Latest / Cleaning Business Life / From Chaos to Profit | Inside the Structure, Scale & Profit Cleaning Business Academy Ep. 220

Transcript

From Chaos to Profit | Inside the Structure, Scale & Profit Cleaning Business Academy Ep. 220 · Cleaning Business Life

• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Hello everyone! This is Shannon Miller with Cleaning Business Life.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't check to see if the mic was on all the way.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: Oops.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to come out here because we have some things coming up in the very near future and talk a little bit about the Structure Scale and Profit Cleaning Business Academy.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: For those of you who don't know, you can find it right on my website, and that is Clean Freaks University.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's Clean with a K.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: So that's K-L-E-A-N-I-N-G freaks, F-R-E-A-K-S University.com.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I wanted to talk, excuse me, about the Structure, Scale and Profit Cleaning Business Academy.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: It is my signature program.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: It actually grew and expanded this last year.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: So it used to be a 12-week program and it's actually 180 days, so six months.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I created it because we needed to have some structure.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: There wasn't anything around that was being offered.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I learned by doing, right?
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: I've been in the industry 16 years.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: I made a lot of mistakes, as you guys have all heard me talk about.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: And to date, we've had over 600 cleaning business owners go through the program since its inception.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: And the best part is that you're adding the structure in and you're putting all of the pieces together of the puzzle.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: But unlike a lot of other courses that require you to take a quiz, I just have assignments and and or an exam at the end.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't want when you're chunking away at changing the business that you have created, there's a lot of changes that have to happen internally.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: There's mindset, there's structural changes, there's employee changes, there's customer changes, there's all of this change.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: And the last thing I felt that you should have to do with all the change that you're going to be implementing.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: Here, let me adjust this here.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: We can see the mess in the back.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: Got some stuff I'm giving away on Facebook for free.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh is that it's important for you to get that structure and get it all together.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so basically the the structure is implementation and not memorization.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: If I mean I could have easily created like a whole structured course on memorization, like with the real estate license, you need to learn 600 and what is it, 640 different words.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: And the real estate industry is notorious for having acronyms for every phase that they have.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's a whole thing.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh my God.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: So just something to think about.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: It is a focus on implementation.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I created it because I wanted to help the industry.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: I want to see we're in the perfect time to be in this industry.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: You guys have all heard me talk about how I think that the cleaning industry is the 23rd trade.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: This is the first opportunity that we as women entrepreneurs have an opportunity to create wealth and to create legacy and to create assets that help generate other sources of income.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: And you can do that right here in the cleaning industry.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's never been present like it has been until now, the last like three or four years, maybe five years since COVID.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I believe that's six years.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: It went by fast.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to give everyone the structure that they needed to get up and going.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: And this is there's a lot of pressure with a lot of people's programs.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: They want you to do a certain thing.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: I want you to create whatever you want to create that works for you in the moment that you're in.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: Do I want to see every single one of you have a seven or eight or nine-figure business?
