Latest / Cleaning Business Life / CBL EP 161 V3: The Builder — Getting the Business Out of Your Head

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CBL EP 161 V3: The Builder — Getting the Business Out of Your Head · Cleaning Business Life

• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Cleaning Business Life.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Shannon Miller from Clean Freaks University.com, and I'm with my co-host Jamie Runko, and we're walking through the five phases of Entrepreneur Framework.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: And today is one of the biggest phases of all phase three, the builder.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is the phase where you stop surviving on memory hustle, and I'll remember later, and you start building a business that actually runs without you being the emergency contact for everything.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you've got a million tabs open in your brain, and you're if you've got a million tabs open in your brain and your team keeps asking you the same questions, you're in the right place.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Technology, who knows what goes on.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back, everyone.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: We Jamie and I are talking about the five phases is you as an entrepreneur.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: So there's some quick framework here.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Episode one with phase one, the doer.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: You are the business.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Everything depends on you, and burnout becomes normalized.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Phase two is the awakening.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: You start noticing what's not working mentally, financially, and emotionally, even if you don't know how to fix it yet.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Phase three is what we're going to talk about today, and I'm super excited.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's the builder.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually probably the largest phase out of the five of them.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Your intentionally designed systems so the business stops living in your head and that you can start to step out of the business.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's just baby steps, baby steps.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Phase four, it the leader.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: You shift from doing the work to leading people, decisions, and outcomes.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that makes me that just gives me goosebumps getting there.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then phase five is the visionary CEO.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, by then you have gotten all of your dreams and desires forthwith.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it you're you're building assets, leverage long-term impact beyond the day-to-day operations.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's when you're making your five-year plan, or you're expanding into other markets, or you're do you're adding on extra layers of income like short-term rental cleaning or laundry or whatever it is that you're deciding to do.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Franchise.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Franchising is big.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm seeing that happen a lot.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: That'll happen a lot this year.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because you have we're building a whole system, a whole ecosystem.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: A whole system.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I feel like I'm I'm in all five phases of my business.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: Various degrees.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I, yeah, to various degrees.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not afraid to share it with you guys.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: If anything, this podcast has helped me learn so much as I give everything about what's going on because I'm I'm just like everybody else.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: Shannon's just like everybody else, but she's been there done that, and she has built a service that I wanted to strive to be.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: She's been there done that.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: She's made a million, you know, she she's made, built, and sold a million dollar house cleaning service.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that's somebody that I I hope to achieve, you know.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm and you know, I know this sounds like, oh my gosh, a million dollars.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: In today's economy, I don't believe that is too far off.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's very realistic now.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: In the past, it was like, oh my god, a million dollars.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: We're never gonna get there.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: But now you can you're gonna start to see five million dollar businesses.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's a couple of twenty million dollar businesses, we're already seeing that massive markets in different states and all that other stuff.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: So we're we're starting to see a lot of people line up for the bigger prize.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: So right, and um there's there's you know, I'm almost there, I'll be there.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: So phase three is the builder.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Would you like to do the intro on the builder?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so phase three, the builder.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: This is where we're taking everything that's in our head, and it's finally leaving out of your head, and it's where it's feeling a little different.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's not easy, but it's definitely there's there's definitely some here.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Let me there it's definitely more clear.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: You're still growing, you're still you're still stretching, and it's still not easy, but you're you're starting to take everything that's in the head and and putting it down.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: You're you're putting it into your booking platform, you're starting to structure everything, your do's, your don'ts.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's not living in your head anymore.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: You've stopped pretending that you can hold ever hold everything together mentally, you've realized that awareness alone isn't enough, motivation don't save you.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: What you need now is structure, and this is where the structure starts coming in.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: Believe it or not, and if that's not how you're it might not look like that to you guys, it might not look like you might not realize that the what you're doing is structuring your business.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, what's that even mean?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Checklist.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: If you're using a checklist, that's part of the structure that has gotten out of your head and onto a piece of paper.