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Transcript

CBL EP 180-Busy But Stuck: The Trap Keeping Cleaning Business Owners Small · Cleaning Business Life

• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let me say this real quick.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you're busy all the time, but your business isn't growing, that's not a time problem.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's a systems problem.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what I teach inside my books and inside of Clean Freaks University.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: If that hit, go check those out.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: All right, back to it.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back everyone.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: This is Shannon Miller with Cleaning Business Life.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure my mic is up.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Today we're gonna talk about the busy trap and the busy trap that keeps cleaning business owners stuck.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: You may hear it on the internet.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm full, I'm full, I'm full, and then they realize that, hey, I'm full, but I'm not making any money.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: One of the biggest traps in the cleaning industry is staying busy.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Busy feels productive.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Busy feels responsible.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, my schedule's full, right?
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Busy feels like you're doing exactly what you're supposed to do as a business owner.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: You're in houses every day, you're answering messages, you're managing clients, you're running from job to job, or your crews are running from job to job, trying to keep everything moving.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: And from the outside, it looks like the business is thriving.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Woo-hoo! Right?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes that looks like progress is actually, or sometimes what looks like progress, so my enunciation, please forgive me, is actually the thing that keeps the business stuck.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: You hear it all the time.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Are you your own bottleneck, right?
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Today we're talking about what I call the busy trap.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the busy trap is something that almost every cleaning business owner experiences at some point in their business, because being busy is not the same as building a business.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Most cleaning businesses start with the owner doing all the work.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is changing.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: As you can see, the industry is changing.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: You clean the houses, you answer the phone, you schedule the jobs, you do the customer service.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: You are the golden unicorn, right?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you you you do everything.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: You wear many hats all day long.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: And some of you work seven days a week, 12 hours a day.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh my goodness.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And in the early stages, it makes sense, right?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's how businesses start, a lot of businesses.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: I wish that starting a business is way easier, but there's a rite of passage, so to speak.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: And over time, something interesting happens.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Busy becomes the identity of the owner.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: So when you're busy, that means that if things are going good, right?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: You're pulling in income, things are going great, and you start measuring success by how full your schedule is.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: If your calendar is packed, you will feel like you're winning.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: If there's an opening on a day, something feels wrong, and you feel guilty.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: I've been there.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my God, what am I gonna do with myself today?
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then you can laundry list all of the items in your mind on what needs to accomplish.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: So you have, like, you know, like most of us, we work in a small window of time between school drop-off and pickup, and you start to try to pack in as much as you can.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I always work in blocks of time.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, some of the busiest cleaning business owners are the ones making the least amount of progress, right?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a big difference between working in your business and working on your business.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: You will hear every everyone agrees with me.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's no denying that working in your business is not building your business.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: You're not working on your business and you're not marketing, you're not meeting and greeting, you're not establishing relationships.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Super important.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And when you're cleaning your house all day, you're producing income, yes, but you're exhausted.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: By the time you get home, the kids, you have to help kids with homework, you have to make dinner, you have to get laundry done, you have to get all of the other domestic responsibilities that need to be finished.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that part's important.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: But building a business requires something a little bit different.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: It requires time spent on things, but like systems.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: So depending on how you've set up your business, it might be like, oh my God, I have all these clients, what do I do?
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: There'll be an epiphany moment.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Or I want to start hiring, or I want to start doing this, or I want to start thinking about my future, I want to buy an asset, I want to do all these things, but you have to have the systems in place.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's training, pricing, leaderships, operation.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: These are just some of what you need.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's automation that goes with it.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, do you have AI be your customer service?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have a person being customer service?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Do you hire a VA here?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Do you hire a VA in another country?
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's all of these things to consider.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And those things don't always feel productive in the moment, but they are things that allow the business to grow beyond the owner.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: So ultimately, and you guys will hear me say it all of the time, I am here to push the industry, all of you guys, where you need to go, so that you can create an asset that you can sell or gift to your family at another date, right?
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And you can earn income for years and years and years and years, and in some cases, decades.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: I know quite a few business owners who've been around 20 years or more.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Just something to think about.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: If the owner's always busy cleaning, there's no time left to build those things.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: And as you get older, your body starts to deteriorate.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: And you wake up and you're stiff, and you wake up and there's this happening, and you wake up and there's that happening.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's a vicious cycle, right?
