Latest / Cleaning Business Life / Culture Starts at the Top with Paul Germo | Ep. 210

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Culture Starts at the Top with Paul Germo | Ep. 210 · Cleaning Business Life

• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: So close we're just slow so happy and it all makes sense to me.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: Happy to be helping your audience.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: What my name is is Paul Germo.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_02: I have been in business for more years than probably most of you have been alive.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: I've started at a very young age working for my father.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: I'd say at the age of eight years old, I was doing door-to-door sales.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: And my my dad had a furnace cleaning business.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: And the first job I ever had was delivering flyers door to door.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: And then I got promoted to a sales guy.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: And my dad started his business with himself.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: And within a year, he was, or maybe a couple years, he is in multiple cities and had a hundred employees.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: And but during that whole time I got to go door knocking and canvassing, which as a kid I hated it.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: But as an adult, I see the benefits of having that.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think door-to-door salesman is a lost art.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's brutal.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: People are just brutal to door-to-door salesman.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, you know, you're you're kind of equal with car salesmen, right?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And in lower.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, even lower.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it's uh it's a hard, physically demanding job.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: You're out there in the heat, people are not friendly, you they don't want you now.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone's afraid if you come to the door, I saw you on my ring camera.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, Yeah, yeah.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: What do you want?
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, well, I'm just here to tell you about this, right?
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Business is obviously not done that way anymore, but we do knock on doors just virtually for sure.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes, exactly.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: And one thing I learned from my dad at a very young age, and this is in the 1970s, he said, we need to touch customers at least three times before they'll buy.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's interesting insight.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: And what he had how many times it is now?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's exponentially more because people are inundated.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: Back in the 70s, we would do flyers that he designed and had printed, and we would fold them as a family, and we'd go and we'd hand them out, and people would read them.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: There was one lady who told him that she had years of collections of every one that he did because he would do cartoons in it.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: And she collected them all and he had them in a book.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm yeah, so so he he always did the flyers, then door-to-door canvassing, and then he had a telephone team that would follow up with every single house in the neighborhood.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: So back then, you know, everything was in a phone book, so you could figure out who lives in what neighborhood.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: And so he had a team that would call and and we would offer free services.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: We'd offer a free estimate, and that would get us in the door.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: And then at that age, my dad started teaching me company culture.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: At a really young age, he started teaching me customer service and sales.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: And those are the most valuable, those three, you know, sales, customer service, and company culture.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: They are the cornerstones of a successful business.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Super important.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's amazing to me to think of what customer service used to be and what customer service is today.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: I often reference the review sites as the the new customer service.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: They won't do anything until you unfortunately threaten them with this bad review.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then they're all over it.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, please come in.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Please like, dude, I reached out to you like five times to try to resolve this, and you, you know, now we're at this point, this juncture, and then they want to fix it.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: So it's an interesting thing how it's kind of devolved instead of involved for sure.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: But we we are here to talk about company culture.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: You had a lot of things, a lot of insight for that company culture in the businesses that you've ran and businesses that you own.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Can you go ahead and tell us define what company culture is in one sentence?
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Can you do that?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: Company culture is the entire philosophy and the outlook on how you, as the leader and the people who work for you, it's how you treat one another and interact with your clients.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, basically that's it.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's it in a nutshell.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: And it's all about people.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: I I think that even though we have this great thing with AI, we it especially my industry is still very much a people industry.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, yeah, exactly.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, I I'll just give you a brief synopsis.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Did I just do something?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: You pushed your image out, it'll come back on for those that are watching.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: I gotta not touch the laptop.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, go ahead.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: What do you see is the biggest mistake when when people are new at building company?
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of things that a lot of my listeners are new to.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: They're they're new to running a business, they're new to HR is in a totally different beast.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Hiring and firing people is a different beast, customer service is a different beast.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: But when you're trying to build company culture, what kind of advice can you give them?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_02: The first thing I would say is you focus on quality.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_02: Above everything.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: I've, you know, I worked in the bus manufacturing industry as a consultant, and I worked with bus manufacturers.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: So these are the people who are creating buses for public transit agencies.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I was a third-party guy mandated by the federal government to be in there, and I'd be hired by transit agencies.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: And one thing I told bus manufacturers over and over and over again, and some of them got it, but most of them did it.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: But I preached it for 15 years is you focus on quality, you focus on people, you'll get your numbers.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: If you focus on numbers, you're gonna burn out your people and your quality will go down to garbage.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: So people, quality, and numbers will just work themselves out.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: I love that philosophy.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh oftentimes, especially when you are a big corporation, it's all about the numbers.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: And and the shareholders, definitely.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_02: And and it goes all the way down to the smallest little business.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: If you're a solopreneur and you focus on your customer and you focus on the quality work that you do, you will get the numbers.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, you have to promote yourself as well.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: But and but if that's your culture, people first, you're gonna succeed.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we we've seen repeated examples of people first throughout history.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm trying to think of someone off the top of my head.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: I usually, for a long time, American Airlines was people first.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: They're not quite as people first anymore as we have seen since COVID.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of companies that are people first that you just go, wow, this is incredible.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Hard Rock Cafe, before they were sold, I don't know if this is still true because I know the Indian tribe in Florida purchased the whole brand.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: But back in the day when um Hard Rock Cafe was there, the the biggest perk for anyone to be an employee at the time was on your 10 year anniversary, the CEO would hand deliver this Rolex watch.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was a big, I mean, they made it a big deal.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: So everybody, of course, got to wear their Rolex watch, right?