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: Hiring the do's and don'ts of hiring, the do's and don'ts of firing, what they have to sign, what they don't have.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: These are all things that I've learned as I got went along.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, oh, I can't do that no more.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I I would I'd ask because I'm not good again.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not good at tech.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: Believe it or not, I am not good at tech.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: I sometimes fumble through it, but I have somebody that helps me a lot.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like I can get it out of my head and over to Sarah, and then she can help structure it.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll tell her what I want.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: I need something as simple as media release forms to protect my company and my my assets.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't need people coming back to me after they're gone and saying, uh, why are you still using my photo?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I use photos for you know, I spend a lot of money on these professional photos to get done.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna continue to use it, whether they're there or not.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: So it just protects you.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: But this is where it comes, the business, the business that lives in your head starts to come out of your head, and you're starting to structure it.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: So you have more technically, you have more good days than bad days.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: It starts to be a shift.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like initially, it's rough.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Every shift you're trying to piece it together, stick it together with bubblegum, pray, keep you know, praying and keeping your fingers crossed that it makes it to the end of the day, and then you start to become more aware.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then phase three really is about getting it out of your head and into your ecosystem, right?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I also had a bad experience with a media release, and I'm telling you this because it just popped into my head way back in the day when I had Castle Keeper Cleaning.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: I made all of these training videos and I featured one particular cleaning tech.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this was a while ago.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't bright enough at the time to understand that I needed a media release, and then she left on bad terms, and then she sued me in court, and they determined that I had no legal recourse, even though she agreed verbally because I did not have anything in writing.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: So you should have a media release in your on-boarding for your clients in case you want to take before and afters.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, use your discretion.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Don't put, hey, this Monet is at this house, right?
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where they live.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: And the same deal with your cleaning techs.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: You want to be able to film them in action.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Jamie just mentioned to spend thousands of dollars on branding photos for the crew.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Plus, they get paid for it.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: So there's that expense too.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: So just make sure that you're putting the right foot forward so that you're not sabotaging yourself inadvertently like I did.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: I still have the videos.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: I don't need to look at the technology because it's changed so much in the 10 years.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: These are things that I, yeah, I I I got bit on a couple of things, and it's because I literally did not have the structure in place.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: I I've made a post, it's like whenever the universe tells you not to do it, and it was like, well, they won't do that to me.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, well, here you go, you dummy.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Here you go.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Let's try it one more time, then.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that's because I it's like, duh, I need to put I need to put something in place.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I have been able to, and if you guys are more tech savvy than I am, some people can whip out a PDF or or some, you know, I I can't.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: I I I can't I cannot use what is it, Google Sheets or Google, you know, Excel or whatever.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: I've gotten good with those two, especially um I can't.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I and I need help with that.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's I I have good ideas, but I need help implementing those ideas and putting them onto paper to build this business to make sure it's structured.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: Can I learn it?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: Probably.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: But I my my focus is better elsewhere, and and I know when to hand that baton off.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: But this is also where you start realizing all the problems.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: If it's something happening, if it's something happening over and over again, that's whenever you know you need to, you're building something.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: You need to put something in a place.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like the media, like Shannon just said about the media release forms, or what's another one?
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: Gosh, there's a the the laundry of them.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the laundry.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: These are little the believe it or not, these are called your SOPs, your standard operating procedures, or some people call them playbook, or some people call them micro plays, whatever you call it.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: I call it SOP, Shannon.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think calls it SOPs.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: This is where it's coming out of the head, and you're starting to build your business.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: So you're you're shifting from awareness to intention.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not I none of it, none of it's easy.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: None of it's easy because I I feel like again, I and I said this maybe in the last episode, is that it's a you're you're in your own habit, it feels comfortable.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: Everything's running smooth, everything's running smooth, and then bam, something happens, and it's like okay, this has happened three times this month.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: Or we'll talk about cancellations, right?