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: I totally want to see that.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: But only if you want to do it.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: Just because you don't want to have an eight-figure business or a nine-figure business doesn't mean that you're any less than.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: It just means that you're in a different point in your life and it's just not, it's not what you're looking for.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Some people want to buy a truck, other people want to buy a house, some people want a vacation.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: It just depends on what your ideal goals are.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: But creating legacy and creating assets that generate more income is my passion.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: I totally love that for every single one of us.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I also wanted to help change the industry by creating some standardized pricing, by creating some standardized processes with customers, by onboarding cleaning techs.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: If we can just square down the upstart cost of what it costs to actually hire and then what it costs to train.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I would imagine in the next five years, with the help of AI, that'll actually shrink even more.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's been interesting to watch.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: It used to be that we did training one-on-one.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: Now we do some virtual, some one-on-one.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we do them in groups, which is actually the most efficient thing to do.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm working on a really big project for 2027.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see if I'll be able to pull it out of my butt next year.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a lot of reasons why it's 180 days now.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: And let's be honest, transformation doesn't happen in a weekend.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: There are some things that you can condense and go to and get it over with in a weekend, but there's a lot of implementation and follow-up after.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to make sure that you guys understood who the program's for and who it's not.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: And people have asked me, you know, would you consider doing a weekend boot camp?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm I might consider it, I just have to finish this large project and it might be on the schedule for 2028, 2027.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm rushing, rushing the date.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I have found that it's paced.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: So with the Structure, Scale and Profit Cleaning Business Academy, one module a week is usually released.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: And each module has several lessons.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: Some modules have dozens of lessons.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason for that is because I if I release it to you guys all at once, I found that most everybody, 99% of you, will get overwhelmed and not do anything because it's just daunting.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: So if you release it once a week, it's a goal, it just cycles through, and once a week it releases a new module.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: And some of these lessons took me years and thousands of dollars to figure out.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: I just trial and error, you know, you know, Miss Shannon.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: So there are a lot of systems and processes inside of the structure, scale, and process, scale, and profit cleaning business academy.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: There's a system for onboarding clients, there's a system for onboarding cleaning techs, there is a training system for cleaning techs.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: There is, I don't remember if the working interview is in there or not.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'll have to actually look.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: There's client boundaries, payment systems, CRM, there's marketing, documentation, capacity management to see where you are, if you can take on any more cleaning techs versus more clients.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to get that ratio just right when you're new.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I came from a huge management background.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was in management for over 20 years.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I had a lot of hiring structure in there because I dealt with hundreds of employees.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: When I worked for TGI Fridays, I had the whole front of the house.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: I was the assistant general manager.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I had a lot of HR experience.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: So when I transitioned from the restaurant industry into retail, that served me well.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then from retail, I went to the cleaning industry.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: For those of you who don't know, I actually have I'm a silversmith by trade.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely still love to putz around and make really cool pieces of jewelry.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: It took me about five years to get my certificate.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I I love, I love beating on silver.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: I love putting things together.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: I love sewing silver together.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't gotten an opportunity to work with much gold or platinum.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: Still like all of the metals, but I had that background, right?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so the systems, I ran a really smooth running ship.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: So when cleaning techs would come to me who had worked for other cleaning companies, the first thing they would say is, like, wow, this is the smoothest run, the smoothest running cleaning business I've ever worked for.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, thank you.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: That I took a lot, I take a lot of pride in running a smooth running ship because no one comes to you and says, Hey, I'm looking for that trial by fire.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: Can you give that to me today?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: No one, no one says, I want this.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: You're absolutely like, how many people are guilty of taking a brand new employee on a deep cleaning?
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: How many people realize eight weeks in that they're still detailing all of the deep cleaning items in a regular maintenance cleaning?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the reason why they're burning through an hour and a half extra on every single house.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: Learn that the hard way, right?
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: So my business did have a lot of structure, but I had to have a lot of trial and error to get the structure working just right.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: And as our industry bumps along and changes happen, those structures also need to change, right?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Things have to be tweaked.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Anytime we have like a blender in the road, we kind of reanalyze and then we put it out and we test, and then we test some more.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, this works great.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then it goes on for months and months and months, and then another blender happens.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's just the way it is.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's tweaking as you go.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think the number one system that I had that took a lot of practice was the customer aspect of it because people pleaser anonymous, right here.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: I was just talking to someone about that yesterday.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know who you are.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: And most of us, I would say like 85% of us are people pleasers.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: We most of us are women, and I'm not saying the guys aren't people pleasers too, but most of us are women and we're societally groomed to people please.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: We are the caregivers, we are the person who is the support system usually.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so we want to, when you see us cleaning, this is why you see so many people.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Any cleaning business owner, if if they're still out in the field and you look through their photos, it's all toilets.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I know you guys are out there, it's all showers, right?
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: Or all mirrors or all chandeliers.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it's mostly toilets.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: So you you know what I'm talking about when you're doing those things.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: So those systems really did make an impact because it prevented a lot of blundering from happening.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, that move out cleaning contract that I have in the con, I think it's contract and clarity bundle.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: I can put the link down in the show notes description.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: That move out cleaning contract has been used almost 20,000 times.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: It has been to court several dozens of times, and I have won every single time.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason for that is because I implemented a system in place to make sure that I don't get stepped on, because the probability of having someone screw you over on anything in the cleaning industry is usually nine times out of 10, it's going to be a one-time cleaning.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: So when you have the contract and you're utilizing the documentation, whether you give it digitally or by hand, makes life easier.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: It makes things faster for you.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: It gives you a security backup.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I always say 50% deposit on the day of booking secures your spot on my schedule.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: There's a reason for that.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: I can't tell you how many times I got screwed over and I was like, they go, oh, well, I found it cheaper and I'm not gonna need you anymore.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: And you already have your crew of four ready to go, right?
