Smart Cleaning School

 I want you to stop what you're doing. And I want you to really listen as this could be the most important podcast you have ever heard. Do I have your attention yet?
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I have a vital question for you. What would you say if everything you said came exactly true as you said it? Keep your mouth closed, listen, and think. What words would you allow to come out of your mouth if you knew that every word you spoke would come to pass? Do you know that your words are powerful? They are not, and never were just words. Our Creator made us with the ability to design our own lives. It's all controlled or steered by a tiny rudder called the human tongue. Life and death are in the power of the tongue. Words are seeds and seeds grow into plants. Everything you speak is a seed and God will not be mocked. Whatsoever a man sows, that he will also reap. You will be held accountable to every idle word spoken. Speak what you want!

Those sayings were an assortment of Bible verses that hammer the power of the spoken word. Here's a secular version from Napoleon Hill's, "Think and Grow Rich". Napoleon Hill studied over 500 millionaires during the decades of the 10s, 20s, and 30s. He released this book in 1937. It's a wildly popular best seller for almost 100 years. Here's the portion of text I want you to hear from Napoleon Hill.

"The pages of medical history are rich with illustrations of cases of "suggestive suicide." A man may commit suicide through negative suggestion, just as effectively as by any other means. In a midwestern city, a man by the name of Joseph Grant,a bank official, "borrowed" a large sum of the bank's money, without the consent of the directors. He lost the money through gambling. One afternoon, the Bank Examiner came and began to check the accounts. Grant left the bank, took a room in a local hotel, and when they found him, three days later, he was lying in bed, wailing and moaning, repeating over and over these words, "My God, this will kill me! I cannot stand the disgrace." In a short time he was dead. The doctors pronounced the case one of "mental suicide. Just as electricity will turn the wheels of industry, and render useful service if used constructively; or snuff out life if wrongly used, so will the law of auto-suggestion lead you to peace and prosperity, or down into the valley of misery, failure, and death, according to your degree of understanding and application of it."
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Do you believe me yet, I'm going to really bring it home now. Our senses are designed to receive information and store them into our brains. Our subconscious brains store them like a library. Our conscious brains can access this information when it makes a decision. Furthermore, the information collected most often gets stored in the same place in the library. Think of the librarian. She's getting the same book over and over. She has to go to the same shelf to put it back because every book has a call number. As this librarian is going to the same shelf with the same book over and over and over again, she's wearing a deep groove in the carpeting to that shelf. This deep groove in our brains is called a neural pathway. The deeper the groove, the more profound the influence of that piece of information to the outcome of your life. Our own words are so powerful because they enter our brains through our inner and outer ears. Our brains are most tuned to hear our own voice. Therefore, anything you say out loud wears pathways (neural pathways) faster and deeper than any other bit of information the brain collects. This is spiritual law from God and scientifically proven. You cannot dispute the law of the spoken word. It's like gravity. You can try to deny it by stepping off a building, but you will only confirm the law of gravity. Speak what you want!


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 Amar Ghose is known around the cleaning industry as a digital nomad, world traveler, SaaS Founder of ZenMaid. His name came up on the interview with Courtney Wisely ("People are Inspired by Honesty").

Here are some highlights and quotes from Amar on this interview.

 "Your dream is your dream and your rich life is your rich life."

 "The Wifi leads the way for the nomads." I thought this was an interesting point Amar made. Digital nomads can't go ANYWHERE they want. They can go anywhere that has good WiFi.

"Nomadic life has helped me appreciate the differences all around the world. It has given me such perspective on gratitude."

Amar read "The 4-Hour Work Week" by Tim Ferriss when it came out in 2007. It was finally the permission that he needed to take a shot. He thought about this book and his dream for 8 more years. 2015 was his first year living it. Amar has always been all-in on personal development. This culture is throughout the ZenMaid Team. Amar wants people that are taking advantage of improving themselves and is willing to invest into them by paying for the courses and books.

"First-time founders focus on product and second-time founders focus on distribution." Amar noticed early-on that a first-time founder will be very focused on what the product is, what the idea is. Very little thought is given to how you're going to get that product or idea into people's hands. This is natural because if you're never owned a business before, you're going to focus on the product and the idea. Once you've tried before and failed, you realize that you need to build the tribe or user base first and let them tell you what to build. Amar says this. "As a more experienced founder, I am spending my time on how to distribute the features of the product."

"I wouldn't be starting a maid service today if I didn't already know how I was going to get my first 10 or 15 or 100 clients. Just setting up a cleaning business and having no idea how you're going to get those first clients is just setting your business up for failure."

Amar is a member of the Dynamic Circle, a community for nomadic entrepreneurs. This has given him a group of friends to grow and live life with.

Amar on lifestyle freedom - "That's what I enjoy the most. It's not that I work less hours than people of anything like that. It's just that I can make my own schedule and work when my mental energy is highest. Ideally, I like to work 10 – 20 hours per week and have the rest of my time just opened to me. The ultimate definition of freedom is choosing to work 10 hours or 80 hours in a week and not having to do either."

"Our biggest goal at ZenMaid is making things accessible and easy to use. Simplicity and ease of use are core values of the company. Our vision is to serve more remote maid service owners We also see the future where the more savvy maid service owners can customize their own perfect solution using ZenMaid software."


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 There are so many reasons why I decided to start and build a cleaning company. I want to talk about an internal motivation that's always been beneath the surface. And I suspect it's in you as well. What does your name mean to you? I want to inspire you to desire a good name. This is called legacy.

