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CBP EP 179-10 Systems to Fix Before Hiring Your First Cleaner · Cleaning Business Life

• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Hello everyone, Shannon Miller here from Cleaning Business Life.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: And today we are gonna talk about 10 things you need to fix before you hire your first cleaner.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: If you're a cleaning business owner and you're feeling a little overwhelmed, as we all do sometimes, or exhausted and buried in all of your work, the first thought that usually pops into your head is I need to hire someone.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: And hiring can absolutely be the right move, but here's the problem.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's a big problem.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: Most cleaning businesses hire before they're actually ready to hire.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: And this isn't the philosophy of saving up money or bootstrapping, that's in another podcast.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: When that happens, the hire fails.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: And then the owner will say stuff like this.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: How many of us have have all heard of no one wants to work?
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: Employees are unreliable.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'm better off doing it myself.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: This is why we see so many solo cleaners.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so glad I did this.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just gonna do it myself.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: I've been cleaning solo for 20 years, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but most of the time, the real problem isn't the employee.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: The real problem is the business systems were never prepared for the hire.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Flip my page.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: So today we're gonna talk about something I call hire prep systems, because everything I do has a system.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: And those are the things that you need to have in place before you bring someone in to your company.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you bring someone into chaos, all you've done is duplicate, guess what?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: The chaos.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: So the moment most owners decide to hire.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's typically a repeat cycle.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: So you put it out there, you take a lot of pride in your work, you're the golden unicorn, things get great.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: Springtime comes, is usually when I see this.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: And they go from 25 houses to 55 houses and they freak out, work seven days a week, and they're like, oh my God, what do I do now?
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: So then it becomes this whole dynamic of I just need help, I just need help, I just need help.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: When in reality, there has to be some prep work involved before you start to get help.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you can still get help and bootstrap it, but it's gonna be a little bit of a rough ride.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: And no one says, hey, Shannon, hire me.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: I like trial by fire, right?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: No one, no one likes it.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: But the reality is, is hiring under pressure is almost where most of the hiring mistakes happen.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: How many of us are guilty guilty for hiring a warm body?
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm guilty of it.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: And let's not be wrong, this doesn't differentiate between the hiring software like Woot Recruit or any of those other guys.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: This is just for the people who are not quite there to have the software do the work for them.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: So you start to skip systems, then you skip training.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, okay, just follow me around and you'll be able to get it.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then you skip structure entirely.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: And when the hire doesn't work out, you assume the employees are the problem.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: And in actuality, you're partially to blame because you didn't have any systems set up.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I call this the hire prep system.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: So before you hire anyone, there's a few things that you should already have existing in your business.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: These systems protect the company, they protect the client, they protect the employee.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: Let's walk through the first ten.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: Number one.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: One.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta know your numbers.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: I can't tell you how many times when I'm talking to people over the phone, and I said, So what'd you gross last year?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: They have no idea.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Their accountant or their bookkeeper didn't give them the numbers.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm hoping the accountant and the bookkeeper are two separate people, but sometimes they're both.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: Or they have no clue over what they're running month to month or quarter to quarter, even week to week.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: They have no idea.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: So you need to know your numbers.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: The system protects the company, and it means that you're knowing, right?
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: So you need to know your hourly production rate.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: I believe there's a podcast on this in one of the episodes.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'll try to remember to leave that in a show notes.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: Let me write this here.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: Oh notes.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: You need to know your labor percentage, and I'm not shy about it.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: I talk about all the time 55, 25, and 20 or the normal margins that should be if you're running the solo method.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you need to know your pricing structure, what your expenses versus your costs, what your income is.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: And this is explicitly explained in the pricing blueprint system 2.0.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: So there's the pricing blueprint masterclass, which I sold over 2,000 times.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: The system is all math-based.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: So you kind of break down, print out the worksheets, and you you do the problems, which will help you recognize what it's like for you in your market.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: So because if the numbers don't work before you're hiring, they definitely won't work after you're hiring.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Employees don't fix pricing problems, they magnify them, and then you start to bleed out money and you could bankrupt yourself, right?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, step two.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Step two, two, two, two.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: Define the job clearly, which guess what?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: You need to have a job description.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: How many times have you been employed by someone else?
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, you need to sign this.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: For me, it's employment at will, job description.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: Here's the employee handbag, here's this, here's that.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: You need to have a job description.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: Some of the things that are said in my job description is can you carry 40 pounds of gear in for short amount of time?
