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CBL EP 172 Legacy Clients: How to Raise Standards Without Burning Down Your Business · Cleaning Business Life

• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back everyone.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: This is Tiny Bits of Life.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Jenny Miller, and today we're gonna talk about legacy client upgrades, how to raise standards without burning down your business.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: There seems to be a lot of iff when it comes time to raising rates with legacy clients.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: These guys have been through with you through thick and thin.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, started typically they start off with you in the beginning and they are like, oh my god, where did I find this person?
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Why aren't there more of you?
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: And as you start to grow and scale and realize that you're not making enough money because expanding and growing and scaling costs more money to run, it becomes really uncomfortable.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: So this episode is about it's not about being greedy.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about abandoning people.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's definitely not about blowing up your book of business overnight, per se.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: But this is about legacy client upgrades and why avoiding them quietly erodes your margins, your team, and eventually your leadership.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: And let's face it, it can't be icky.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: So let's dive in.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: And Jamie's out today, so it's gonna just be a little more direct, a little more owner level, and honestly, a conversation I see people avoid for years.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Jamie just couldn't make it today.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: So here flying solo.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: What are legacy clients?
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Legacy clients are the ones that you start off with the beginning.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: They're your first like clients, and you're just like, yes, I got this client, right?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And and they're so nice, they're just happy.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: They there's a little bit of idol worship that happens because they're your first clients.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: You want to do an excellent job.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's just you typically out in the field.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of things going on.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: But as you start to grow and scale your business and you want to start earning money and not have to clean forever and ever and ever.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: And if you do, that's totally fine.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Legacy clients should always be raised, regardless of the fact that they'll be never be at market current value.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: But they should always be raised because they should be also adjusted.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Everything else goes up in price.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Legacy clients still need to have a small bump.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: It won't be current market value, but it will be a small bump for you.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: So it will add up.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then eventually what will happen is legacy clients will just fall off your schedule.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so, and legacy clients really aren't bad clients, right?
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: They're usually early adopters or your survival clients, right?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, yes, I'm gonna make it.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna be able to pay my car payment.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna be able to pay my cell bill.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna be able to do these things.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: And they're usually friends of a friend of a friend's, and then you you realize that, you know, there are no friends in business, and that's a topic for another day.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll just do it cheap.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'll just do it cheap for now, clients, right?
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: They're the ones who are always shocked, the ones, I'll just do it cheap for now.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: When you actually go, well, you know, just let you know you're getting a special deal, you're getting the Shannon deal, right?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: And you want to make sure that they understand if you're gonna give them just, I'm gonna do it for you at this price, but you can't tell anybody.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a reason why you can't tell anybody, because what will happen is Susan will go and tell Mary and Sharon and Susan and Virginia, who all live on the same block, that she's getting a fantastic deal.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then they get mad because their house is double the size and they can't figure out why you can't clean their 4,000 square foot house for a buck 20, right?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: So make sure that you're you're you're understanding what legacy clients are.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: And let's be honest, in reality, they paid the old you, they signed agreements that never existed.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Usually it's verbal, right?
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: You never really want to make your legacy clients sign anything as you've, you know, gone to coaching and gone to ISSA or whatever convention is c up and coming.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's like nine or ten of them now.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's there's a lot.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: When there just used to be one and we had a small section at the ISSA show.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then they trained they trained your nervous system to tolerate chaos because they all they were always, they were more high maintenance.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't know any better.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't know what you didn't know, what you didn't know, right?
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And they didn't know.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a profitable doesn't always equal loyal.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: As you see, a lot of people are price reflective, right?
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: You could you could be with I spoke to someone the other day and she'd had these clients for 10 years.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, just finally, after 10 years, a decade, decided that she was gonna give them a small bump, five bucks, five whole dollars, less than a Starbucks.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, these people went on vacation every year, they had a new car delivered every year, they they sent the kids off to college.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they did all the the all of the life things that everybody else wants to do.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's the American dream, right?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: But when it came time to paying five more dollars an hour biweekly, right?