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: I lived in Vegas for many years.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I remember that being in a place like, wow, I want the Rolex, right?
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, that's an expensive award.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and that's that's really important, you know, and that shows they value their people.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_02: I I know people who have worked for a company for 35 years, dedicated everything to it, and their last day, nobody says goodbye.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: I know it's so unfortunate.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it is.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: So especially with the cleaning industry where we it's a it can be a hundred percent turnover.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's just when you have someone who takes the time to invest in your company with their time, you should at least appreciate that.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_02: So I have a question for you in the cleaning industry.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: Do you while your I guess your audience, are they hiring mostly 1099s?
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: Are they W-2s, or is it a mixture of For a long time?
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: The industry was solopreneurs and W-2s.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then COVID kind of pitched everything in a different direction.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: And there were the W-2 crowd who still are the W-2 crowd.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then we had all of these people jump into the cleaning industry who never had jumped into the cleaning industry because it's it's grown tenfold in the last five years.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of them operate underneath the umbrella ship, but they're all 1099s.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: I believe in being transparent with that.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, like I operate, I used to have a W-2 model and I operate right now in this market for 1099, but I'm completely transparent.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: I say, you know, these are 1099, they're insured, they're background check, they're vetted, the whole deal.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but not everyone is as truthful with that as they should be.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Or they hire 1099s and they misclassify them and treat them as employees, or they something breaks and then everyone's like, well, who's gonna pay?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, you should have had insurance.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: You there your 1099 should have carried insurance.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: So there's there's that model, and then there's remote models where someone's living in Hawaii and they're operating crews in four different states.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen that.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Those are usually 1099s.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: We're seeing a lot of things pop up in the industry that have never appeared before.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: And that makes sense.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: The reason I asked that is because the company that I ran, I ran it remotely.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_02: I worked from my home.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_02: I worked from Minnesota.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: I worked from 26 different states.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we traveled full-time and I could run the business.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: Jamaica, Norway.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I was able to do that, and everybody I had working for me was a 1099.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't see the company, but I ran that division of the company.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone was a 1099, and every one of them understood the company culture because I trained them, I mentored them, I spent time with them, I got to know them as people, and I valued them as people.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I actually I've had several of them reach out to me since I left the company and uh, you know, say, hey, if you start your own business, I want to come work for you.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_02: Because, you know, you build up loyalty by treating them well.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: And they're all 1099s.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: I I do have a question when you're done.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: And and so that's that's just a big part of it is treating them as humans, valuing them for who they are, and then uh building into them, seeing the potential in them.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: And that's how I was able to build loyalty.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's awesome because it should it really should be people first, especially when you're a people first industry.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: My my question is you had mentioned you trained your 1099s.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: Is that was that something that was legal in your circumstance?
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, uh, because we were working for federal contracts and people have to know what they're doing.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I would normally hire for personality and customer service understanding over skills.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, skills are important, but they can be learned.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: Personality and customer service.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_02: If someone has a salesman personality, a customer service personality, then I'm willing to hire them.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, you had to kind of mold them in culture, in the in the company culture, so they understand how to do it.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_02: Are you saying it's not legal to train a 1099?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: No, not in our industry.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's not legal to train a 1099.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: You can get in trouble for misclassification.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I was asking, because I know I'll get hit up with it later.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that guy, you had Paul on there.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: What did he say that for?
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's interesting.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: In your industry because you worked for the government, so you had long, you know what I mean, you had a larger range of entities that you were dealing with for sure.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_02: So that's why projects, our projects would go anywhere from six weeks to five years.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it's exciting to be part of a larger project too, to see the end result for sure.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Can a company have good people and bad company culture, you think?
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: I've experienced it.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: I'll tell you, the company that I worked for, I I was recruited by the CEO, the founder.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_02: He understood me.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_02: He worked hard to get me to come work for him, and I did.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: I agreed after several months of back and forth, and we really developed a healthy respect for one another.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: And then six years in, he died.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: His widow took over, and she devalued everybody who worked for her because she didn't understand the history, she didn't understand the business, she didn't understand anything.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_02: And so she had a great team, but the culture shifted dramatically.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_02: And it was just because the person at the top didn't understand the company culture and wasn't willing to learn.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: So it you can have great people and a bad culture.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_02: You can have a great culture and bad people if you hire poorly.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's so impactful because it takes such a long effort to get everything to be a smooth running ship, so to speak.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: So how do you go about how did you go about creating accountability without creating any fear?