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: If they can't carry 40 pounds of gear for a short amount of time, as in from their car to the front door, they might not be a good fit, right?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Can you work on your hands and knees for a very limited amount of time?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes by that toilet, we all know getting back there, sometimes it requires us to get on hands and knees.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: That if they can't do that, then that might not be a good fit for you.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: Or maybe your criteria is to wear gloves and you like gloves everywhere and they don't want to wear gloves everywhere.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever it is you decipher, I believe there is a job description inside of the Facebook group, The Maids Network.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: If you go in there and you go under discussion, there should be a whole bunch of guides in there.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: I believe there's a job description in there as well.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: And you need to make sure you need to include what tasks are included, right?
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: Some people have they they envision that cleaning is what the media has predicted it, right?
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: So what that entails is how many times have we seen a movie and they're like with a feather duster, right?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm just gonna feather dust.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: They don't think about how we have to reach into toilets, right?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: Gloves.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: I've had people freak out about the fact that they're even gloved up and have to reach into the toilet.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, okay.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: Or what quality level is expected?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: Are you the type of cleaning company who likes to have all the pillows aligned in a perfect order with a karate chop?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: Or do you like the side waist chop?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: Or maybe you don't like a chop at all, you just like to shake back and forth.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: Do you like to have the throws folded or laid across the couch, right?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: So there's there's those dynamics as well.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: Those are standards that you're creating.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: What speed is required?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: When we first hired people, we always tell them at a professional housekeeper, because it's a goal, is to get up to five or six hundred square feet in an hour.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: After they start to imply, you know, the speed cleaning method and get that all situated, they actually become faster and faster and they'll move up the ladder.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: They'll clean more than 600 square feet an hour, they'll clean 800 or 1,000, which is a lot for house cleaning because if you think about commercial versus house cleaning, commercial can do 1,000 to 2,000 square feet an hour where housekeeping is always lower because there's more detail, right?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: Clarity is one of the most powerful management tools that you can have.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: And when you set expectations that are clear, I know I sound like someone else doing this, performance improves dramatically.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: Let me enunciate that for you guys.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: Professional cleaning businesses track production.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: So number three would be set production standards.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: So when you have a brand new crew that's untested, your production rate's going to be two or three hundred square feet an hour.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: Where if you have seasoned professionals who can come in, like if you were to hire me, I don't think I could do it anymore.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: But when I was out cleaning, I could score, I could clean a thousand square feet or more per hour.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I haven't cleaned a long time.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I can do that.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: But now, but I I did in the past, right?
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: So a maintenance cleaning might have a five to six hundred square foot production rate.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: Deep cleans are usually slower, as I just mentioned, two to three hundred, depending on the scope and what kind of deep cleaning you're doing.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, hoarding cleaning takes hours and hours and hours.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: So that production rate's going to be different than an actual deep cleaning.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't know what these numbers are, there's no way to measure your performance.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: And you can start to track.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like I had, I don't even know if I have it anymore, but I used to, because we've done 15,000 move out cleanings, I would have a spreadsheet and it had size, scope, how many bedrooms, how many bathrooms, and how many labor hours it took.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I could calculate by the job how much I made.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: This was obviously before software.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: And it would just calculate what my production rate was automatically for me.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: So that was a nice thing to do.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: It is pretty easy to do in Excel or I can't remember what the one is for Mac.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: I want to say sheets or numbers or something like that.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: Number four is creating a training process.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: You'll hear me talk a lot about McDonald's.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason why is because you can go into any McDonald's worldwide and get a Big Mac, with exception of India, because they don't eat cows.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: But every single location in the world of McDonald's will serve a Big Mac the exact same way, with exception of the country India.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: So they have systems in place, right?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Every single person in the back of the house of a McDonald's until robots and AI take over can work every other position in the back of the house so that if someone calls out sick, the world will not end, right?
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: So creating a training process is super important.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: And you don't want it to be watch me today and do it tomorrow.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's hands-on training, right?
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody knows cleaning is hands-on training and give it another year or so, and it cleaning might not be so hands-on.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: It might be that you watch this or you engage with this AI and we're gonna show you what we're expecting, right?