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's always a big one.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: Cancellations is a big one.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: I implemented that we charge 100% if you're not, if you have not, and this is not for people that are sick, you know.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: I give grace.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: We're talking about people that have chronic.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that oh, I'm on vacation and I totally forgot about it.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: I have that happen uh the day the last month, which and I'm so sorry, blah blah blah.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: I can't fill that spot.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: This is our busiest time of the year, which is December.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's our busiest time of the year, and and that just threw everything off.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: It could have, it could have financially for my cleaning tech for everybody.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: And because I had that in place, the 48 hours 100% uh they know they automatically know.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: Go ahead, go ahead and charge my uh I you know I understand I I messed up, it's not my fault, or somebody forgot to leave the key, lockouts, stuff like that.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: Back when I was Mary Maids, there was many incidences where we would show up to the house and no one we wouldn't, we didn't get paid.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: They were like, Oh, so sorry, see you later.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for thanks for coming in.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: But I just drove all the way over here, and that's why I was like, or the house takes the hit, you pay the clinging tech, and then you get nothing, and then it ends up eating away at your profit margin, especially if you have five or six or seven of them.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: That can happen too.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, you you gotta be really careful with your baby that you're growing, and it is that it this is like bur or like raising a child.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: It really is, and there's a lot of us out there, and like uh so you yeah, we're you start deciding to solve them deliberately, and what that means is you now you're you're like I'm putting that policy in place, and you might seem like it's like nickel and diming in there, it's not, it's it's you don't want this problem to continue to hit you, right?
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: Or to hit your cleaning tax, or when you're in the car losing your temper and you're like, this is never happening again! Never we've all we've all done that one or twice once or twice.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: So phase two is where you've noticed the problems, and in phase three is where you decide to solve them deliberately and with intention.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: So you stop asking what should I do next, and you start asking what should exist so this doesn't depend on me anymore, so that you can start to delegate even more things to your staff so that it ends up developing them and they end up staying longer because they're getting something more out of it than just cleaning houses.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that that question alone changes everything.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: So phase three is where you stop reacting and you start designing.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: So if you have not done so, we're in the beginning of the year.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: What things do I want?
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: If if you had a Christmas wish list on things that you wanted to fix for your cleaning business, laundry list them out.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then you can go to, you know, you can either go backwards or forwards, or if you're having trouble, you can go to Chat GPT and say, How can I fix this in my business?
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: And and that will, and and sometimes you need a coach and sometimes you don't.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: I told three people last week that they didn't need a coach.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what the other people are gonna tell them, but they weren't, I'm happy to take their money, but I'm not I'm like, you're not ready for me.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm happy to come and show up and dangle my lasso, right?
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: No, you have to be, you do whenever hiring a coach, you guys, you have to be ready to be criticized and do what they tell you to do.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: But how I got to where I'm at is she Shannon told me what to do, and I went out there, and not only that, and then and then I came back to her and celebrated with her.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I did it, I did it so many times, so many celebrations, so many milestones.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's this is a lot of uh there's been heavy times and there's been really empowering times, and that's all part of this process.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, and it looks like it says this is often the first time business owners realize how much they were personally propping up.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you were the support, you were on the bottom pushing everybody up, and that shifts so that you're starting to delegate more to your cleaning techs and your crew or your shift lead or whoever you have.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: So you yeah, and then then things then you can go on vacation and you're like, so I didn't get a call from anybody.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: Were there any fires?