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because I there, there's the old school method that a lot of us experienced when we were younger of the you're gonna be fired, you're gonna be fired, you're gonna be fired, you're gonna be fired.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not the reality of what it is.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's people make mistakes.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I in my industry especially, I have to remind people that if we could walk on water, we would.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that usually goes, Oh, well, yeah.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Who do you know that can walk on water?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Not very many, right?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: Right, yeah.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: There's the one guy.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: Definitely.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_02: Question for you are these commercial clients, are they residential or are they both?
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think they're both a lot of people, right?
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Primarily the the basis of the podcast is mostly residential, but there is a commercial aspect of it.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: There's post-construction, move out, move in cleaning.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: So depending on where you're located.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like, for example, in Canada, you actually have to have a special permit in some of the provinces to do a move out cleaning.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: There's a fine if you don't have the right permittage, where here in America, it's just considered mostly residential.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's not really commercial unless you're doing like large Okay.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I grew up in Canada, so I understand it's a lot more regulated.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: They don't have the same freedoms.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: My goodness.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: New Zealand is another very regulated, very complicated tax system.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I don't know how you guys someone tried to explain it to me.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, repeat it one more time.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I don't understand, but it's very complicated.
• 17:19
  unknown: Yeah.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: Of course.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: I did live in New Zealand for a while, so and it was that way.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: Now I kind of sent us down a rabbit trail.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_02: You asked me a question, and then I asked you a follow-up question, so now I don't remember.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's totally fine.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: So the how do you create accountability without creating fear?
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_02: The best way to build accountability without creating fear is it starts in the hiring process.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I heard a question years ago that a CEO of a company would ask his people that he was hiring.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: And the question was do you uh think that most people are honest or dishonest?
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_02: Will most people cheat you if they get the opportunity?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: And and this there's a study that was done, and predominantly if they think most people are dishonest, they're a dishonest person.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_02: If they think most people are honest, they're an honest person.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so Yeah.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_02: So someone you can kind of figure out, okay, this person has honest tendencies, so that's a good thing.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: You get to know the person a little bit.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I'm sure in in your industry there's a lot of turnover, and there might not be a lot of time to spend getting to know someone, especially if they're in another state.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: But I spent a lot of time on the phone with my people and in person with them in different states, different in Canada, the U.S., I would spend time in person with them, sometimes a day, sometimes a week, and build into the person.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_02: And if you can do that somehow, and you build into them and give them trust and make, you know, try to hire a trustworthy worthy person.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: That's the hardest thing to do.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_02: I have hired people who seemed great on paper, they interviewed well and they were lazier than anything, and they spent the whole day hiding.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_02: You know, so I'd get calls from bus manufacturers saying, I haven't seen this guy, or from other people who were on a team with them saying, this guy disappears all the time, and I'd, you know, have to fire him.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_02: And that's hard.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_02: But you keep people accountable, not through fear, but through trust.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: I I think, especially in my industry, we are a trust-based industry.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of trust points.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so there's markers, right?
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's the the initial interview, and then there's the training part, if they show up for training, uh, validating on training, and then there's how do I interface with the clients, making sure that you're giving them eye contact, making sure that you're getting all the bells and whistles, making sure that you're asking, hey, how am I doing every once in a while?
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's your own quality control.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's like showing up all the time as part of trust, right?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: But um it it is interesting the dynamics of how that much that has changed in the workforce.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: Do you do you feel that especially with cleaning, if you were to hire a cleaning company, do you think that trust would be a major impact decision for you for cleaning?
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_02: If I were hiring a cleaning company, I would think that, yes.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_02: Because number one, you're letting them into your office or your home.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: So you need honest people, you need people who aren't gonna go, ooh, nice cell phone, I'm taking that.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: Or who don't just walk in and, you know, take a duster and just kind of go like that in a couple places and then go scroll on their phone for the next hour and then get out of there.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I know that happens.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Once in a while it does.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I would I would say um if I remembered the question, I'd answer it.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we've kind of bounced all over the place.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just go on to the next question.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: How do you handle a high performer who is toxic to the team?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: The worst thing in the world is a toxic employee.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: I remember listening to a podcast by the founder of Netflix.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_02: He said they had grown really fast and they were just killing it.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: And they were, you know, just the biggest business.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_02: And then suddenly they had this I don't remember what it was.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: It might have been the housing crisis or something like that, but there was some major uh inflection point in their business, and they were risking shutting down, and but they knew they had to they knew they had to reduce their staff or die.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_02: So what they said is we're gonna look at everybody, and no matter how good the person is at their job, if they suck as a person, we're getting rid of them.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: That must have been hard.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: It was, and they did it.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: They went through, they got rid of all of the people who are toxic, all of the people who were complainers, all the people who, you know, just made life miserable for everybody else, and suddenly it was a wonderful experience going to work.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_02: People loved their job and they are able to be more creative and they're able to turn it around.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: So if you have a high performer who's toxic, I've made the mistake of keeping them on.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't benefit anybody.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_02: It actually hurts your company.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: And you need to, you know, I don't know what the what the laws are in the cleaning industry and in different countries and stuff, but you have to take steps to make sure that you get rid of them as soon as you can.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: Hire fast.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: Is that me squeaking?
