cleaning business life.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll still have the same format, we'll still do the same Halloween stories, we'll still do the case studies and the interviews with industry leaders, but we're really excited to have this March to a million and you get to see it in real life.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: So cleaning business life is going to be mostly teaching, frameworks, lessons already learned, and then March to a million will be decisions in real time, honest, real, honest conversations, no guarantee of success and behind the scenes of building.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: That way, when you're listening and you're not working, you can go, well, I think that would work for my business.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: And if you have a success, reach out.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_01: We'd love to hear.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: If you had a blender and say, I don't think it would work this way, but I think it would work that way.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_01: We want to hear.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: We're always available to hear insight in the industry because it's always interesting to see where we're going.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's huge.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think they estimate that the cleaning industry alone in the next years, what was it,$587 million or something like that?
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: It was a lot.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lot.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: It was it's a lot.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lot.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: So again, it's a lot of room for growth, a lot of room for there's just a lot of room in this area.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna share our wins, our mistakes, or pivots from the mistakes.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: I know there's a better word than mistakes that I just can't articulate at the moment.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: Strategy sessions that we've done, big decisions, or not big decisions, financial milestones if we make them, unexpected problems, celebrations.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, we all we want to always celebrate, and then some honest conversations.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: Manufactured drama.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not about drama at all.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: Neither is Janie.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: No, I don't we don't have time for it.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm literally working on uh it's too much, too much for for any drama.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I'm excited for it.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm excited too.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: So if you've ever wished you could watch someone build a business before they became successful, you have to tune in to these two episodes.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: March 2 million.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: I can't wait to see what Jamie does with this.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll fill you guys in on more information as it comes along.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for tuning in.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, guys.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: Bye.
• 40:56
  unknown: Bye.