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, don't worry about it, but yeah, it you can get there.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: And Jamie's left on vacations a couple of times already, so that's been really nice.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: I did baby steps, uh you know, I um because I had systems in place, and uh systems are these little micro plays, whatever, in place for me to set up so that I could do to be able to do that.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I would start off with you know a long day trip or two days, then it went to four days, and the place never burnt down, which was a bar, which was awesome.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know that it blew my mind that it was like I am on a vacation, and was a maybe a little guilt at first, not now, but a little guilt at first.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm like, I'm making money while I'm out.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: We're still making money, it just blew me away on from employees, from having employees, and it was just and and I mean the right employees, not just internet.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean the right and it just well, and it was like they're making money too.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: I had my systems in place, and it was it we it's very nice whenever it starts doing that, and there's not times that not to say that there's times whenever I I still still to this day have the oh, that's gotta go somewhere.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's gotta go somewhere on our CRM or I use Connect Team.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm still building that.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's a little, that's a huge, it's like building almost like Jabber, but for employees for HR, for the HR, that's where I'm what phase I'm in it.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm building something for human resources, and it's amazing to realize how much stuff lives in your head.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: If it lives in your head, how do how are you how people are so dependent on you then?
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: You're the only person that can fix it.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want to be the only person that can fix anything.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, you can really you really need to get it out of your head.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's it can be very hard sometimes.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: And people it's a whenever it feels uncomfortable like that, which it is, that's growth.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: Believe it or not, that's growth.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: I know I'm going through a grow another growth spurt.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: It feels like I'm going through rubber.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: My face is going through rubber, and you know you can get through to the other side.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's just, and because I've been in this place of growth before, I know that that's what this is now.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: You may see it differently.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like some people might turn back around and be like, I don't, I don't, I'm not ready for all that.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: But whenever that's okay, whenever you take that those steps to go forward and trust yourself, trust that you're a good business person, not just a good cleaner.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people are just great cleaners and start off solo cleaning.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: Some people, you know, don't want to do, you know, if you don't want to do this forever and run a business, you're going to have to and scale, you're going to have to put it down and put these systems in place to build your building.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately that needs to be your decision.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Don't let anyone pressure you into doing something you don't want to do.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because there are, I know plenty of solos who've been doing it 35 years.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: Bless them for having the capacity on their bodies to continue to do so.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: But then there's the the other part of the industry, which is mostly what we talk to, who do want to scale.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it's exciting to watch and see and be present.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: I get to see a lot of inside baseball stuff that not everyone is exposed to because of the relationships I have established in this industry.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I get to see all the, I get to see the juicy bits, right?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, make sure that's your decision.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: And you have to think of how many decisions have only lived in your memory, getting them out on paper.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how much consistency depended on your presence.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: And Jamie brought up a valid point, making sure you're starting to delegate.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then how often problems were solved through effort instead of systems.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: So effort, what that means is a crisis has happened.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, you immediately roll a deck to the last episode that happened.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: You got the five steps in your head, but it's not written down anywhere.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: So you have all of your cleaning text running around like a chicken with their head cut off, and you're like, well, you just need to do steps one, two, three, four, five.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you they're like, Well, we didn't know steps one, two, three, four, five.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe one of them did because they went through it with you and they might remember maybe two of the five steps.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: But unless you start to take active steps, those guys are not gonna know.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: They're not gonna say, well, go to paragraph C, part A.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is what we do in this incident, right?
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: So far, yeah, so far down into the never ending hole, right?
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: It can, and it can be a never ending hole.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then the realization that can feel confronting, once you start to acknowledge that you know you cannot walk on water, which is totally fine, you start to see.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Where the patterns start to repeat themselves so that you can start to take steps.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: And again, it can be an episode where you go out to your car and you curse at like a truck driver, and it could be that you ate 1500 bucks and that makes you like, whoa, right.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: But if you start to take steps in the direction you need to go, it's not confronting.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: You're trying to take the bull by the horns and get some sort of strategy going.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the first time you grab the bull by the horns is probably not the best idea.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: I've watched those things in Spain every year.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, just move out of the way.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever seen that, Jimmy?
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: And they get bored by the hook.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like those guys are mad.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: They got, you know, they get bored and everything.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's pretty graphic.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I sure have.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: But this isn't, you're not doing anything wrong.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's no, that's not what this is about.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: This is you're starting to see that what was living inside of your head can't work if you don't get it out.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: If you're not building something, you can't, it's unsustainable, it's unscalable.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: And systems really are about control.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you have systems in place, you can release a lot of control.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I can tell you in the beginning, yeah, it feels a little uneasy because it feels like, am I doing this right?