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: I I believe it might be.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: Could be the mic.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: Could be.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: Or you're living next to a data center.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_02: What are the other big Amazon distribution center near me?
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe it's ad.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: And this mic isn't actually what I'm using.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: I'm using my other mic.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: So So we're good now.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, perfect.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: So should company culture ever outweigh performance?
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: I know a lot of people pitch like company cult hire by your company culture, creating a company culture, what you're, you know, what those attributes are.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think that it would the culture would ever outweigh the performance of the actual person that you've hired?
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_02: You mean if they're a cultural fit, keep them as opposed to get rid of them.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I understand what you're saying.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I would say if they're not performing, you know, that's an interesting question because normally I would think in a service-based industry like cleaning, someone who is not performing but fits the culture is kind of just as bad as a top performer who's toxic.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: I was kind of thinking the same thing.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I've had to unfortunately you've had a couple superstars over the years who could do, like, you know, the golden unicorns.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, because they were negative Nelly's, and if your name is Nelly, I still love you.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um because they just could they couldn't they couldn't transition out of that mindset.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that's internal work.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: And internal work is hard.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's really hard to do a lot of internal work because we come into this world with pre-programmed predispositions, then we learn things from our parents and our peers and our friends and all that.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: So we I've had to let them go.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: I've had to let two go who who generated a lot of money for me over like like over a hundred grand per, you know what I mean?
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so you have to kind of wait, you know, I'm gonna be taking a hit here.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: But and in eventuality, I liked what Netflix did.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: They just kind of looked through and just cut off the fat to make themselves run leaner.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: And we're starting to see that with a lot of businesses.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: As AI starts to take over some of the general tasks, they're starting to cut the fat off a lot of businesses or they're shuttering their doors entirely, which is an interesting phenomenon to watch in itself.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: What behaviors do you think destroy culture the fastest?
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: We know that negativity and having a bad attitude.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um what else do you think contributes to that?
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: Gossip.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: Definitely.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_02: Gossip is insidious and it's poisonous.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: You you just I don't know how you're actually quick too.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_02: It does.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_02: It does.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if you have people and they hear something negative, they're gonna go on it.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_02: And how do you stop that?
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_02: Because, you know, even you know, I've I I've been drawn into that from time to time where someone in leadership is gossiping about somebody else.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, oh yeah, well, they this, and it doesn't help.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: No, it doesn't.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_02: Gossip, gossip, you know, is insidious.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: So that was one.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: And um just cutting that off as quickly as possible.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_02: Those are those are negative attributes.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_02: Another one is you had asked in your previous question if somebody is a good fit culturally, but they're not a good performer, they really don't serve a purpose unless their job is the entertainer of the company.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe their job is the motivator, and that's what their purpose is, to keep people, you know, excited about their job.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_02: Then you might be able to keep them.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: But if there's someone who doesn't really perform and but they're really good at schmoozing you, you know, they're no they're no better than a a gossiper or I think at some point you just get tired of them and you're just like, you have to go.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, you know what I mean?
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: It just gets all uh initially I would imagine it could be entertaining and it's good for the troops so to speak, but after a while I would imagine it would just be if it takes up too much space in my head, I'm like, you're out of here.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have that much space.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: So so yeah, I I think that gossiping and and being negative all the time are are two biggies for that can destroy company culture fast, or you know, the constantly playing one person against the other.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen a lot of that sometimes sometimes because a lot of us are women and we haven't learned to be adults, air quotes, so to speak, is what I'm politely saying.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: I've I've seen people try to tear the other one down.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, we're all on the team together.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_02: So right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: And that's that's true.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, if you're if you're self-indulgent and you put yourself above everybody else and you are self-protecting and self-promoting, you know, those those are signs of someone who is insecure and someone who doesn't understand human relationships.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_02: And if you don't understand that part, even as a cleaner, unless you're all solo cleaners, then you know, it can be it can be destructive.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_02: So self-promotion, self-protection is kind of one of those indicators.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: If someone's always promoting themselves and protecting themselves and they're defensive, that's that's a bad one.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_02: Like you said, there's a lot of inner work.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_02: I work on it on a daily basis.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we all have these crazy little guys in our heads telling us things that aren't true about ourselves.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: Self-sabotage does interesting things.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked a little bit about failure analysis.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um what founder behaviors do you see repeatedly damaging company culture?
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: You had mentioned earlier that one CEO had passed away and his wife has taken over.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: Are there any other examples that you can give us?
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: Of leaders who what founder behaviors do you uh repeatedly damage in company culture?
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: So are there are there founder behaviors that can damage company culture, do you think?