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: What is that?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's we know that I can't add when I'm doing this.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: But I must sale if my little brain just doesn't work that way.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: It turns off, it goes click.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: So five times 26.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: So$130 is what they dropped her for after a 10-year relationship, a business relationship.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: We had to be reminded that you know, there are no friends in business ever.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Your clients are not your friends either.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Regardless if you go to baseball games, hang out, have birthday parties, do all the things, there are no friends in business.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, um, and then being nice doesn't always equivocate being sustainable.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: And legacy clients are not the enemy, but they are frozen in time forever.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: They will forever be frozen in time.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they'll never catch up to the current price, ever.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's, you know, then there's the emotional core, there's the common avoidance avoidance reasons, there's fear of backlash.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh, man, the first couple times I did it, I wasn't sure what I was gonna get.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, fear of mass cancellations.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: I always talk about that, especially in the price increase.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: Boot camp, it's you only want to do a couple.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you've never done a price increase ever with your client base, do sprinkle them.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Do one or two at a time, see the results, then do one, two more, then see results.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Please don't call me and leave me a really bad message because you raised everybody at once and they weren't used to it and they all dropped you at once.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to be responsible for you not having income, right?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then there's there's guilt.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of guilt.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's mom guilt, there's business owner guilt, there's woman guilt.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's like, oh my god, these guys are my friends.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: They took me on when no one wanted to take me on.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm having flashbacks from my from my days when I charged hourly.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: I charged 25 bucks an hour.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: And at the time I was like, yeah, I made a lot, I'm making a lot of money.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when I learned to bid flat rate.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of people pleasing that happens a lot because we want to make everybody happy.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: We typically don't like conflict.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Conflict is disruptive, you know, it eats away at the eye the lining of your stomach.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's the scarcity mindset.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if they drop me, then I won't get another client.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: When in actuality, what will happen is another client who is at current market value will slide in, typically at a$50 or$100 more than what you were getting.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, oh, I get it.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's there's trauma from past income dips.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you grew up in a single mom home.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you, your mom went to college and she was never around, or maybe, maybe you got married and things were always tight and you you didn't know how to make income stabilize, right?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people I speak to in the industry, this is their first foyer into entrepreneurship and let alone being the leader.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: There could sometimes be dips, common dips.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then avoiding legacy clients doesn't keep you safe.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: It delays the reckoning.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: So if you wait 10 years, or another person I spoke to had been cleaning these same houses for 18 years, didn't clean the cleaning anymore in her house, but sent in actual workers.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: So she was paying for the privilege of cleaning their home.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: She had to take on a full-time job to supplement the income that her business was not making.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Again, the topic for another podcast.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then it all kind of ties into leadership, right?
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Your team's gonna fill it first because you're constantly like, why did you take two extra minutes in that house?
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Why did you take five minute extra minutes in that house?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Or if they're working at teams, the two minutes turns into 10 minutes, right?
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: The two the team of two turns into 10 minutes.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you're working in triples, that's 15 minutes per house.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: It starts to add up throughout the day, right?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, then burnout increases, and then you have a higher turnover, and then there's less job satisfaction.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: And after all, these are your golden unicorns, right?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then you then you personally as a leader, you start resenting your calendar.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Oh God, Mrs.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Smith, she's still at 75 bucks.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, you guys are gonna have to hustle it today.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not the cleaner's fault you haven't raised rates, right?
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: It puts undue pressure on your cleaning text when you go, okay, you're gonna have to hustle it.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Are you okay with that?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: And they're of course they're gonna say yeah, but they're gonna be like, yeah, Shanna's crazy.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, there's no way that house is 3,000 square feet.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: I still can't believe it's 75 bucks.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, right.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: So there's that whole dynamic of that pressure that you inadvertently add onto your team.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's not necessary.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then you avoid looking at your numbers because you know it's a loss leader every time.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: It comes through every every tweaks, right?
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Oh God, this house should be 325 bucks.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm only charging her 75 bucks.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm, you know, then I'm eating.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: We can do the math, right?
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Let's let's do the math here while we're at it, right?