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: But whenever you start seeing people get what you have put in place, boy, I'm telling you, it's so gratifying.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, oh my gosh, it's working, it's working.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: And as you guys know, I have so such bad ADHD.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm all over the place.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: You you guys can tell probably through the podcast, but I get really excited and passionate.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: That was the same for me trying to tell people, but whenever I'm able to put it down, structured to build the business, and somebody gets it, boy, that's it.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's a moment of happiness.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, the the phase three is not about the systems.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: Is that systems are about rigged?
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: They're not.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: Systems are about removing decision fatigue.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: How many of us have gotten so tired?
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how many times do I need to repeat myself?
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how come this at the last 50 times?
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: How come they're not getting this?
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then that's also that's creating consistency without micromanaging, because then you're you're you're micromanaging, you're fatiguing your own self, and you are like that needs to go down into a system that needs to go into something and making uh outcomes predictable.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: This and this happens, then it's predictable, you know.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: You're you're you're you're setting your business up for success.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: It can't live here, you guys.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: It cannot live in your head.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: It can't.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: So here's an example of making outcomes predictable.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: In the summer in Arizona, we get the monsoons that come through and they are brutal.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: It'll be dry, the sun is out, this the birds are singing, like in the movie Heidi, and then storms come in right away, and it's not like a tink, tink, tink.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's like yeah, yeah.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it throws the breaker off.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to have a policy in place on what to do if we arrive on site and there's no electricity or no water running because everyone's on a well out here, right?
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: And you need the well, the electricity to make the well pump the water up to the surface.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to have a policy in place on what to do should monsoons happen.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: And we, you know, due to inclement weather, we have no control over the weather.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: If we cannot access water or electricity, we will have to reschedule you.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, we will charge you a show-up fee of the full cleaning amount.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: And and that's an outcome that's predictable.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that the you've you've settled it down, the customer knows they're gonna have to pay, the cleaning tech knows they're getting paid, and you can just keep on marching on.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: So either you can fit them back in the schedule maybe on the following day, maybe you can't fit them on the schedule, maybe they have to wait a week, but that's a predictable outcome.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: We've had to have that.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: We we have atmospheric rivers, but I'm sure that's the same thing as a monsoon.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: So they used to call them seasonal creeks.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we have yeah, if anything is uh out of our control, like whether a lot of you get snow.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: Trust me, I've lived there, been there, done that, I've lived all over America.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I I know what it's like to drive in snow or to shovel.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you would have a system in place that would say what for your for your cleaning text on what to do.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: What what to do for your clients?
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: Their clients sometimes don't know.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, for us, it's earthquakes too.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but thankfully you don't have to deal with that.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: I hate them.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's yeah, a system is simply a decision you don't want to keep remaking or keep saying it over and over and over and over, or something happens over and over and over.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's a system.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: You're you're putting a system down, you're putting it out of your head, into your computer, into your CRM, into your connect team, into whatever some people use clickup, whatever it is that you're using, you're putting that in there.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: I myself am I'm creating it, and it feels really gratifying whenever you can finally go, oh I got that out of my head and onto this connect team.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: This is for my employee, but but I had to do that in the beginning for the client.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: Whenever I still constantly, that's whenever I still constantly working in the business in and out sometimes.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: And and when you're initially building, it can take a little longer on the front end, but once you have it built, you just reference the paper or the drive or wherever you're storing it.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's it's to build the right things first.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: So we all know, and you you hear me shout it from the rafters, you need to have a cancellation policy.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot tell you the importance of that.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: We are a professional trade, the 23rd.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: You hear me talk about it on my soapbox all the time.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: So you're you need to build things the right way, and that usually means like pricing clarity, being specific, making sure that you're, as we talked about in the last episode, price increases.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then sometimes you underbid a job.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: How to negate, you know, I underbid this, what do I do now?
