Latest / Cleaning Business Life / From $100K to $2M: The Systems Behind Growth | Ep. 206

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From $100K to $2M: The Systems Behind Growth | Ep. 206 · Cleaning Business Life

• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to the Cleaning Business Life Podcast.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: I am with Shannon Miller.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: Miller Millier.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: Shannon Miller.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I am your co-host, Jamie Runko.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: And today, an episode, we are talking about scaling pains and when your business outgrows your systems.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Woot woot.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Seashells on the seashore.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes when your business is growing faster than your systems underneath it, that's when things feel really chaotic.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that's going to be the topic of today's conversation that we're going to have because there are pain points as you scale.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: There's pain points from when you go to 100,000 to 300,000.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: There's more pain points when you hit 500,000.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Then again at 725 and then a million, and then it hits 2 million, and then 3.5, and it goes up and up and up, and we, you know, 11 million or 12 million or 20 million.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: There's no, there is no top right now to I there's a pain point for every area.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: And we're gonna kind of break that down a little bit for you guys today.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: So growth magnifies problems.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not a bad thing.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's just you have to have some systems in place before you go on to the next bump in the road.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's like going on a pink cheat tour in Sedona, right?
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: They go four-wheel driving, you gotta have a path, they know which path to go, which rock to go on, which rock to not go on.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're struggling with scheduling at 10 clients, you'll struggle even more at 50 or 100 or 200 or 500 in a day.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, that it's a huge myth.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: So you need to have those systems in place so that you have smooth sailing.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: And if you you will it'll go smooth for a long time, and then you hit a bump in the road and you'll be like, Oh, I gotta fix it.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I I remember thinking that once we got bigger, we'd have a fewer problems.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: You have a different set of problems.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, instead, it the problems have changed.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: So there's different problems at every every aspect of the growth.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: So whenever we're first starting out, the when we're trying to gain all the all we're worried about is getting the clients, right?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's all we're that's all we're trying to get.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: But when you're bigger, we're worried about servicing clients, routing clients, hiring, onboarding, retention, communication, and what that looks like between you and your team.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: Quality control.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're into the quality control.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: We have QCs that do random check-ins.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: And and this was nothing planned because you know, I was just down trying to grow this business, but now that we're in this area of growth, it's you gotta stop, pump the brakes, readjust, and yeah.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it's different problems and even bigger consequences.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: So there's more, you have more skin in the game, the risks are bigger, your payroll is larger, there's a whole different layer of your responsibility.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the first walls I see, uh, as I mentioned, is the$100,000 to$350,000 range.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when you're you've become an employer.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: You you you've outgrown yourself, you're no longer cleaning if if you started your business that way.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so you you get to the$100,000.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Typically, even a solo cleaner now should be hitting$100,000.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so you hit the$350 range, and you're like, okay, what's next?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then you're you're trying to lead people.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you and then this area, the 100 to 350, a lot of people are still in the business cleaning.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: So now you're doing all the jobs, you're doing two jobs.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: Not only are you like scheduling payroll, you're doing all the jobs.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: You're and still cleaning.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: You're cleaning houses and and still trying to run a cleaning company.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of people, it's just it's just starting to become not you're not able to do that so much anymore when you agree.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: I I think a lot of people think they're failing when they hit that, right?
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: But everybody goes through it.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's you're not failing if you hit that.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's just tweaks need to happen along the way.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it like with any business that you're growing, if you don't tweak along the way, that's when you run in and you can go bankrupt.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so you're not failing, you're just learning a completely different skill set for that size of a business.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so sorry, you guys.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm at my office and she's got some landscaping things going on out there in her office.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Go down the street.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: I thought this was a good idea.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe not.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: We're just gonna go with it.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's totally another wall around the 650 to 750 mark.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: What about you, Mick Jamie?
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: Where do you well?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: I do.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: I this is where the sticky note era has overtaken your life.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: You have notes everywhere.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: At least I do.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: I have notes everywhere trying to schedule everything.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: However, I this is kind of where the era I am at right now.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm no longer cleaning in the industry or I I did a big thing, a big girl thing, and I went and got rid of my work shirts.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: And those of you guys that know how big of a deal that was for me, I I like literally like text Shannon.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: I was crying.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: I tried to tell my husband, and he was like, huh?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, this is such a big deal.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: What do you mean, huh?
