Latest / The Kelly Jedele Show / The Not-To-Do-List: Things I No Longer Do In My Cleaning Business
Transcript
- Kelly Jedele: I remember so many times walking into like small restaurants or different things, and you see the policies like on the wall, and you're like, who did that? some weirdo did that, and so now they have a policy for it. So that's how I feel sometimes when I'm making policies Kelly: Welcome to the Kelly Jedele Show. I'm Kelly. 17 years of building businesses and zero interest in hustling myself into the ground. If you want the business and the life, you're home. Let's get into it. Kelly Jedele: So last week we talked about getting more clients. And the week before that, we talked about how we do what we do with the cleaning teams and how I would do things differently if I started over today. But today I want to talk about things that I do not do. So this is the cleaning business edition of this, but it can also relate to other businesses. So if you have your own businesses, There are things that we just don't do anymore, things that we've learned that don't work, that we put aside, that we have policies for, we have reasons that we don't do them anymore. So stick along with this and see which ones you would use, you would not use, and which ones you agree with, because I've got a few. I've had my cleaning business for 17 years, and in the beginning, I was your go to girl. I would do anything. I was chasing money, chasing clients, saying okay, letting things happen, letting employees do whatever they want. Like I was really, really trying to please everyone. And I will say, as things continued, it just didn't work. So I had to put policies in place. And it was it was pretty quick. I would say within the first year, I was working on policies. I had a a lawyer friend of mine who was very gracious and helped me come up with my agreement. And he's very just a wonderful man. And so we talked about like what I wanted and what were my challenges. And so we came up with an agreement between the clients and I. It's not a contract. Contracts are a little bit tricky in our day and age right now with a cleaning business type of businesses, trades and stuff. But I wanted to come up with an agreement. I'm willing to do these things if you're willing to do these things. And so some of those things are just really kind of common sense to me. But putting them on paper made them a little bit more workable and allowed me to push against them when I needed to. So I send these out in to our clients. On a regular basis, but I also have them for our employees. We have an orientation packet when they start their job. And then I have other just things that we just don't do in general. So the things that we don't do in general, I'll start there, I'll start there. I've talked about this before. We don't clean vacation rentals anymore. There is one exception to that right now, but it's a very small, tiny apartment and it's very doable. We can stick it in our schedule whenever. And it's very in our our area and we don't do laundry and we don't do supplies. So it's very managered managed by the client. We only do the cleaning. Typically in a vacation rental scenario, back when we were cleaning vacation rentals, we had 19 at one point. And we were doing the laundry turns and we were s restocking all of the supplies and really making sure everything was re ready for the next guest. And that was just too much. It didn't work. we had to have checklist for the cleaning staff to make sure that there was enough paper towels and toilet paper and soap and shampoo and all those things and cleaning out the refrigerator, dealing with alcohol, things left behind, things broken, like it was just too much. And also in Austin, which is where we're located, we have South by Southwest and ACL, and now Formula One as well. And so those weekends were huge weekends. And so every vacation rental. in Austin so was occupied. And so our Sunday, Monday, Tuesday was just packed with those. And now our schedule just doesn't align for it. Like we don't allow for it. We do not have availability to put in you know, five, ten, or what we had, nineteen at the time, vacation rentals on a Monday right now. So and and it has to be done between the checkout and the check-in time. So it just doesn't work. So we have said no to cleaning cleaning vacation rentals. I have another previous employee that has a small business and I give her those clients and that works out very well. The other is we don't clean offices anymore. We used to clean several offices. We were six days a week we were Monday through Saturday Saturday and several years ago we went to just Monday through Friday. And we I don't miss it. I do not miss that. I love having my weekends available and our teams get there 40 hours during the week, sometimes a few even extra hours during the week. And those offices are really after hours and on the weekends. So I give those to my friend that does refer those to my friend that does commercial cleanings and they're taken care of. So it's just not something that we do. We also don't start cleanings after 3 p.m. anymore. We used to do like into the evening because people wanted us there when they were. Getting home from school or work, and that just doesn't work for us anymore. Our day is from really like nine to four, eight to four for our teams, and so we try to get them done as