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: Every new cleaner should go through the exact same process.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: So think of a factory.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: Start here, go through the mid-range.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's not gonna be like the I Love Lucy episode where she's eating the chocolate because it's going faster than she can do with the production.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it's the exact same procedures, exact same checklist, exact same expectations, just like McDonald's.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: Consistency and training creates consistency and results.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: Number five, standardize the cleaning system.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Thank God for Jeff Campbell, the godfather of speed cleaning.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: If you have not seen who he is, he's still around, but he's retired, obviously.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: But you can go to YouTube and look up his videos, speed cleaning with Jeff Campbell.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: And they're totally like 1980s, 1990s, but it's totally okay.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: You get the same benefit as if you bought a private system.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think that private systems are just updated with, you know, fresher uniforms.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: But a professional cleaning company is gonna clean in a in order, right?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: Most of the houses that we have here where I'm located have three levels.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: So the ideal situation is to start at the top letter, do the main level, and then leave in the bottom level.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: But it could be that the person has small children and maybe their kids are napping by the time you guys show up.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe you're doing the bottom level and then the main level and then the top level.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: However, you work it, you want to work it as a system so that it becomes, you don't have to think about it.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's not brain surgery, and that you're able to go about your day and get your things done.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: Step six is defining company standards.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: Start early now, especially with the advent of AI.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's not that hard to create SOPs.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like you have to think really deep anymore about, well, we're gonna do this.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: If this happens, what do we do that?
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: I've had a lot of life experience in my businesses and personally.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's how come I know so much, right?
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: I've made a lot of mistakes, I've had a lot of experiences.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: So your team represents your brand, which means you need clear standards around things like professional appearance.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: Do your cleaning text look cleaned and pressed?
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: I worked in a restaurant in Vegas in fine dining, and it only took one time for you to realize that if you did not show up cleaned and pressed 15 minutes before the start of your shift, guess what?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: You didn't get to work.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: Now, those standards are not applicable to today's standards.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: The employees have changed a lot.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's a it's it's a different dynamic entirely.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: But those were the standards back in the day.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: So you had to be cleaned and pressed.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: Your shirt had to be have creases in it, your tie had to be perfect, your hair could not be wild like mine is, your fingernails need to be clean.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they checked your nails.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't like in in you know, in Christian school where you had to shuffle down your skirt.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: To make sure your skirt was that the standard was just above the knee, right?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: So you want to make sure that you are your uniforms are clean and pressed, that your your people haven't been partying all night long and they're not all wrinkled, and they didn't just whip out your uniform shirt out of the trunk and put it on, guilty as charged in my 20s.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: You want to make sure that your arrival times are standard.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: So in the larger areas, actually, it's starting to change a lot here where I'm at now as well.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: You need to have an operating window of when your cleaning techs are going to arrive.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: We used to say it used to be 10 minutes.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: We've had so many people move into my town that we can no longer say 10 to 15 minute window.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: We actually give people an hour.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason why is there's car accidents, the traffic.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: So that way it gives, and then some of the larger areas, the metropolitan areas like Sacramento, um, certain parts of Massachusetts, it's an hour or two-hour window.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's because the traffic, it's crazy to try to get anywhere anymore.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: Behavior inside the homes is super important.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: For example, you don't want your cleaning tech drinking inside of a home.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: You don't want your cleaning tech vaping inside of a home.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: You don't want your cleaning tech eating inside of someone's home.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: You don't want your cleaning tech saying inappropriate things.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: I walked in one time to a cleaning tech who was shouting at the top of her lungs to her spouse over the phone while she was cleaning.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: The homeowner was there.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: So you and I wouldn't have never known had I someone had called me and said, Can you please go check on this?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: I said, sure, no problem.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: Or your lead, maybe you don't do it anymore and your lead goes out and does it.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: These types of things should not be assumed.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: So cursing is a big thing.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: For those of you who have not caught that episode, Angela Brown was interviewed, I believe, in 2023, and she talks about how she instituted a no-cursing policy in her company.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason for that is because she lost a really good client because her cleaning tech was cursing inside the home, and they felt that the cursing was offensive.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: And it was like, I believe it was like a$20,000 or$30,000 account.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: So she made it in a policy that nobody could curse because she wondered how many people she lost due to the cursing, right?