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Anyways, you're you're you have voicemails going, you have all this other stuff still going, and you're trying to build out these things, and you you're lost.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: You're you don't know where anything are is at.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: You're again, sticky notes have taken over.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's usually the sign that systems need to catch up to where you're at.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: And everybody talks about hitting seven figures, which is actually not, and I'm not trying to discount it.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's not as monumental as it used to be.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: We have a lot of companies right now hitting five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, twenty million.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I'm not trying to discount your celebration at all.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's just when you when you hit a million, you have a different set of problems.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: When you hit two million, there's a different set of problems with that.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of people don't talk about what it takes to operate a million-dollar business.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot to it when you're doing 50 homes a day versus 10 homes in a day or 20 homes in a day.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: And those are different skills.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: And at that point, the the mistakes are starting to get expensive.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: The bad hires.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: The bad hires can really, one bad apple can really just throw a doozy at you.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: Poor communication, that starts costing a lot more.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: Losing a client can cost even more.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: You can no longer outwork every problem.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: So you you there's tweaks along the ways.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then when you hit the two million mark, that has a different aspect.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: So you're probably doing roughly 100 to 125 houses every day.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then these numbers around, these are it to be arbitrary, these are actual numbers.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: When you hit a million, it's usually about 50 to 55 homes in a day, sometimes 58, depending on where your schedule is, how many monthlies versus weeklies.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Two million, you're you're roughly doing a hundred homes in a day.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: And if you guys are listening and cleaning, this is possible for you.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Don't think it's not possible.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: I I remember forever, I thought there's no way.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: I remember I whenever I first started working with Shannon, she's like, make a number that just seems laughable to you.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, 350,000.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: What?
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: I always like that.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Just would never that living in rural Humboldt County, California, just never seemed like a I just didn't think that's possible.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm finding out more and more that this is very much possible.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: Not only is my business doing good well, I have that whole you guys have heard me talk about it before that march to a million.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: There are other cleaning business owners in this county that are doing the same amount, if not a lot more than me.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: So it's and it we are rural.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: Whenever I say we're rural, we're very rural.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: So you're build you're building at this point, we're building a company.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's not no, it's not just a cleaning business anymore.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: You're actually building a company.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: You're you're building leadership within the company, you're building the company, you're expanding, you're starting to have a five, a three to five-year plan.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: You can see at the end of the tunnel.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: You might you might not be able to see really clear, but you can make a point A to point B like, oh my gosh, this is so doable.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: The business that got you to 250K is not the same business that gets you to 750K.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the business that gets you to 750 is still not the same as the 2 million mark.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: There's different, there's a whole different layer of responsibility when you get that big.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: So every level requires a new version of the owner, and you have to be able, you have to be willing to change with that.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes people and we're and we're notorious in the clean industry to DIY everything.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: You guys will do and you will research 50 YouTube videos before you make a decision.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm laughing because I've been there.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: I was there.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: One more.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think we all have.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think we all have.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's also, I don't think whenever you're up there, it's not possible to get there alone.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: I want to make that clearer.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think there's no possible way that you can do this completely off by yourself.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I know as cleaning business owners, or any owner, I'm sure, has a lot of control, micromanaging, and all that, but I believe that's whenever our bottleneck is.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of people don't realize that's whenever you're the bottleneck, right?
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: They think that they're helping, they think that they're staying involved, but they are actually slowing everything down.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's they gotta be able to, you have to be able to relinquish control.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: And and I we hear it a lot.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Jamie hears it, I hear it.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: No one will ever clean like me.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: You no, no one will ever clean like you, but that's not scalable.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I always reference the McDonald's business models because every person in the McDonald's location can work every other position, so it has to be scalable.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're doing too many details, you're you might not be able to sell a detailed cleaning as a regular maintenance cleaning, and you shouldn't be doing a detailed cleaning regular maintenance because the next person who comes to fill your shoes won't be able to achieve that goal.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna do something new today.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna do a mid-roll sponsor.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you who don't know, in the middle of the podcast, they put a little mini commercial.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna try this out today.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you guys hit yay or nay, we'll never do it again.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: But we're gonna read this real quick.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about it, and I'm like, okay, we finally did it.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: So before you jump back into today's episode, I want to tell you about something we've been working on.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you're looking for a way to increase revenue without adding reoccurring clients, you may want to consider a move out cleaning system.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Over the last 15 years, I've personally completed more than 20,000 move out cleanings, and I've put everything I learned into our move out cleaning system.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: You can check it out on my website, and that's Clean Freaks University, cleaningwitha K dot com.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Back to you, Jamie.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: No, back to you, Jamie.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: You can tell with all the rookies on doing that stuff.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's so great.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I you know what?