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_02: A founder who thinks they're the smartest person in the room.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: Definitely, I agree.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean that that's just it it's really hard because then they can't open themselves up to possibility of potential ideas.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, if if you want to grow, you have to be secure enough in your position.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_02: And it's tough when you're a new founder.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_02: You're hiring people to just be open to listen.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_02: Not every idea is a good idea.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: True.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_02: But every idea is worth hearing.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of founders are unwilling to listen to other people's input and advice.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_02: And the guy who's on the floor, the guy or the gal, the young lady, whoever it is, that's actually out there doing the work, they have so much insight and understanding into what's really going on.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_02: And that's when I got hired by this company, that's one of the reasons I got hired, is because I had spent almost a decade doing exactly what the guys in the field were doing.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why the guys in the field loved working with me because I understood.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_02: I wasn't an ivory tower guy who just hired these people and totally had no clue what they were doing.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_02: I had been in their shoes for a decade and I totally understood what they're doing, and that was the biggest benefit to everybody.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: So, not a leader who thinks they're smarter than everybody, a leader who is disengaged from the day-to-day and what's really going on, and understanding the day-to-day business, and who's unwilling to listen to the people out there and learn from them, that is destructive to company culture.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: I always felt that I shouldn't be the smartest one in the room, that there should be more people who are smarter than me in the room that I could benefit from because they always see a fresh set of eyes is always beneficial.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_02: And they may have efficient ways to do something that you never thought of.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_02: They may have ways to market to get to get the word out there that has not entered your mind.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_02: You know, because you might have people who work for you as a cleaner and they're listening to business podcasts all day, and they're trying to get ideas.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean, I don't know how many of them do, but that's what I always did.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: And they literally could help your business.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_02: You have to somehow know how to filter the good ideas from the bad ideas, but it's worth at least listening to them.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's always good to have fresh ideas.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: And and I agree with you.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we've tried things, and part of being an entrepreneur is being able to experiment.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: I've kind of talked about this in another podcast.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: We're constantly as entrepreneurs experimenting with new ways to do things.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: We're like, well, let's try this.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it's like, oh, it was just fantasy in my head.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then other times you're like, it worked, it worked.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: And most people don't see this back of the scene stuff like I've sweated out I got 10 grand on this, right?
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: So it can be a little, you it yeah.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: You have to have some big kahunas sometimes to be able to go forward, right?
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: To get the plan in motion for to get from A to B.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes people don't realize that the kahunas have to be there.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: You just can't skate by.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: So do you think that systems create culture or culture creates systems?
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: Both?
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: Both.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_02: Because first of all, if you don't uh define and systematize your culture, right at the outset, the culture will define itself.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_02: And you don't want to.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think so.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: The culture could be very negative too.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: If if you have negative people in your team, then then you have a negative culture and then you're trying to reel it back in, going, okay, wait a minute.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_02: And so you can set systems in place to define the culture.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_02: And as anything builds and grows in the startup world, they find this out all the time when someone is building a tech company or they're building a community or whatever.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_02: They say, I'm going to do it this way, but they find out that there are better ways and it evolves.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: So it's both.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_02: You set the systems and the structure in place and say, this is our culture, but then the culture can shift.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_02: And you have to be open to that, but you have to be sure that it doesn't wander way off and creep, you know, way out in the wild and then have you.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm laughing because I've let it happen.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_02: We all do.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm like, oh, I probably should have put a SOP in place for that one.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: What do you mean?
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: What do you mean you oversold this, right?
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's just it's just funny the things that we realize as we're having these conversations.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: How much culture is hiring versus training?
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: I know you said you hire on personality.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_02: I would say hire for character, personality.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_02: Character, I think, is number one.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, someone who's honest, someone who has integrity, someone who um who has the can-do attitude.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_02: So you hire for that and then and then you train.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_02: So I think hire for character and and then train them and train them in whatever way is legal for wherever you are and whatever industry you're in.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_02: But if you hire for character, you can always train.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_02: If you hire for skills, you know, and this was a debate that I had with people when we were looking for people in and in our industry.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I had this one with other executives in my company, and they'd say, okay, we need to make sure this guy has all the qualifications.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the number one question.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, actually, let's rethink this because if you hire someone who is a great mechanic, but he treats everyone like crap and he's got a temper, uh, you know, we don't want him on our team because he represents our company.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_02: So first find a guy who has the right temperament, the right personality, the right character, and then secondary qualifications.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_02: You can always train.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: You can always train.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: There have been many situations where I've hired someone and they took over the schedule and demanded all these things, or they wouldn't show up unless they got this, or they got that, or this special vacation here, or whatever perk they decided that week.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: I remember how much I struggled with that in the beginning, and then finally I was like, okay, I've had enough.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: You you need to go.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, best wishes, see you later.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, that's uh definitely a flashback for me there.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: What I know that you had talked a little bit about what a question that your CEO friend had asked.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: And are there any other interview questions that you could tell about a candidate for company culture?