close to four as possible, but that's travel and all of that as well, so resupplying supplies and everything. So we want to make sure that their day is not too long. so that's something important. We also work on making sure that we start our jobs on time. Some of our Want us to start at 9, but really we've got to get there and start by 8:30. So we do have those policies put in place. So, how about our policies for our employees? We allow the clients, the employees to take off a few days, but no more than three and 60 days. And so they have to they have to ask for those days off and they have to plan for them. So we encourage our employees to plan for emergencies so they don't plan all of their days off. So if something does Come up with them or a child or a family member that they have space in in their days off to take time off. That's really important because if when an employee is taking too many time days off, it really makes it hard for us to schedule our clients. And so it's a balance between us scheduling it our clients and them taking days off. So we've got to make sure that we have both to make the business work. we also have someone for our employees that helps us with supplies. So it's not just a free for all. So there's a supply area in our office and we have two people that help every morning to give supplies away. And so the They hand out supplies and they take they check them off for each team. And so they they can't just walk in and take things off the shelf. And that just allows the the the employees to be more mindful of what's happening. I I trust my employees. I don't think that they will take more than they need, but it's kind of a human condition. If you see a lot of things, you're going to take more than if it's a select amount of things. So I want them to be mindful of the supplies because it is an expense to the business. So I have someone that monitors monitors the that. Whatever you want expected, you have to be inspecting it. So that's one thing that we make sure that happens. all of the bottles for our teams are labeled. So if they happen to be filling up a bottle or replacing it and they happen to leave it in the office area or somewhere around in a different car or something, we know whose it is. That's important over the years. I've noticed that. It seems silly to label everything, but when you see a random bottle in the office, you know whose it is. So that's very helpful. It happened earlier this week. I saw you know a team. had left one of their products while they were getting their coffee and I just called them and they swung back by for it. So otherwise I wouldn't have known whose it was. So it's really nice to do that. I don't supply utensils anymore. This seems silly, but I was realizing that I was buying forks and spoons for my team members of 45 employees for multiple meals. And I was just like as an owner that's not my job. It's not my job to supply you with utensils or Kleenex for your car. So if you need that, you get that. Take it from the home. And so I bring my own, you can bring your own. Like that's let's make that happen. That's in an agreement. So I make sure that they do that. we also bag all of the rags. So each day we used to have just like the shelves with all the towels, the rags for the cleanings and all of every the mop heads and the sponges and they used to take what they needed. And then some ladies would take too many. And so there would be teams without rags for the day. And so now we pre pre-bag all of those rags for the day. And that seemed a little silly to me, but it just is what it is. So it makes the day go faster. Each team can come in and grab their bag. It's already been predetermined for their sponges, their mop heads and their rags for the day. And they take those and then when they get back, they just displaced, know, put the dirty ones where they go and the clean ones where they go at the end of the day. So that makes it just run a little bit more smoothly, make sure that everyone gets their supplies that they need for the day and we don't run out. It seems so silly to me sometimes to have these policies in place, but we really need them to make everything run smoothly and make sure that everyone is paying attention to everyone else's needs as well. So it's just a good thing. Our clients we've Got policies for our clients. We make sure that they have a have to have a credit card on file before we go to the cleaning. This is important. And we do have some people that have a hard time with that. There are some people that just don't feel comfortable giving a credit card over to us before we go to the cleaning. And so we we just don't allow that client. Like that we're we're not the great fit for them. If that's not okay with them, it's just not a great fit for us. We need a credit card on file. file before we book the appointment. We're not gonna charge you until after the cleaning because I think that's fair, but we need the credit card on file before we go. Same as that, we don't take checks anymore. I used to take personal checks and tracking those down or getting the right amount on the check written or a check bouncing or all that stuff we just don't deal with anymore. As well as having to get the paper, the physical paper, we don't take cash either. So the having to go to the bank or deposit the check with my phone and all of that, or we had a check depositing