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: Because we have honestly the best audience.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: We have the best audience.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: So many people have reached out to me, and I just love each and every one of you guys.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought for the longest time we only had like 10 followers, maybe, and I'm so wrong, am I?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: I laugh at that now, but just lots of hugs, kisses, thank you.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: But we're now we're gonna go on to and talk about the owner bottleneck.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right, and that usually happens at the 650 to 750 mark.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: You're you've kind of delegated a lot of the responsibilities, but not quite.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it's getting, and Jamie says this a lot, getting it out of my head onto paper into an SOP or a procedure where people can reference.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: There's even Layla, if you guys haven't tried that out, Libby has it.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: You can check it out on Facebook, and it is geared towards cleaning companies.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: So all of that stuff you could just do a brain dump, it will categorize it for you.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: And if the people who keep asking the same questions, it makes you more efficient, it makes things faster for you.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that people are still really against AI.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: I can tell you, as a big advocate, I was against AI until like this last year.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think I have probably 600 or 700 separate feeds in my my chat GPT.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: I have not ventured off to Claude because I have the free version.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: I refuse to wait.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: You must come back in 20 minutes, like what?
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: So but I I do I have projects.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: I have like 27 projects going in there.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I use it for everything, and it does make your life easier.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, it does.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I will say that Claude is more geared.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm constantly at this stage of our business, I'm constantly running numbers and making sure that things like I'm feeding it.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm making sure that can we afford to do this?
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: Can we afford to do that?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what are my numbers?
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like constantly.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how people did it without I it's like I don't know, whenever the internet came, you know.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't know how we did it without that.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I would not know the numbers that I have now if I didn't have my hands.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: Good old pen and paper.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: I've done payroll from scratch, way back in the day before the internet took effect, and we had this big textbook.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: It was like a phone book for I'm dating myself.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: And you would have to roll back it in each payroll, and or if you memorized it and find where that person sat, depending on what they claimed and how many people, and it would tell you that the approximate amount to withdraw from their paycheck.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then sometimes the book wouldn't match what the IRS had updated, so you would owe extra money.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was just a nightmare.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, wow.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, it's also like everybody hated doing payroll.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you want to do a payroll?
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: But there is a bottleneck with owners, and every decision should not have to run through you when you hit a certain point.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: And if the business stops functioning and you you don't own a business, you just own a job.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I I and that's if that's what your what your goal is to have a job that you don't have a boss over, by all means bless you.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: We still love you.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, uh, there's no right or wrong way to do this.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I it I I'm gonna tell you guys, I I running this business is so much fun to me.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like, if you don't have that passion, I I don't know if this is a business for you, but I love being able to hire people.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: I love that I'm putting food on their tables, I love the things that I can offer them.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: I love that I got this new office.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: She does baby showers and Christmas party.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we have such a great company culture, and it's the thing is, is it it for me, it's fun.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: Is it stressful?
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: Hell yes, it's stressful.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: Heck yeah, it's it's but at the end of the day, it's fun.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm learning all these great things.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: The company or the the the community that we're in, the comarodity of being with everybody with you guys.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: I I love it.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: I absolutely love it.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, I got a little off track there.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: So until you're exhausted, then you're suddenly being needed by everyone doesn't quite feel so fun.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: And you want to make sure that you are scaling to where the size that you are, and making sure that you're fixing those systems as you go along.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: You're totally fine.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: So systems are not sexy, is where we are in our show notes.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: You guys, I got a I got this new thing.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not working right now.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: We are trying to be more efficient, but you know, and the reason why we have show notes is because we could easily go squirrel at any given moment.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just because kids and and things happen behind the scenes.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: We all know how Jamie is too.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it's we can agree that nobody starts a cleaning business because they love SOPs.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: We we clean because we're good at cleaning and we know their money is there.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's what it comes down to.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: And there is a lot you're you've hit the cleaning industry at the right time because it is booming.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: Even Grant Cardone is trying to sell cleaning systems.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: That blew me away.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry, that blew me away.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: What?