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_02: You know, um that's that's a tough one because I I generally enter into an interview in a conversation.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_02: I rarely script it because I feel like if I script, and and that's just the way my brain works.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, some people need structured questions.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_02: I like to enter into it and just get a feel for the person.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_02: So I'll ask, you know, so you know, tell me about the job you're just in and you know, why did you leave it?
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_02: Why are you looking?
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, those are basic questions, but I just enter into a conversation and get to know them kind of.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_02: And by doing that, I can get a feel for them.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_02: And for me, that's the way my brain works.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_02: I I suck at having a structured uh questionnaire that I'm gonna ask people.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_02: So it does help to have bullet points.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_02: But to me, the number one question, you know, I is customer skills.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like, have you dealt with customers before?
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_02: Have you been in a, you know, because I'm assuming in your business your cleaners are going to interact with customers generally, unless they're the night cleaner.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_02: But so you wanna what what have they done?
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_02: Try to find out their understanding of dealing with people and and responsibility.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_02: And and I just I just enter into a conversation and I let it kind of flow organically.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_02: So I I'm the wrong guy to ask about what are the best magical questions to ask in an interview.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: I I was asking because there is a lot of times, believe it or not, this is the first time that a lot of business owners are hiring at all.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it's the same questions over and over again.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like I have this situation, what do I say to the client?
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: And um I and I get it hundreds of times.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: I speak to hundreds of people every single week.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes I get the same exact question.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll usually, because I start to track, I'm looking for the patterns on what is easier for me to I think that learning customer service, and I know that this is a a podcast about company culture, and it kind of goes side by side.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: They're cousins.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: Learning customer service and what to say and how to say the right thing is probably one of the more difficult attributes to have from human to human, because we don't have a society right now that likes to deal human to human.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: We have a society that likes to deal from our phone to maybe a human on the other end, maybe not a human.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: There's not a lot of eye contact that happens anymore.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that those would probably be something that I would look for if I was hiring a cleaning tech.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, your casual conversation with me.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: Can you give me eye contact?
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: Did you say the right things?
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: How do you feel about cleaning a toilet?
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of times people will say, I laugh about this now, but I've been doing this 15 years.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we would get, like, I used to do all the training.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: So we'd be in a house because we used to do training one-on-one.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: We no longer do that anymore.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, so you have to, you know, you have to reach your hand in the toilet.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, You want me to reach on the toilet?
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, yes, I want you to reach in the toilet, but we have gloves, right?
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it's this whole dynamic of you want me to touch the toilet brush?
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: What do I do with the toilet brush after I, you know, it's this whole step by step by step?
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: So it kind of goes through this whole evolution.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's interesting to get people's different input on what and how those those two subjects are our cousins.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: What's one thing every, and this is reading from my script because we're getting towards the end here, ladies and gentlemen.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what's one thing uh every listener today should stop doing immediately when it comes to company culture?
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: And we can talk about rewards of company culture next.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_02: What's one thing they should stop doing?
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_02: Boy.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: Stop thinking that you are above your workers and serve them.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_02: You know, customer service is not just about the people who are paying you money.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_02: Customer service as an owner of a business at sorry about all my hand actions.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_02: You're fine.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not a I'm not Italian, but but yeah, customer service is about serving everybody you interact with.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_02: So you are serving the people you hired, you know, and how you treat them is how they'll treat their customers.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_02: So if you treat them poorly, like they're just some grunt scrubbing toilets, they're gonna feel that way and it's going to it'll have a ripple effect.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_01: Definitely toilet, you know, that's kind of a toilet humor, ladies and gentlemen.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh it is an interesting dynamic, and it's when I first got into management many moons ago.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: I've been in management a long time.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: We when I first got in manager, I was like, oh, I'm the manager.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: What I didn't realize was that I'm on you are, you are on the bottom.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: You're the bottom of the triangle, you're supporting everyone at the top.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: And for us, cleaning techs, and I refer to this all the time, our golden unicorns.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's where you earn your money.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, you earn money from the client, but where you're making your money is your cleaning tax.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, with that being said, what kind of things have you done culturally for company culture to kind of reward and make people bond together and want to stick around a long time?
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of things can you suggest to the crowd today?
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_02: Acknowledge people.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: Acknowledgement?
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, give them acknowledgement.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_02: When they do something good, when somebody goes above and beyond, don't just think, oh, that was good, or don't just say it to your business partner or spouse or whatever.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_02: Number one, say it to the person.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_02: And somehow in your internal communication, I don't know if you have an app or if you have an email where everybody sees it, you acknowledge that person.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_02: If you have weekly meetings or whatever, say, hey, uh, Sarah was amazing.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_02: She did this, and this was the result.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so, Sarah, thank you.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_02: And you can actually, you know, if you've got the margin, give her a little gift.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it goes a long, long, long way.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_02: There was a guy, his don't remember his name, but they are one of the biggest egg-producing families in the country.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I'm sorry, it's chicken.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's the, you know, that big chicken brand.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_02: Can't remember what they're.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_01: Is that me?