machine at one point. And we don't do any of that anymore. And that was kind of a slow decline on how we were taking cash and checks and now we don't anymore at all. And that that just makes everything run a little smoother. I know people are like, we're trying to save you the credit card fee, but honestly, I would rather pay the fee and not deal with trying to track people down for that. It just makes everything a little easier. Also, on that note, if your credit card declines for whatever reason, sometimes there's fraud on the card, sometimes it's declined because you moved and has a different address or maybe the it's just expired and the our system doesn't catch it, then if that's the case, we will only allow one cleaning to not be charged. So if we can't charge your cleaning and then you're a weekly client, we will not go to that next cleaning until you have updated your credit card with us. So we're only gonna let one cleaning go by. Cause I've had that in the past where we've we just keep cleaning and they don't update their credit card and then I'm out like you know, a thousand dollars. It adds up real quick. So So maybe not a thousand dollars. But you know, it just adds up real quick. So we gotta be real careful with what we allow and what is possible. So only one cleaning. And most people are really good about that. We it's very rare that they they don't figure that out. We send emails and if they don't see the email, we send a text message. There is a fee. We will charge a fee after we notify you three different times. And and then because that's our time that we're using to try to notify you and get that down. Anything that's outside of the automation gets a charge. So that's one of them. The credit card fee. So and then let's see and also we do charge for lockouts. So if we get to your home you have a scheduled cleaning with us and no one's We don't have a way in, there's no code, no way to get in the back door or anything like that, then we will charge for that cleaning 100%. Because our teams need to be paid, and we will send our team somewhere else, and we need to make sure that they're paid for those hours. Because when our teams are loyal to us and we are loyal to them, that's when you have consistent care at your home. So we've got to make sure that that happens. As well as the cancellation fee. We are very, very strict with our cancellation fees. We have we ask for two. Two business day notice if you need to cancel it or reschedule. So that's really tricky for people on Monday, Monday and Tuesdays. They've got to reschedule, you know, the week before in order to do that. But we make them do that. And we will have them if if they charge, if they try to change in 48 less than 48 hours, it's 50% of the fee. If it's less than 24 hours, it's a hundred percent of the fee. And there's no way that we can really make that easier for them or for us. I don't like it. But really honestly, our teams rely on their 40 hours a week. And so we if a last minute cancellation comes in, we can't refill that spot. And so we have to get that money from somewhere. A lot of times we have clients that are on a short list of like single moms or people that have cancer or they're dealing with some, you know, a death in the family or something like that. We have a short list of people that are on our Let Kelly Cares and we will fill that spot with those people. They're kind of like ready to go. And so that is a win-win kind of the client has to pay for the cancellation, but someone else is receiving the cleaning and our teams get the hours. But the fee is still there. So it's kind of just one of those things. So those are kind of some of the things that we do as we do and we don't do now that we've had the cleaning business and the policies and learned those things over the years. So I wonder what you have learned about things that you don't do over the years and things that you do. And it's it's one of those learning policies, learning learning things that we we do as we grow and learn what we're willing to put up with. And willing to not because I remember so many times walking into like small restaurants or different things, and you see the policies like on the wall, and you're like, who did that? Right? Like, you see these random policies. You're like, some some weirdo did that, and so now they have a policy for it. So that's how I feel sometimes when I'm making policies or you know, adding to the orientation packet for our employees. It's like, they did that. Now that's a real thing. I've got to make sure that we put that in the policies so no one else does that. So it's It's interesting to see how that works out with business. But as you grow your business, I hope that these policies are things that can maybe give you an idea of what works for you and what doesn't and how you can change. So if this Thank you so much for listening to our podcast today. And if this hit, please share it with another business owner, share it with another woman that's out there making life happen. And if you have any desire to be a sponsor for our podcast, please check out the show notes. We'll make sure to get you all the details you want for that. And have a great week. We will see you next week. Thank you. Bye. Kelly: That's the show. One favor before you go. Send this to one woman who needed to hear it today. Strong doesn't mean solo. I'll see you next week.