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: Or I overbid this, what do I do here?
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: Or they've changed the dynamics and they don't use the top floor or the basement, they only use the main level.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: How much is that?
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because they've been with you for 15 years, right?
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: So those are pricing clarity, scope clarity.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: We talk a lot about scope creep.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: And people test, they're like kids, like they're like brothers and sisters, they're siblings.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: My two like egg each other on and egg each other on and egg each other on.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: They just know which buttons and which combination to push to get the other one to set off.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: And clients are the same way.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: They don't intentionally, I would like to believe, they don't intentionally go about their day to go, how can I mess with Shannon and Jamie?
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: I I think that they they have had it happen because everyone has bent over backwards to appease them.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: So when Shannon and Jamie don't do that, they're like, Well, the other cleaner did.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, why why didn't you go with that cleaner company?
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: They they went out of business because they weren't charging enough, they didn't have pricing clarity, and then processes top to bottom, left to right.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone talks about the speed cleaning method.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Debbie Sardone, for taking Jeff Campbell's product, making it even bigger and better.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: We are all thankful for you for that.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: But if you don't know top to bottom, left and right, you're gonna have to go and look up those videos with Jeff Campbell in the 80s.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's awesome.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: What is it?
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: I have the buttons.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: But you know what?
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's a very uh I I have a little that's another thing.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: I have worksheets in English and in Spanish that I have ordered from speed cleaning.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: They have to do a test.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: I have taken out all the tests in the back, the answers in the back.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: They have a little card.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: There's eight steps, 10 steps of how to do make every make every move count.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: Boy, I think I probably need to revisit those.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a while since don't don't quote me.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we can do an episode just on the speed cleaning steps in the future.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, in the future, that would be great.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: But I think I do have them here.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: Hold on.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: So we have them make every move count.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, guys.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: Tools work from top to bottom.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: If it isn't dirty, don't overclean it.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: Don't rinse or wipe surfaces before it's clean.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: Don't keep working after it's clean.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's where the OCD comes in because I'm guilty of this myself.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: What if you're doing isn't going to work, then shift to a heavier-duty cleaner tool.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: Keep your tools in impeccable shape.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: So don't let your cleaning techs out there with broken brushes trying to scrub bathrooms.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: Repetition makes for smoother moves.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: Pay attention to what you're doing, keep track of your time, use both hands.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: And if there's more than one of you, work as a team, not as an independent.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, we could have a whole episode just on that for you guys.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: But that okay, take that.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: He campbell got that out of his head and made a whole book about it.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: He put got several versions of it.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: Tell you what, he was a very, very successful person.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: Debbie Sardone has since taken actually her daughter, Amy Sardone, has taken over the speed cleaning, the chemical part of it.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh huh.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: And scientists, from what I remember.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a system, and that is a system that was made back in the 80s, that is used to this very day in almost almost everyone's business.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: A lot, yeah.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody, a lot of successful businesses, cleaning businesses.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: So here are some common traps and mistakes that you can make in phase three.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: Trying to systemize every scenario at once, just pick one, flesh it out, test it, make sure it works, tweak it some more, do the same thing over, and and do repeat that process.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: Creating documents that no one actually uses, and you you can be guilty of this because you can create this wonderful document and never make anyone read it, or like, didn't you read the document that I wrote on toilet cleaning?
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, no, right?
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm guilty, totally guilty of that.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh, I must have not have given it to you.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: Overbuilding before validating, giving someone a big chunk of information without them working through all of the kinks is overwhelming to anybody, so don't do it to them.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: Too much at once, too much at once, slow it down, do it, do it a little bit at a time.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: You're building this, you're building a little bit at a time, and then forgetting that systems must be taught, not just written.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I am a very visual hands-on learner.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: I learn by doing, not everybody learns by doing, but some people learn by reading.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: I I both I need both of them to work, and I need it to happen multiple times before I go, oh my god, I got it, right?