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_01: It could be.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_01: It stopped.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_01: Nope, it's going.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm still.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think that the chicken brand you might be referring to maybe is Tyson Foods.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_02: It might have been Tyson, yeah.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: In Arizona, it's Hickman Farms.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_02: Or Pilgrim.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_02: It was one of those two big ones.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_02: They had been in the chicken industry for years.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_02: They had people working all over the country, and this guy, he was like the third generation guy to run the company.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_02: Usually second and third generations will destroy a company.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen that happen repeatedly.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: In my small town.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: Mom and dad build this great thing.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: You pass it over to the child.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: The child's not interested.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: Runs it right into the ground.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_02: Or it can be the widow.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh my God, they put so much effort in it.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: Boom.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: It takes like six months to a year.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_02: So they um this guy, third generation, he figures I need to start acknowledging people who go above and beyond.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_02: So he just created this little award, and it was just this egg.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_02: And whoever did whatever it was, like cut production or waste or came up with an idea or whatever, they would get this award.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_02: And this guy said that he would see productivity and positivity climb because people wanted that award.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_02: And it was just a piece of paper, acknowledging how amazing they were.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_02: And and one guy, he said it was the Christmas party, and his wife came up and said, My husband is so proud of that egg-shaped certificate that he got.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, and he just has such pride in what he does and in the company because he got that acknowledgement.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_02: And he got it presented in front of all of his co-workers.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and that's what that's what they did.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_02: And it changed the whole outlook and productivity and waste and profitability, it all changed from that one little simple acknowledgement.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_02: So acknowledgement goes a long way and it's cheap.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: Acknowledgement, I agree.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um are there any other suggestions for people to provide more company culture besides acknowledgement?
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: Invest in your people.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_02: If, you know, depending on what level they're at, look at your people, figure out is there a path for growth?
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_02: Because if you can see possibility in your people and you can say, these people, this guy would be great.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_02: I want to really invest in him.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_02: I want to help him or her grow.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_02: I want to help them.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_02: And whether they stay at your company or move on, does that matter?
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_02: What matters is you train them and you put effort into them and you help them grow.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_02: And if they stay with your company, that's great.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_02: And if they leave and they succeed at something else, you helped them do that.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_02: So that that's a big thing there.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think back to all the crazy things I've done to give acknowledgement.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_00: We used to, and I you guys have all heard me talk about this before.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_00: When you have a cleaning tech who has done a great job at a move out cleaning, we used to buy increments of Starbucks cards.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: They were$5 increments.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_00: So they would have to collect, obviously, if you're going to get a vente, you're going to need two, but we would give them out like cash.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: And you would be, it would be funny because we started a tracking system where we would put their the cleaning tech's name, got two Starbucks cards, and you would see them when they came into the office and they would sit there and talk amongst themselves.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, look at Maria, she got four Starbucks cards.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was just an interesting way to track, you know, for the month of how to acknowledge great job done without, you know, the, oh, here's your here's your thing.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I totally agree that acknowledgement and creating company culture is super duper important.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_00: I see a lot of companies who operate remotely, so they have no connection to the client and they have no connection to the cleaning techs struggle because they plateau at a certain financial basis and they can't ever get past that.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, what are you doing for company culture?
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_00: I ask them all the time.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: And they go, Well, I'm not doing anything.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, you need to have you need to have company culture.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_00: What we know, what is your company culture?
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: You have to define what that is.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I think these are uh great lessons to learn.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have any questions for me, Mr.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: Pa?
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I uh probably do.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_02: So you built and sold a company.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_02: I believe.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_02: And and then you've started your cleaning freaks university.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_02: Is that right?
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_00: I still have another cleaning company and I'm getting ready to another cleaning company.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_00: I have two other cleaning companies, and I'm getting ready to open a third.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_00: All within one city, or are they two are in the same market, and the third one is gonna be in a different market.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_02: And the two in the same market, are they tangential?
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like one's commercial, one's residential, or one is residential and one is short-term rental because you can't have the same entities.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_00: You can't have that same crew working in short-term rental versus and many people try, and the reason why is because there's a shorter window for short-term windows.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_00: So there's that's a different beast than regular residential.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_02: That's just a quick turnover there.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_02: Get in, get out.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, gotcha.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, cool.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um now I guess I I'm really interested in in your cleaning freak university thing because I'm sure, you know, I'm starting ideas in my brain.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's awesome.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_02: Which I've been I've been thinking too long about, and and that is a community.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_02: So how does it work?
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_02: Uh how do people join your community?
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_02: And and can you just tell me a little bit about that?
