About a year ago, I had a conversation with Carrie Miyazono. She is the owner of Kaizen Cleaning in Chanhassen, MN and a Black Belt in taekwondo. Her solo cleaning business is highly niched to clean martial arts dojos. These schools have students sweating up the mats every day of the week. In many cases, the owners are either cleaning themselves or have a staff member do it. Therefore, Carrie found a niche that she could serve with excellence. It was so much fun guiding her to pick up her first gym for $400 per month. But she got discouraged after that as no one new was hiring her service. Carrie was working an overnight job at the time that she desperately wanted to quit to have better pay and hours with her new solo cleaning business.

 I helped her mindset with an example she knew well.  I asked. "What's the difference between a white belt and a black belt?" She answered. "Time, commitment, repetitions, and a willingness to suck." I asked her about confidence and technique and she told me that those two are byproducts of the first four. Then she summed it all up. "The difference between the black belt and the white belt is the use of those four things. More time leads to more commitment. More commitment leads to more repetitions. More repetitions leads to  a greater willingness to suck. The cycle self-perpetuates and your technique, form, and confidence increase and so do your belts. Eventually you make black belt."

I thought about the sports greats of Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods and their legendary pursuit of practice. When you take 5 shots, you're upset to miss one and may not take too many more. When you take 500 shots, missing 50 or 100 is no big deal because you'll keep shooting. This is what Carrie is talking about. It's the pursuit of becoming highly skilled at your craft. For Michael and Tiger, it was basketball and golf. For Carrie, it was taekwondo.

I related to her growing your solo cleaning business through the ISO Model is the exact same way. This first gym that she got is like earning her white belt. It was really hard to get. She was sloppy. Her technique sucked, but she got the job anyway. She didn't get the best price. However she achieved the first belt and now she's ready for the yellow. The yellow is getting another gym to prove she can do it again. Carrie will need to apply the same fundamentals to her cleaning business and she'll eventually become an Optimizer and a black belt in my system. Solo cleaners out there, think about your business like this. Don't expect to start as a black belt. If you like the business and lifestyle that I had as an optimized solo cleaner has, be willing to put in the time, commitment, reps, and willingness to suck that I did in two different states over 16 years. Fortunately for you, the ISO Model Black Belt can be achieved in 2 years with my system. If you don't want to put in the time or commitment or reps, go do something else. But if you are willing jump into the ISO Model through the Solo Cleaning School Elite, you can absolutely earn all of your belts.

To those that would like to go beyond my black belt system and become a 5th degree master black belt and scale to a 7-figure company with great income and freedom, check out my interview with the CBF Founder, entitled "A Buffalo Charges the Storm with Debbie Sardone". Debbie is offering free consultations to listeners of this show through the Smart Cleaning School Resources Page to see if CBF could be the right solution for you.