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Number seven, sorry, I'm losing my voice.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Number seven is build a pay structure that works.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: One of the fastest ways to break a cleaning business is hiring some someone without enough margin.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: I actually spoke to someone the other day who has been cleaning the same house for about a decade for$120 square footage is 4,000 square feet.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: And she wanted to know how much of a price increase she should make.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, the current price of a 4,000 square foot home bi-weekly is about$525.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, different areas are going to play into that, give or take,$50 or so.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: But the reality is, is as soon as she bumped up that person, because you know, legacy clients will never be at current market value, but she ended up giving them a pretty significant price increase because she hadn't done it in 10 years and they dropped her.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it was really heartbreaking because they, their kids grew up together, their kids went to baseball games together, played on the same soccer teams.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then reality, there really are no friends in business.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: That was a reality that she had to be reminded of.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: So you want to make sure that you're pricing fairly because if you're starting to pay out more, you'll never be able to leave the field and you're gonna pay for the privilege of cleaning someone's home.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: So make sure that your pricing is right where the national average is.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then suddenly the owner feels like there's working, you're working harder and not working less.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: So a healthy business needs a pay structure that supports both the company and the employee, not just the company.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: Some I spoke to someone who paid their cleaners very little and they had a thousand percent turnover.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: I won't go into detail about that one.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's a story for another day.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: Step eight, create a communication system.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: So when you're small, you could probably get away with text messages.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: When you're larger, you probably have a Slack system.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: Make sure that your communication is lavish.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: Angela Brown also refers to her team as, you know, they have 15 minutes with her each and every Monday, should they want it or not.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: So that way there's an open communication dialogue.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: How does your team receive their schedule?
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: Super duper important.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: In the old-fashioned days, I was a TGI Friday assistant general manager, and my manager did not have kids, and I did.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: And she would not give me the schedule until 11 o'clock on Sunday night.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: So at 11 o'clock on Sunday night, I would find out if I had to be at work at Monday morning at 7 a.m.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of the reasons why I quit.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: And those things don't happen anymore because we're more of a digital world.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm telling you that to so you can remember, be conscientious, that you want to make sure that you're scheduling, if you're still doing paper scheduling, that you're giving them the same schedule.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: They know what their schedule is.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: As soon as they have more established clientele, they'll know that they have Mrs.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: Smith at 9 a.m.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: on Mondays every two weeks, right?
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: So that becomes more familiar and it's not waiting till the last minute.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: Do they report problems?
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: Do your cleaning texts tell you if something goes down?
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Mr.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: Smith, you had a heart attack and the ambulance came and I kind of did a clean, but I didn't finish the clean and now we all left and blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, what?
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just now finding out about this now.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's just encourage your cleaning text to tell you if something goes down.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: I broke that vase that's worth$1,500.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, I forgot to tell you.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, what?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: Or do your cleaning text ask questions?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I noticed that Mrs.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: Smith has a bed skirt, but she likes to have her sheets tuck with a military fold, but then she wants the top sheet folded down, but not all the way.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: But it has to be over the extra blanket that's on top.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: And she likes that tuck too.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: Is there a way that we don't have to put all the pillows on there?
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's like, you know, making beds, we all know the theology behind that.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: There's like 57 steps to some beds that are made.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, what the fuck?
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you have 72 pillows, right?
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: But if everything runs smoothly, random texts and phone calls will kind of fall apart, right?
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: You're setting a boundary.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: If they know what to expect and how to make decisions on their own, hey, more power to them.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: Step nine, documenting the cleaning checklist.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't have a digital calendar system or you haven't gotten the jobber or Zenmate or whatever program you're working with, you could do the old-fashioned way.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: This is my show notes.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: You guys can see it's highlighted so I can remember.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: You can actually give out sheets of paper, which is embarrassing nowadays considering how digital we are.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm I'm guilty of it.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: I we used to go through reams and reams and reams.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think I just finally got rid of, because you're supposed to keep everything seven or eight years.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: Every single box of like sheets of the customer sheets, and it would have the address, how many visits, they lifetime visits, if they paid by check or cash, if they like this bathroom done versus this bathroom.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a sheet, it was a paper checklist.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: They just, we just went down and okay, Mrs.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: Smith likes it.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: So you can do that if you have digital, if you have the luxury of having digital, you can put it right in.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: This person does not like you touching her pillows on or or the creepy doll on the chair.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's an antique, don't touch it.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, no problem.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: So making sure yeah, you have a cleaning checklist is super importante.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: What gets dusted versus what doesn't get dusted.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: For example, we have several clients who have Picasso.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: Guess what?