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: You spent 45 minutes organizing, got everything packed, everyone has all the gears, there's the prep involved, the checklist.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: All that stuff and they go, oh, sorry, we found someone cheaper, they're gonna do it for 200 bucks or whatever it is.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, yeah, okay.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: But those are the things that made it better for me.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's it prevented me from having nightmare experiences with clients who were looking to take advantage of me as a cleaning business owner.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it's you got the label right here.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: You don't mean to, but you're you want a people please.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: You you take undue risks when you shouldn't have to, right?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: We're a trade just like everybody else.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: When you go and order a contractor, not order, but hire a contractor, you're giving out usually a percentage of the job as a deposit, and then they're doing weekly draws against what you what they owe you.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: You owe them.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: So sorry, I got that all backwards.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's probably the number one thing for me for most of the employee thing, because I had such a huge employee background.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of things that are new for us as an industry, like how to hire someone, how to fire someone, how to document someone, how to do a working interview, how to validate that this person is gonna make it through training and when to cut them off and say that you know what, you're not a good fit.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's physically demanding, as we all know.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then a lot of the mistakes that I see when they don't have a system is they have nightmare experiences.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: There's been a couple of you, I'm gonna be honest.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: You called me at the blue, we got on the phone, I didn't charge you for the call, and I was a little firm.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: One of you, I was more than firm because you knew better.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: And you had been through the program, but you still didn't follow the program.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: And eventually we ended up getting your money back from someone who clearly was taking advantage of the situation, but this person left themselves open.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: So when you follow the protocols and you do all of the work, it leaves less openings for people to step in and overtake and overstep and don't have those boundaries.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: And and some people confuse chaos with productivity.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then it becomes you get so used to the chaos that you don't see that things are not running smoothly until you have someone go, oh my god, this is the most smoothest running cleaning business I have ever worked for, right?
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, oh, thanks, right?
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: And scaling means a lot of things.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: There's a financial attribute to it.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: It used to be that, you know, seven figures was the ooh, I did seven figures.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's five million, and that's gonna be like almost standard.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'm seeing a lot of businesses do 8 million, 10 million, 12 million.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: I talked to a business owner who did 11.5 million.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: I did another business owner who I spoke with there, did 17 million.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: They're forecast to hit 21 million by the end of the year.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's just amazing to me how much this industry has grown and it's leadership.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you eventually can step out and be an absentee owner, but there's a process that you have to take to get there, right?
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: There's lavish communication.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: There's so much communication that is involved in the cleaning industry.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: It blows my mind sometimes how many avenues of communication we have to have now, where in the old-fashioned days, you just voila, you had the phone and you had the email, and maybe you got a text message.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: Now you have Slack or WeApp or WhatsApp.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh, there's so many of them now.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's like 54 different ways of communication on top of all of the normal stuff, right?
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: Then there's delegation and then there's expansion, whether to have an office, not have an office, whether your crew operates from the office or whether your crew operates remotely from their home, which is the best business model because you're saving thousands on each one for mileage.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, figuring out whether you have to pay from the time that they start to the time that they end depends on what kind of team you pick, right?