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Let's see if we can get the phone to work in the cooperation.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Here we go.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: So if we if it's it's if it's 75 bucks and it's supposed to be 325 bucks, right?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's 250 bucks you're eating each time you go to that house.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: So you either need to drop them or you need to raise the rates.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you jump them up from 75 bucks to a buck fifty, you're still not going to make any money on the house.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a that's a really tough conversation to have with that particular client, where the rest of them will just get a small bump regardless, and they eventually will catch up some of some sort, or they'll drop off the schedule.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: But this person, you either need to pay up, like put up or shut up, basically.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: They either need to pay what the current market value is, or they need to you they need to fall off your schedule because it's just it's not good for business.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to kind of bring in your math authority without getting technical.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: So costs, costs include margin compression, wage stagnation, team churn.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's when your teams are constant, you're constantly turning and burning.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you're constantly turning and burning, there's something wrong with who you're hiring.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: So look internally there first, then look at your system and then company culture and then pay.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Unequal service expectations.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: I just mentioned.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, can you guys hustle it for me?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm only getting 75 bucks on this one.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's 3,000 square feet.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: Who's gonna be able to clean that in less than an hour?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's policy inconsistency.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: So for the$75 house, you allow it to happen, but the the other houses where you're making money, it's not so it's not so stressful.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's inconsistency, and those two people end up being neighbors, and they say, Well, Shannon's only chart making me pay$75.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then Susan calls and goes, Well, why am I not paying$75?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: So it becomes that whole dynamic.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then it becomes decision fatigue because you just don't want to deal with it.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Totally get it, totally been there.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want to give yourself decision fatigue.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: You want to be able to delegate and have this be an automated process.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: You want the cleaning techs to have their cleaning kits, drive over to the house, clean the house, do a little mini break, drive over to the next house, do the second house if you're doing solos.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: If you really have a unicorn, then maybe they're doing a third house.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: You just never know.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: So legacy clients don't just underpay, they overconsume.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I have found that sometimes because you, you over-indulge them.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: You, you set, you've set them up for failure.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: You've uh they've gotten all of the sparkle that Shannon has to offer.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then then when Susan's in there, she doesn't have time to give all the sparkle because you're not, you've told her you need to get in and out of the house.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm only getting 75 bucks, right?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: So this is stuff to think about when you when you start to delegate and get the price increases to happen.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: And they do overconsume and they don't understand why they can't have the bed made, and they don't understand why this isn't happening anymore, they don't understand why that doesn't happen and why this can't happen and why you don't want to chat and all this other stuff.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then examples you can riff on are, you know, then there's, you know, the extra text, the special favors.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, can you let can you let Bobby out?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: He's got to go potty and there's no one home and the pets that are called out, blah, blah, blah.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Or we've never been charged for that.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, because when they had Shannon, Shannon was given all the sparkle, right?
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Susan can't give all the sparkle because you're only getting 75 bucks on the house.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: So now you're wanting to start to charge.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Or a lot of cleaners, I hear a lot of cleaners go, Well, you know, you shouldn't nickel and dime everybody.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Labor has become so expensive.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Charging the rice price point, the scope of the job has changed immensely.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like when I was a Merrimaid, we did the floors on hands and knees.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: That was old school.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: I would never make anyone do it on hands and knees unless it absolutely needed to be done because you saw something down there or whatever.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: But I wouldn't expect someone to do a whole kitchen on hands and knees like Merrimaids did.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Or they're they're skipping deposits.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I've had this happen actually last year.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: I had a legacy client who I had for eight years.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: They were moving, and mom wasn't doing so well, and they were gonna put her in a home.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: So mom wasn't paying the bill anymore.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: It was the daughter, and I didn't take a deposit on this move out cleaning.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: And guess who took the shaft?
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then she tried to nitpick her way through it.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, dude, you walked it and said it was totally fine.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: So then I had to go to court, and it was ugly, and then it was like the we both live in the same small town.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Where if I had followed the procedure, it wouldn't have been an issue, right?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's the, you know, because they're your legacy clients, they always get away with last-minute schedulings.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna make it today.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going out to lunch with Susan.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Can we do it next week?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like you have open availability, and that's actually not the case, right?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Your systems can't mature if your client base refuses to, just something to think about.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: And a legacy upgrade is not a punishment, it's not a surprise, it's not a cash grab, even though I've had people go, I was a nurse and I have a college degree, and I never made that much money.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm like, you were an employee.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: There's a big difference.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: Owner operator has all these expenses for operating, and employee is just there filling in time.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, when people throw it in my face, well, I had a college degree, I'm like, I have three.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like, give me a break, right?
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to rub it in my face about how you're better than I am because you're not, right?
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's a standards alignment, a business maturity checkpoint, and uh, it's a choice for both sides.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: You could raise the rates and they could say, you know what, Shannon this just isn't gonna work out anymore.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: I it's not in my budget, or I get it.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's the people who try to shame you because you raised your rates, or how dare you, even though you know that they've had a brand new Corvette delivered every year for the last 10 years.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's all great as long as it doesn't affect the Corvette fund, right?