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that's actually how a lot of businesses get stuck, right?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: They get stuck for years, they don't know how to get out of the hamster wheel, they're just running on the hamster wheel day after day after day.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then usually something happens.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: A spouse passes away, there's a medical episode.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: I spoke to a cleaning business owner the other day who wanted to, they were in the Arizona market and they wanted to put their business up for sale and they had had two heart attacks.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Two.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And when I spoke to them, they were working seven days a week, 12 hours a day.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, why are you doing that?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: And now, now she's trying to sell this asset that she created, but it doesn't, it doesn't run by itself.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: So it's just really a client list, right?
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: No website, nothing.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: We won't get into that today.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's just one of those things that I happen to speak to someone on.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Another reason owners fall into the busy trap is control.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people, this is a hard one because there's control issues going on.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: You you'll hear everyone say, I can never find anyone who will be able to clean as good as I do.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that's true.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: You you'll never find another golden unicorn, unless, of course, it's another cleaning business owner who's going out on their own and they're a unicorn, right?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: So there's that dynamic, that pivotal stance that has to go back and forth.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it's okay not to find the golden unicorn.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: There are, they are out there.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: As far as finding turnkey employees, I think the days of employees staying 20 years or more, while that philosophy in a pipe dream is awesome, I don't think it's realistic considering our economy and how it's changing.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: So when you're in there cleaning every house, you know exactly what's happening.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: When you're not in there cleaning everyone's house, then you have to kind of wonder.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then you start to obsess, right?
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Again, it goes back to control.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know the quality, you know the clients, and you know the schedule, and you've set the bar for your clean tech.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're perfect every single time and you send a cleaning tech in there, guess what?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: They're never gonna meet your standards.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: They'll get the basics, and this is why you guys always hear me reference McDonald's, but they'll never clean as perfect as you did.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: So then you've you've created a monster, right?
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: This client is expecting you to walk on water, which is something that you do all the time, but your cleaning tech is not gonna be able to walk on water, and I would never expect them to do it.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because after all, not everyone can walk on water, right?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: But it also creates a ceiling.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Again, that's that's expectation.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because the moment the owner is the system, the business can never grow beyond that one person.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: So think about if if you guys don't want to grow and you're totally happy being solo mama or solo parent or solo business owner, there is no crime in that.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking to the ones who want to grow beyond what that is to have an actual asset.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: And this is when a lot of the cleaning companies stall out because they can't figure out how to jump from the one position to the next.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: And the owner becomes the bottleneck without even realizing.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: I've been the bottleneck in my own business on multiple occasions, and someone had to point it out to me.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: I paid a mentor 10 grand.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: I can see it right here, Shannon.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't see it.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: But they did because you need fresh eyes to see what is going on, right?
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's like Groundhog Day.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: I actually just re-watched that for the first time.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's been years.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then you start to watch the thing.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: So then you're asking, you know, Chat GPT, how many times did it take him to get out?
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: How many times did Phil have to do the loop in the Groundhog Day before he realized that he had the only way to get out was to do something good?
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Is if you haven't seen Groundhog Day, I believe it's still on Amazon.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Check it out.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's from like 1993.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually a really entertaining movie because he proceeds, he starts acting back because there's no consequence, right?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because the day repeats itself day after day.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: They said that they estimate that he had to go through the loop of like 12,000 times before he finally got it right.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason why I mentioned the 12,000 times is he failed 12,000 times, intentionally or unintentionally, before he finally realized he had to do something good to get to stop being his own bottleneck.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: So that is the whole moral of that story and sharing that with you.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: But if you have time, check out Groundhog Day and watch the movie.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: It will, it'll tell you a lot.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because I've seen it like, I don't know, six or seven times, and it's been a while.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: So, and it's an iconic film like The Rocky Horror Pitch Show or Jaws or any one of those crazy movies that came out that just was like a pivotal marker in time.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: So staying busy for too long comes with a cost.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Your business will never grow.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: And over time it leads to burnout.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: I talk to a lot of cleaning business owners who are like, oh my God, I don't know what I'm gonna do.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: I have all of this personal stuff going on, and then I have the responsibility of my business.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how I'm gonna manage both.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I still see some of you guys on the hamster wheel, just running along, running along.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then you get, um, and then you get physical exhaustion, and then you end up sick and in the hospital, and then everything stops because you didn't put any systems in place, and then your clients have dropped you, right?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: So then it becomes this vicious cycle.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: So physical exhaustion, limited income growth, and eventually frustration at why you're not making the money that you need to make to make money, and you don't want that to stop, right?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: You want money coming in all the time with less effort.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's the ideal of where this economy is going.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: You want to be able to have money come in every single day of the week without a lot of effort.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the only way to do that is to create systems, right?