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're working, if you pick solo the solo method, which is the most profitable method, there's a difference when you're running teams of three.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: Teams of three all have to be driven around the same vehicle.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: So then you would pay by the day versus the hour.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: I hope that kind of makes sense for you guys who are wondering.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then a lot of people come to me and they and I see it at least five times a week.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: I want to hire, but I don't know what to do.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's the a fear of hiring of I they'll never clean like me and they never will.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: But you can make everything just like McDonald's.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: And the hypothesis behind the McDonald's theory is that every single person in McDonald's can work every other single person's job inside of McDonald's.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody's cross-trained, so they all have the same training, they all get the same results.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: There are millions, I don't know if there's millions, but there's hundreds of thousands of McDonald's throughout the world, and they all run the same, every single one of them.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that is a system.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then I see a lot of people making mistakes when they hire a team.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: I can't tell you how many times, and I have some blunders, trust me, I have shared some of them.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: When they make a mistake hiring, you make an emotional decision on hiring someone because you feel sorry for them, because you're gonna scoop them in and you're gonna be the people pleaser, and you're gonna be like, it's okay, and you're gonna burp them, change their diaper, and they're gonna be like, oh my God, I'm gonna save this person.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: When in reality, that should have been a flat no exclamation point.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like you shouldn't have taken them on.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: They had too much chaos going on in their life, they're not ever gonna be a good employee, they thrive on the chaos.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of things that can happen when you have a bad hire.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: Then in some states, you can't do certain things anymore.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: So there's that element to it.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of people assume that when they scale, if they don't have the structure that everything's gonna be, you know, bubblegum and spit together.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's that's not the case.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: You can see the difference between a really good, smooth running ship versus a cleaning company that has perpetual chaos, they don't have enough supplies.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: I worked for the MGM restaurant in Las Vegas.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: If you guys have ever been there, at the time, and this was many years ago, I worked in the diner.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: It sat 691 people.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: I never could figure out why they put 691 people, but they did.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it was taken over, they contracted it out with another company.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I ended up working for that company, not the actual MGM structure.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a company based out of New York, and it was a large restaurant, as I just mentioned, 691 people.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it was the worst run restaurant I had ever worked for.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: And as a matter of fact, that was the restaurant that I worked for where someone was murdered inside the office.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: I believe I've shared that story.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: You can look at one of the other podcasts to get all the details.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna cover it here.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: But it was not set up good.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I've worked for a lot of restaurants.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: I worked in the restaurant industry for 22 years, and there were good restaurants and there were awful restaurants.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: But this particular restaurant I'm giving the example of, they had it was breakfast and lunch, primarily what they're known for.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: And they had saucers in one, they had three busser stations.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: They had saucers in one location, coffee mugs in another location, and spoons in another location.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: You could never get them all in the same area to make it efficient.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: And the the kitchen was far away.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: They had an actual conveyor belt for the dirty dishes.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: And you would just like sometimes I peek in there and look down the conveyor belt.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I hope that stuff doesn't fall off.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then you would see the dishwasher at the end of the tunnel.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, and they would be back there.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: There were two of them sometimes just squirting away, doing their thing as they slid it through.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it was really loud back there.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then you get to a point too in your business where you realize that having more kind of more clients doesn't necessarily mean that you're gonna make more money.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: If you have a lot of low-paying clients, you're not gonna, you're just gonna work more.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna spin your wheels more than if you had a lot of average paying clients.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: You don't really want the top-tier clients because that's the first thing people come to me for.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm guilty of it myself.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: I want to go over into the subdivision that has all the$10 million homes.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: Those guys are usually house poor and they're not gonna hire a company per se.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying it doesn't happen because it has, but they're not gonna hire a cleaning company to come clean their home.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's just not some because they're house poor.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: So you want the people, and what I look for, and I will tell I've told this, I don't know, a thousand and one times.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'll just tell it one more time.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: I like to look for people who are empty nesters.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I live in a small town, so there's usually him and her that either work the business together or they both have their own businesses, and neither one of them wants to spend the time maintaining anything.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: They usually have 2.5 dogs and no kids living at home.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: The kids will come home over the holidays.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: Those are the perfect clients.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we look for.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: Before COVID, we catered to the retired community.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, COVID made people afraid of a lot of things, and that was okay.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: But when you have a senior base that is 80% of your clientele and they're all afraid, and we have a pandemic, nobody wants you to come and clean.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: So we had to pivot, right?