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that's there's nothing wrong with having a new carvier.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just giving that because it's an easy example.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: So there's types of upgrades.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: There's pricing adjustments, there's policy alignments.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes if you have someone who's really difficult who cancels all the time, they actually might never have been a good client and you're just now realizing it.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: You can look at your schedule.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Out of 26 cleanings and they rescheduled 14 of them, that's gonna tell you that they're monthly and they're paying, you know, a lower rate because monthly is higher, right?
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: They're their frequency changes, as I just mentioned, and then there's service tier changes, right?
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: So they no longer want, if maybe you offer a premium package, or how many times do we see in the mom's group?
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, well, I want a cleaner to come in and do all the all the stuff stuff that they don't want to do.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: They I want all the I want the bathrooms deep cleaned, I want all the baseboards wiped down, I want the vents hand wiped.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like, but that's not regular maintenance.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: I have to constantly go in the Facebook group and say, this is great, but this is considered just to let everyone know, because there's 35,000 people in this group, those items are, we can do those items, but those are deep cleaning items.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: So it would be charged accordingly.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it kind of sets the tone for the rest of the cleaners, right?
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because we're all watching.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: So it comes to a point, like you're like, well, okay, Shannon's right.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: I need to increase my prices.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: So how how do you do it without chaos, right?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's a good way of doing it, and then there's a bad way of doing it.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: And and like I said, sprinkle, sprinkle them across, just do a couple of them at a time.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: With ours, they automatically know at the end of the year they get a small bump.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's just automatic.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Once in a while, we'll hear someone like, Why did you raise my rate?
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I raised it every year in a row for the last four years in a row.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, Oh, okay.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: So not all legacy clients are equal.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Remember that.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: You have to decide what your non-negotiables are.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe you have one out of the 26 cleans, they canceled 10 or 14 of them.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: That might be something that screws up your schedule.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you're starting to be out of the field, that clean tech's not going to get paid for 14 of those visits.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: They're going to get mad, right?
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: So you're going to have to fill in the spot with someone who's more stable.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: Communicate once and clearly.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, you're not having to repeat yourself.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: There are circumstances when you have older clients, because I have a huge senior base where I am, that you will have to repeat yourself because they're having memory issues.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's a whole different thing.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to decide what you're gonna deal with and what you're not gonna do with.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about the regular Joes who don't have memory issues and who aren't listening to what you're saying.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, and then you can offer a window, not a negotiation.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they'll try to keep the same price and then change out rooms, but they have a hard time because they don't understand that a bathroom takes more time than a bedroom.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: So you'll have to be very firm on what that scope of that job is.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's called scope creep.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then let adults choose.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: There isn't, it's always hurtful when you've been cleaning for someone for over a decade and then they get hostile towards you because you raised it$5.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: It really speaks volumes on what they actually feel and what what where you actually were in the ecosystem of their lives, right?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: So um let adults choose.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: If they don't want it, it's totally okay.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: If they do want it, it's great, right?
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then as you start to bumble along and tweak your numbers a little bit more, the eventually they'll just fall off because you're gonna have to keep increasing the rates.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: And there are times where they actually get two price increases in a year.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: When we when the other president was in office, the economy was different.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: So every time we had a bump in the economy and they raised the rates, I encouraged everyone to raise their rates because everything kept going up in price.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: It was crazy.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: So if someone threatens to leave over an unfair upgrade, they were already misaligned and it's time to say goodbye.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it's totally okay.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Just so you know what?
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really sorry this doesn't isn't gonna work out.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you ever change your mind, I'm happy to put you back on the schedule.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's all you have to say.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing major.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: We don't need to say hurtful words.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: This we're not in second grade, and clients are not property, even though sometimes we think they are.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then you can kind of figure out where you go from there.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Today's episode was brought to you by Clean Fricks University, where we teach cleaning business owners how to stop guessing and start leading with systems.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: If this conversation has hit a nerve, it's probably because you're in you're past the beginner stage, and that's exactly where the systems first cleaning business academy is built for.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Legacy clients don't define your future, but avoiding them does.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: And just remember that growth requires discomfort.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: Respect is built through clarity and firm boundaries.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: You are allowed to evolve, you are allowed to make money, and you are allowed to profit.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so tired of people saying, Well, I can't believe that this is what you make.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: You make an outrageous amount of money.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: And they try to shame people into compliance, and that's actually not what's required.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: We're excuse me.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: When we go into business, someone somehow or another, everyone thinks that house cleaning is a hobby.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, just laugh all the way to the bank.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's just the reality of it.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Businesses don't fail from upgrades, they fail from avoidance.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: You don't owe anyone the right to keep you small, keep on marching on.