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: So if he's in on it, then you know that it's it's hit the right touch points.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: But but yeah, every do you guys know that every time you make you we create a new process, it gets easier and easier.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, oh I don't know what the feeling is like, woohoo! I did this.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I just so training gets easier, communication gets easier, hiring gets easier.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: Hiring does get easier because you can immediately decipher if you're still doing the hiring at that point, what you're looking for versus what you're not looking for.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of that stuff doesn't have to be done face to face anymore.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: We are getting more technologically advanced in our industry, things are more automated.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's all kinds of things that you can do that people are expecting now in the old school days, and and still to this day, I spoke to an operator that still does in-person interviews.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's how she gauges everything.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if she'll ever go entirely automated, but we discussed, you know, her taking baby steps to get in the right direction.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not so she can go on vacation and not have to make every decision in her business.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: But there are hidden systems behind the problem.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes owners think they have a people problem, and nine times out of ten they don't.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's usually a systems problem or a process problem.
• 22:05
  unknown: Yeah.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: And that's an important distinction because if five people are make the same mistakes, maybe it's not the people.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe the process isn't clear.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: Communication is usually what ends up happening.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then sometimes I'll say something and they'll they'll nod up and down, and in reality, they didn't hear anything I said, or they're like, I didn't, I was too embarrassed to ask what you meant.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm like, girl.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think people nod just to like, I'm a good listener, you know, and then they don't really understand.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, man, why am I still explaining myself over and over?
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: I've told you this several times.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: You nod at your head, yes.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's so here's a question: Does your business run the week?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Or does the week run you?
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: If if you get to if you go Monday through Friday, you're not seven days, and you get to Friday.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Are you exhausted or are you excited about the numbers that you hit?
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because we've all had weeks where it feels like chaos is making the schedule.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then you realize that constant emergencies aren't normal, they're system, they're symptoms, not systems.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: Seashells on the seashore.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like me in the beginning, Miller.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: So let's address a phrase that everyone loves.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: And we've heard it all before.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: Work less, earn more.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: The internet version is usually somebody on a bench.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's so true.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: I just on the bench chilling.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: I uh yeah, it's uh I I think that actually might say beach.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe mine didn't come out.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe mine says bench too.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, oh, it it it says beach.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: Does it?
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, my my printer didn't print it out, so I was like, maybe it does say bench.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, but it's sitting on the beach somewhere in a nice blue water, white sand beach.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you always see it with the toes.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody taking a picture with the toes, and the Mai Thai in the hand, or whatever it is you're drinking, alcoholic, non-alcoholic.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: So the real version looks a lot different, and it and it's really is years of building systems, training people, documenting processes, you know, creating consistency, and consistency will always get you there, even in small incremental steps.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it's not avoiding the work.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like we're we're putting in the work, we're still putting in the work, it's changing the type of work that we're doing.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: So it could yeah.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, so if you're yeah, and I so if your business feels harder than it used to, that doesn't necessarily mean you're doing something wrong.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: No, it simply means that your business has outgrowing the current structure.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's like when you grow, like little kids grow, their skeleton grows along with them, and there's growing pains, right?
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: How many kids complain?
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, my leg is hurting.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: I wish my mom knew to give me magnesium when I was a kid.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: Magnesium helps with the, you know, to alleviate, you have to have those systems in place.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: So growth creates pressure, pressure reveals weakness, weaknesses show us where we need stronger systems.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's the good news, you guys.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: Because guess what?
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: Systems can be fixed.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: And remember, successful businesses eventually stop running on hustle, they start running on systems.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that concludes this episode.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: Today, if this episode has resonated with you, please like, subscribe, share, leave us a review, leave us an emoji down in whatever little whatever platform you're listening from.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: Leave us a clap of the hands emoji.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: It tells the algorithm that we are worthy.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you know another cleaning business owner who might be struggling, send them this episode.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the right conversation at the right time can save someone months and months or even years of frustration.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're realizing that what you thought was a pricing problem might actually be something deeper, we'd love to invite you to apply at our next pricing accelerator cohort cohorts on the seashore, um, which starts in the at the end of June.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because after working with cleaning business owners for years, I've learned that pricing problems are often confidence problems, sales problems, qualification problems, systems problems, wearing a pricing costume.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you guys.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: Bye.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Bye.