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then what profit really means is having the money to seize an opportunity when it lands in your lab.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Labor percentages in the last three years have gone up 5.83%.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to make sure to be competitive with what everyone else is offering, you need to offer a livable wage.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that's different in every place, obviously, dependent on the cost of living.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: But when I hear that you are only paying$12 an hour because the federal minimum wage is seven, that's not a livable wage and no one's gonna hang around.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: You're just gonna burn all of your training dollars right out the window.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: You might as well just take a fire, start the fire, throw cash on the fire.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: Just watch it burn because you're not going to get anyone to stay at those wages.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: Or you're going to get a job to supplement your cleaning business that isn't operating efficiently and you can't figure out why.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: There's payroll taxes, there's hidden costs, there's equipment overhead and sustainability.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: And how you sustain yourself in your first year while you're trying to transition out, if that is the route that you took when you built your business, is you've got to have systems in place that are operating efficiently.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to have a good system for hiring.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: You have to have a good system on onboarding your clients.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: You have to have an onboard, you have to have a payment system.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: You have to have what kind of system do I have if I get a charge back?
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: What do I do if I come to a place and someone has passed away?
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: These are all like, what do I do if I get a flat tire on the way to a client's house?
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: What do I do if I'm running more than the hour and a half window that we have given the person?
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, what do I do if it snows and blizzards?
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: Or what do I do if I get a micro burst?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: These are all questions that you need to laundry list and get those SOPs out there, right?
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: What do I do if someone's accused of theft?
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: What steps do I take to file an insurance claim?
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: What does my workman's comp cover?
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: What does my general liability insurance cover?
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: Why do I have marine insurance?
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's a good one to know.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason why you have marine insurance is more than likely all of your equipment is insured.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's how they blanket cover your equipment for the house cleaning industry.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: And there were some hidden costs when I first had workmen's comp.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't call it hidden costs anymore, but I was surprised because I didn't know the first year I had workmen's comp.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think that was probably year two or three.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even remember.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's been a while.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: Is the audit, right?
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody goes, oh, it's it's always a shocker to have someone go, my workmen's comp went up.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: I don't understand.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't had a claim.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: Your workman's comp is based on your gross numbers.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: So every time you grow, your workman's comp insurance needs to grow with it.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: So just something to think about.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: So your revenue pays your bills, but profit buys you options.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: You want to make sure that you're keeping your options open and you don't know what those options are unless you have systems in place.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: Do I need a bookkeeper?
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, you do.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: Do I need an accountant?
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I do.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: What's the difference between a bookkeeper and accountant?
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: One deals with tax, one deals with your books, right?
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: Then there's a certified public accountant.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: Then there's, you know, the reason why they're certified is because they went and had they had more education.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: So they should act technically be better, but that's not always the case.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: So you're probably wondering what 600 cleaning business owners have taught me out of all of this craziness, out of all of this teaching.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: And just know that you get a whole year of access with this course.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: So 12 months.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: It gives you 12 months to access it.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: And there is a monthly Q ⁇ A session that usually happens on a Saturday.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: I usually don't kick anyone out of that group.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: I probably should.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what I'll do next year.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're in the pro if you were in the program from two years ago and you had a question that came up, there is a private group and that you can be inside that group and you can ask a question, and more than likely you'll get direct contact with me or any of the other people who are students for the structure scale and profit business academy.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then I like the live Q ⁇ A's because sometimes things come up that aren't explained or they were explained, but that person doesn't understand.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: And it just makes it easier on everyone to have like contact, right?
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to just take a course and go, oh, well, I don't know, she's not going to answer my email, or I don't understand this, or the step to this, this makes sense, but not really.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: And the most successful students are the ones who actually implement.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at Jamie, who is actually the co-host of the show, when Jamie and I first met, and I it was like in the middle of COVID, I just kept giving out more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more free content.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: And every time Jamie caught me on a live in the group, she took notes.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: There were like 10 or 15 people who are all further along.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: Here we are, three, four years in, who took notes on everything I said, who applied everything I said.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: She just was like, oh my God, this is this totally makes sense.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: So those are always awesome to be part of those success stories.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: There are several people who went and implemented every single set thing I said in addition to the course.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: So that would be the main point of what they had in common.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: And usually the struggles that every single person has is the confidence of not being the people pleaser, right?