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_02: Because this fascinates me.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_02: I love this topic.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: So Clean Freaks University is actually, it's not an accredited university.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a university where people can you can write it off on your taxes.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's a class that you, it's a business expense.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh at any given time, there are 55 digital assets on there that you can purchase.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_00: And some of them are$10.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_00: One of them is actually free if you sign up for my email list.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I have a signature course, the structure, scale, and profit cleaning business academy.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_00: Over 500 people have taken that course and gone through the program.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's a six-month program, and it teaches you all that you need to know to add systems in place and structure in your business because oftentimes we build a business because we know how to clean, but we don't how know how to do the back end.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like no one knows how to do the payroll, no one knows how to hire, no one knows how to fire, no one knows what to say in case this happens.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I it's I've had a lot of life experiences with my businesses.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I have a lot of reference points to say this is what you say in this instance.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then so I teach others how to run the back end of their cleaning business, is the short assumption for it.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_00: As far as community, I have a I I consider it a medium-sized um Facebook community.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_00: I believe there's 6,500 or 7,000 cleaning business owners, and it's cleaning business owners only.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's not um for the consumer.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_00: We're not offering cleaning tips for that.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_00: I believe there's one individual in there who is not who is just a consumer, but I know her and she lives in my town and she just roots me on.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_00: So there's that.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_00: What else do I have?
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like we have the podcast that has 210 episodes or nine episodes so far.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_00: And the goal is to get it to a thousand episodes.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_00: So it'll be a whole library of cleaning content just for cleaning business owners, is the goal.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_00: I um don't ever envision myself being as big as Joe Rogan.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_00: Cleaning is not that interesting.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah, we we do two shows a week.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_00: So that's 104 episodes, plus there's extra episodes that are strown in depending on what's going on in the industry.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, that's that's the short version.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, and I have eight um published works on Amazon.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_00: One of them is actually paper, and the others are digital.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't gotten back to because there's different formats.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you who've never published, I self-published, and when you enter in the editorial realm of Amazon, it's very complicated.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_00: The easy Kindle reader, easy peasy compared to the other formats.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_00: Audio, audible is um a whole different beast versus written, and then written depending on the size, there's all of these editorial things that you have to decide on.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_02: No, that's awesome.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I've written a book.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_02: I've written one, it's a failure's guide to success.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I totally understand that.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, I have to go in and do a little editing on there because a reader contacted me and said, page 70, you repeated a sentence.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_00: So but thank God they're reading that's why you know they're reading it, right?
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because you're like, thank you.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_02: You made it to page 70.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's pretty exciting.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_02: Well, no, that's exciting.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_02: I just I just love what you're doing.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_02: I love um I I love the fact that you're niche down and that you are speaking to a group of in the industry that may or may not be spoken to and you're sharing your life experience, and I think that's great.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_02: So I I appreciate just the insight into how you're doing it.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_02: And that's kind of my thing.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_02: I love people who have been in whatever they've been in, they burn down the box that they are stuck in, and then they're moving into something else.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, I don't know what you did prior to cleaning.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_02: Is that something you can share?
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_00: I actually came from the restaurant and hotel industry.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_00: I worked in Las Vegas and in Lake Tahoe for many, many years.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_00: Both of my adult children were born in Las Vegas, and I have a lot of hospitality experience.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_00: I was a restaurant manager for TGI Friday.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_00: So we had the that when we had the suspenders, we had the 33 points of flair.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you who've never seen what's the name of that movie, Office.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_00: Gosh, I can't remember the name of the movie.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_00: He's in there and he's in the uniform and they're teasing TGI.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even know if TGI Fridays is still around.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's I saw one recently.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_00: Did you?
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_02: I'm in South Carolina and I saw one and I no, I'm sorry, that was not a TGI.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I I worked at the time it was called Main Street in Maine.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a like a franchise.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_00: And uh there was 144 TGA Fridays in that franchise.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know, I think that they're all shuttered.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like I looked at my old store.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_00: I opened up the Long Beach, California location.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_00: I worked in the Cerritos location, I worked in the Marina Del Rey location, I worked in a lot of TGA Fridays.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but that's where I got a lot of my interesting stories.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_00: I have lots of stories about TGA Fridays.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the craziest things I have ever experienced have been either in a casino or a TGA Friday.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_00: They just, it's just wild how people act.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness, it's wild, absolutely wild.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I worked in the restaurant industry for gosh, I want to say over 20 years.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then I went into the retail industry briefly.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_00: I worked for the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_00: I work for Norties.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_00: I have lots of stories about Norgies.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then I just kind of came out here where I live in a small town, and I actually opened, I'm a jewelry um designer by trade, silversmith.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_00: And the economy was tanking, and I didn't know about like recessions or anything because the first time I was in a recession, I had just gotten out of college.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_00: I was already poor.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't it didn't bother me.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, well, how can I stay in my small town?
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_00: I want to live here for the rest of my life.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then I got hired on by a Merry Maids, and that the end, the rest is history.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_00: I got in a squabble with the owners, the second owners of the Merry Maids over two bucks.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't want to pay me.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I thank God they didn't pay me because I wouldn't be where I'm doing now.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_01: Definitely.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_01: And you do a little bit of coaching as well, don't you, in a different capacity?
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll have his contact information in the show notes.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing some of your experiences with us, especially about company culture.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I appreciate you for that.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I will see you on the next one.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_01: Take care.