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: We don't touch them, those don't get dusted.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there is a certain knowledge that has to happen if you understand fine art.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: If you ever go, and you guys have probably heard me say this a thousand one times, when you go to the museum and you have those brass bars in front of a piece of antiquity of fine art, the reason why they want to have those bars there is because if you got too close and you fell over, the natural inclination is for you to put your hand out and you would fall forward and rip that canvas.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: No one likes to be the person who ruined a piece of antiquity.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: So if you don't know how to handle fine art, educate yourself before you attempt it on your own home.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: Don't attempt it in the client's home.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're not prepared, just say, you know what, we don't touch those things.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: My insurance will not cover it.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: Cut and dry, right?
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: We have bronzes.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: Bronzes are if anyone understands the process of creating a bronze, it's a lost wax process nine times out of ten.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: They'll the the mold deteriorates after a while, and they can only use it so many times.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: And they're And they're limited.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes they're 500 runs, sometimes they're a thousand runs, sometimes they're 1500.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: Once in a while, I'll see like a 10,000 made.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: But we don't want to lift bond bronzes because if you fell and you dropped it, it would break it.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: You can't replace those.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: They're not repairable.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: It'll just be dented, right?
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then you'll be the person who broke the duga, right?
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: So you just we don't touch those.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: We don't touch collector's plates.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry, your 1978 Elvis plate correction, one of them fell off and I can't find him anywhere.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then you end up finding it in a thrift store randomly, but it's the probability of finding it is rare.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: So we don't touch collector's plates, fine arts, flat screen TVs, certain pieces of electronics because we don't want to be responsible for ruining them, right?
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: What else?
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: Step 10, and this is important, and I'm not going to go on a whole tangent about this.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: Creating company culture and paying top-tier pay.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: I cannot emphasize enough how important that is.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: I still talk to many cleaning business owners who are paying$15,$12,$8,$7.85, and they can't figure out why no one's hanging out.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, milk is five bucks.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: They got to work a whole hour to get a gallon of milk.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: Come on, let's equivocate what what would the re plus they have gas.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's just not worth it.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: There's no value in it.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't have, if you're not paying them top tier talent for top-tier talent, you're not going to make it.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: So in company culture, I see this a lot, especially with the remote models.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: They plateau.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: They get to a certain point, like$785,000, and they can't figure out why they're plateauing.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's because they have no connection to their cleaning techs, and they have no connection to their clients.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: There is no company culture.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: They're just an ends to a mean to process and pump, prime the pump for them to pull on the income.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I said it.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: There we go.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: There's a truth bomb.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: So understanding your company culture, worshiping the ground that your cleaning techs walk on because they really are golden unicorns and they generate a lot of money for you.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: Office staff doesn't generate revenue for you.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: Cleaning techs, I am not worthy.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: They generate revenue for the whole company.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: They're the ones that make it all work, right?
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: And you want to make sure that your crew, you know, your company culture is not chaotic and reactive, but that it's calm, smooth running shifts.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's huck all the time about having smooth running shifts.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: And people would come over from other cleaning companies and are like, man, this runs really smooth.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, yeah, there's a lot of behind the scenes that makes this run smooth.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I I intentionally went out of my way to make sure it ran smooth.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, this is the smoothest running business I've ever had.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, yeah, I know.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: So making sure that your company culture is present, that you guys, that they're part of something bigger than themselves.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone likes to do that.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then when you bring someone into a structured environment, they succeed.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: If you bring someone into chaos, chaos spreads.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I reiterate: no one likes trial by fire.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: No one.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, oh, oh, me, hire me.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: I love, I love chaos.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: I just thrive in it.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: After a while, it burns them out.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: So hiring is not the first step in growth, but preparation for hiring is when you build some systems first, the right people can succeed inside of your business.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how you end up getting turnkey cleaning techs who are awesome sauce.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: When systems are missing, even good employees can struggle.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: So before you post a job ad, ask yourself the simple question.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: If someone started working for me tomorrow, would my business actually support their success?
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's the whole point of this, right?
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: If the answer is no, then the next step isn't hiring.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: Gonna flip my page here for the last segment.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: The next step is building systems that make hiring work.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: If this episode helped you think about hiring a bit differently, share it with another cleaning business owner because the goal isn't just to help, the goal is to build a business that actually works with people inside of it because we are a human based business.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: I love you guys.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: Take care.