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: Learning to say no is probably the hardest thing for most of us as clean business owners because we want to people please.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I genuinely believe that our industry will hit a high, like the most it's ever done here, probably in the next year.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: I believe from what I read the other day, it was$593 million, is the industry right now for 2026.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what the estimated thing.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm guessing it's going to grow by 20%, but we're seeing everybody step into the cleaning industry.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: Grant Cardone actually, you can see advertisements on at least on my Facebook feed, along with all the dogs, right?
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: He's even, you know, stepping his toe into the cleaning industry.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, come on, you're in real estate.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: But people people still sign up, people still do it.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: So and and success for a lot of people isn't the same thing.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: That was probably the biggest surprise that I learned when I first started to work with people.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: Let me grab some water here.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: What I noticed is success is different for everyone.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: Not everybody wants to have a seven-figure business.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: Not everyone wants to deal with employees.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: Not everyone wants to have a$5 million business.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: Not everyone wants to be a remote cleaning business owner, believe it or not.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: So there are some of you, I've spoken to someone who is still out cleaning 27 years.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's a long time to be cleaning.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm sure her body is not liking it very much.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: And there's steps that are going to have to be taken for this person to get out of the field.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: So she's trying to figure out how she's going to have to replace her income, right?
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: There are those.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: There are other people who are just doing this as a side gig because they want to buy a new truck for their husband, or they're looking to buy a car for their kid who is getting ready to drive, or they're looking for something to do while the kids are in school.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: There are so many different success stories.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I just love being part of that process with you.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: There are some of you I have known six or seven years now.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: I've watched your kids grow up.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: We've known each other virtually for a while now.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I've watched some of your kids grow up.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh my gosh, your child is in college.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: You're all your cut your child has graduated high school.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, when they're like itty bitty, and then the next thing you see them, they're like six foot five.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: It just it's it's cool to be part of this community.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: So sometimes success is firing the client who is very difficult, or hiring the one great employee who is your golden unicorn, or having 12 golden unicorns, or taking an exotic vacation and not having the whole operation crumble because you're not there.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: Paying yourself consistently consistently with a paycheck.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: Super duper important.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: Getting home in time for dinner.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's success.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: Having time with your family is super important.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: Don't wait until tomorrow.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: Don't suck it up.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: Those days are gone.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think that you should life is so short.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: You should spend as much time doing the things that you want to do because you just don't know about tomorrow.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta spend time with your family.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's important.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's important for you to bond with your people.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: Your people's your peeps, right?
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: And building a business that fits your life and your lifestyle.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: Some people like to travel.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: I spoke to someone who I haven't spoken to in several years.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: They're in the south of France right now.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: They're she runs everything remotely.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: She has VAs, some in the states, some out of the states.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: And she does about$8 million a year.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: She's like, I just wanted to reach out and let you know, give you an update.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought it was cool that she reached out and she told me all about what is going on in her life.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: I love to be part of those stories.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: So the whole point of me telling you about this is because we're getting ready to start the application process for the Structure Scale and Profit Cleaning Business Academy.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I started it initially to celebrate Miss Maya, who is almost 12.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I think this is year number six or seven of me giving away.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I believe I probably am the only individual still giving out a signature program.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: So every year you can go to the application, which will not be included in this podcast because it's going to release a little bit later.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: But we are getting ready to ramp up and start the process for applications for the structure, scale, and profit cleaning business academy.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: So one particular person gets to have the whole program for free.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: No, no strings attached.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: You have to sign immediate waiver.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: I try to be as transparent as you guys know as I possibly can.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: And you at the end of your year have to give me a podcast episode.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: So we're going to have Miss Jenny Bean here soon come up.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm super excited to be able to interview her and get her experiences on what that was like.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I wanted to come out, and most importantly, I wanted to thank all of you.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: I could not be in the position and do the things that I do without all of you listening to the podcast, listening to all my crazy stories, doing all the things, doing the courses, all the replying to back to my responses in the Facebook groups, all of that I could not do without you.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I just want to say how much I love each and every one of you.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I am excited to see who the next applicant is going to be who is awarded the Structure Scale and Profit Cleaning Business Academy scholarship.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: If you guys have any questions, feel free to reach out.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: You take care.