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just one of those people.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm gonna say connect team is we're in the day and age now.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, just because I said uh connect team, I'm the one that's doing that.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: You there's other apps out here, but we are in the day and age of technology for you to be able to read and take video and put that into your little your system right of how we are doing this.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: So and then systems only work if they're simple.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: Keep it keep it simple, stupid.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a big advocate of that.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: If they're accessible, like they're not in the binder that's in the back of the office underneath the box by behind the purple thing, and that they're repeatable, so they have to be easy to implement.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: So don't make it 72 steps for speed cleaning, make it just the 12 steps for cleaning.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know why this hopped up here, so just yeah, I we have a I believe it's a 21-point system that we uh do that we check.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: So make sure that you know maybe video yourself.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe this is an ideal, maybe video yourself doing this is so that you don't forget, but whenever you actually video yourself, don't forget to go and put that down somewhere.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: Again, we're in the day and age of technology.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: If you're still a pen and paper person, good for you because boy, and if that that pen and if that paper just stays at your house or in your office, how is that where is that going out to for anybody else to learn that?
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: Right, they're not gonna learn because you can't read your mind.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: Don't gatekeep your don't gatekeep what you're doing.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you've had your system in place for protection of your business as well, you know.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a little bit of an identity shift that makes phase three work.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: This phase requires a specific identity change.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: So you'll move from I'll remember how this goes, because it's I'll do it later, to the business should know how this goes.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then everyone should be able to access that information to know how the business should go and not back like Will Shannon said, you know, blah, blah, blah.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: This should that shift is uncomfortable at first, especially for high performers.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: But it's the moment burnout starts reversing.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: So if you want to end the burnout and you're facing a lot of burnout in your business, adding some stabilization is going to be a good thing for you.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: You'll have fewer fires to put out, more predictable days, smooth running shifts, clearer expectations where you're going on vacation and you're earning money from employees while you're on vacation having a good time.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's a less emotional exhaustion.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: So your brain won't hurt at the end of the day because you had to overthink about the 57 fires you just put out for today.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that stability is what makes leadership possible later.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: Without phase three, phase three, without phase three, it's a tough thing.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: Phase four collapses, which is what we're going to talk about in the next time we meet up.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: And this phase is where burnout starts to heal.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is important.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: The system stops requiring you to compensate, and this is where the relief begins, not because the work disappears, but because the work becomes intentional.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: Everything that you do has an intention.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: You're no longer building the business around your capacity, you're building one around structure.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it, you know, it really helps me to stay on track.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: Trying instead of me trying to explain to somebody again.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: I have ADHD and me trying to train, forget about it.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm the worst at it because I'm just all over the place, you know.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: So having the system that, okay, look, the system that Shannon has made for the podcast.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: I have notes that I can follow.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_01: It keeps me structured and on track.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, I'll say shiny, we'll talk about something else, but it helps me stay on track.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: She has built this system, not just this system, but several others.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how you do it, but it's great.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks for joining us.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for sharing.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we'll we'll leave some stuff in the show notes on how you know if you need if you need some copy and paste, Shannon will leave some stuff down in the show notes for the Clean Freaks University.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: All her documents are down in there.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: Guys, give her a checkout.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's really helped my business, and I know that it'll help yours.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I cannot wait to see you next time.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: All right, that's phase three, the builder.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: And this, if this episode has hit you, here's your next step.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: Write down the top three problems that keep repeating in your business.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: And ask yourself what should exist so this doesn't depend on me anymore.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's going to be a game changer.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: We'll put resources in the show notes.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: And if you want to build the structure faster, visit cleanfreaksuniversity.com.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: Next episode, we're moving into phase four, the leader where systems become delegation and delegation becomes real freedom.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: Woohoo! Thanks for hanging out with us on Cleaning Business Life.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you've got value, leave a review and share this with another cleaning business owner who is ready to build for real.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see you next time.