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Many owners reach a point where they realize that something important.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna flip my page so I have a reference point on these notes I've made.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: They've built a job and not a business.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: The J O B, what do they say?
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: J-O-B is just overbroke.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't remember where I heard that from, and it was it's someone's podcast, but it's true, right?
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: You've built a job, which is not a business, and that realization can be difficult.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's a hard, it's a red pill to swallow for sure.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the most, it's also the moment where real growth can begin.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: And this is typically when you are burnt out, you spend time outside, is which what I recommend.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: But whatever, whatever it is that you need to fill this, and I'm pointing for those of you who are not watching, I'm I'm putting my hand over my heart.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever feels good to you, follow your heart.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: And you can start to ponder.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: I find that when I go out into the woods, it gives my mind an opportunity to expand and kind of work through all of the things that are going in my mind.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: I find that I need to spend as much time in this season in my life outside than ever before.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a time when I lived in Lake Tahoe and I spent all my time outside.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't get enough.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I think I'm back in that cycle.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's been years since I've lived in Lake Tahoe.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: I lived on North Shore and South Shore, and Kingsbury, great.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, you want to be able to break the busy trap that requires a shift in your thinking.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: So spend time outside, relax, go the day to a spa, whatever it is that you can do for self-care.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that's usually when the shower gods will deliver great ideas.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of asking how I could fit more houses into my schedule, which I do not advise that you do, especially if you're out cleaning on your own, um, you start to ask different types of questions.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: Can I improve my pricing?
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Hell yeah.
• 13:24
  unknown: Yeah.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: I I'll still many of this so that I would say 60% of the industry is still undercharging.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that's actually improved.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: When I first started, when I first stepped into the coaching room, I would say 80% of the industry was not charging enough.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: And there's still that dynamic.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: You see it in the in the groups where I can't believe this is what you want to charge per hour.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: I have three college degrees.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, yeah, sister, everybody has a college degree in this industry.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: It makes no difference whether you have a college degree or not.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's all about supply and demand, right?
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Can you improve your pricing?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Can I build systems that allow other people to succeed?
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Again, the McDonald's model.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Can I create repeatable processes that don't rely on me being in every house?
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Those questions move the business forward.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: And those are the three questions I actually want you to ponder while you're listening to this, doing whatever you're doing.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: They turn activity into strategy and write things down.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you are driving, obviously do this in a safe spot.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: But you can, if you have an iPhone, you go right to your notes and there's a voice memo clip inside of notes now.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Won't it be perfect?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Probably not, but at least you got your general idea.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of searching around your car for a pen and paper, at least it's there and you can re-listen to or you could read what your voice memo is, right?
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it's taking many years for notes to get that.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you have a Samsung, I'm sure there's an opportunity in there somewhere to do that.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: I just don't know how.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: So you need to turn your activity into strategy, and strategy is not what eventually leads to freedom, systems, freedom.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: I did a podcast on it.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: And busy being being busy is not the goal.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: Being having an opportunity to really think about long-term fans, that's when you get the CEO mode, right?
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: It kind of kicks in.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, okay, I can I can do my three-year plan, I can do my five-year plan.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is I'm gonna sell at 10 years.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is what I expect to sell it at.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: This is what I'm gonna do.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: These are the locations I'm gonna be at.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: That that's a 10-year plan, right?
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it takes effort.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: I wish it was instantaneous, but if everything was instantaneous, there wouldn't be any purpose in working, right?
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's gotta be rewarding.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: So building a business that works without chaos is the goal.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: When I, and I've mentioned this multiple times, when I had cleaning techs come over from other cleaning businesses, they would always tell me how smooth running shifts I had.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: It took a lot of effort to get smooth running because I had placed systems in my business to make things easier for them.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: So they understood what the parameters of the job were, how long it was supposed to take, how everything was calm, it wasn't chaotic, and people love that.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: And it requires stepping out of the busy trap long enough to build something stronger.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: So you're gonna have to decide what systems you want to start with first.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: I always recommend pricing because the companies that grow in this industry are not just the busiest ones, they're the ones that built systems, leadership, and structure.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: So thanks for tuning in.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: If this episode made you stop and think, please share it with another cleaning business owner and they might be stuck in the busy trap.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: I love the fact that you guys tune in.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I love you all.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Have a good day.