 First, I want to read you a quote from King Solomon. Now who is King Solomon? Let me build up his credibility. King Solomon is the richest and the wisest man in human history. He reigned over the Kingdom of Israel from 970 to 930 BC. Scholars have estimated his wealth in current dollars around $2.2 trillion. For perspective, the richest man in the world right now is Bernard Arnault, who is worth around $200 billion. If King Solomon were alive today, he would be worth 10 times that of Arnault. Here's more perspective. If you search Google for the richest man of all time, they seem to omit King Solomon. You will find Mansa Musa who reigned King of the Mali Empire from 1280 to 1337 AD. His net worth in today's dollars is estimated at $400 billion. This is two times the richest man today. Yet King Solomon is still five times wealthier than Mansa Musa. I have even more perspective. Do you know how King Solomon got so wealthy? He inherited some from his dad, King David. But did you know that world leaders at that time would literally travel far distances via camel, I suppose, just to hear his wisdom and learn from him. They would bring him the wealth of their country and give it as a tribute just to hear him talk. This is mind-boggling to me. I shared all this because King Solomon wrote a book that I read often. It's called Proverbs and it's found in the Old Testament of the Bible.
 
"A good name [earned by honorable behavior, godly wisdom, moral courage, and personal integrity] is more desirable than great riches; And favor is better than silver and gold." – Proverbs 22:1 Amplified, Attributed to King Solomon
 
I first read this at the age of 25, when the Bible was still new to me. But this verse really captured my heart. I wanted to make a name for myself. I wanted to make those that poured into me and made our name valuable, proud of me. I wanted to carry on their legacy. Here's a few examples of men who knew their name and purpose.
 
"Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die." Inigo Montoya knew his name and he knew his purpose.
 
"My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife." Now that's a man who knew his name and his purpose.
 
The first one is a little bit silly from "The Princess Bride", but it does show the power in a name. The second one from "Gladiator" is just chilling and awesome and gets men to want to fight for this man.

Now it's my turn. My name is Kenneth Joseph Carfagno, III. I was named after my Pop-Pop, Kenneth Joseph Carfagno, Sr. My father Kenneth Joseph Carfagno, Jr. named his firstborn son after his father. My Pop-Pop, Kenneth Sr. was the sixth child, and fifth son of Genaro Carfagno. Genaro was the firstborn of eight kids of Giuseppe Carfagno. Giuseppe is Italian for Joseph and Genaro is Italian for Jerry. So I carry the name of four generations of my fathers. My middle is Joseph, the English version of my great-great grandfather Giuseppe. My first name Kenneth is the same as my father and grandfather. That is so cool to me. So much has been poured into me and into that name. I feel the weight of  responsibility to make that name even better!


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I attended my first ever commercial cleaning conference last month in Washington DC. The event was called Cleaning & Cocktails Live, the Interactive Playbook Edition. It was hosted by Michael Brown of Swept Technologies "I Wish You Would Have Told Me" and Ricky Regalado of Route/Rozalado Services "You Still Need the Grit and Blue-Collar". I was the event MC. That was such a cool experience. Big shout out to Michael and Ricky for believing in me, bringing in someone that's never been to a commercial cleaning conference, never MC'd a commercial cleaning conference, to BE the voice of the conference on their most important day. That was a great honor and I am grateful to both Michael & Ricky. I felt really good about it. I had a lot of fun. And I met a lot of great people. I will say this, I was definitely nervous in the beginning. But I noticed that I got more comfortable over time. Now get to put MC of a conference on my resume.

I met a lot of great people at this event. One of my new friends is Brian Comiskey from Legacy Cleaning servicing the Twin Cities of Minnesota. As Brian and I talked, he was sharing a takeaway from the night before that we both heard from Terrell Weg of MSNW. Terrell said. "You don't have to create everything on your own. Just learn to be a great copier. Copy. Copy. Copy." Brian and I agreed this was excellent advice. Why would we reinvent the wheel? It's working pretty good, right? And then Brian dropped this one liner. "Ken, we need to be a pirate, not a pioneer." I said. "Uh, Brian, can you say that again?" He kind of chuckled. "Yeah, sure. You have to be a pirate, not a pioneer." Then Brian explained his mindset even further. "Ken, we need to do what Terrell said and copy, copy, copy. We need to be the best cleaning pirates out there. Show up at someone else's cleaning company (with our Jolly Roger and cannonball and blast the front doors in)!" Brian didn't say that last part. He did say this. "And be a pirate and steal from others. That's what we need to do more of, we need to stop trying to pioneer or recreate everything."

I loved this mindset. It took me back to my days in Amway, when we learned that the most successful companies copied a proven business model. It's called duplication. It's what franchises use. Find a proven model and duplicate it. This is exactly what Terrell and Brian are talking about. No one is saying not to pioneer. We are entrepreneurs. It's in our blood. We would be wise to take the proven stuff and then pioneer from there.


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I remember this season of life like it was yesterday. I was overwhelmed with cleaning work, cleaning all the time, and we had no money either! The business that was supposed to be my way out of the nine-to-five had turned into a nightmare. Yes, I loved serving people. Yes, I had flexibility to go later or move appointments around. But I was a slave to our house cleaning business. I was solo, and I was feeling SOooo LOW.

Can you relate to this? Are you working endless hours in your house or office cleaning business with little to no hope for a way out? Are you feeling stuck? Do you want your time back? I did bad. I didn't just WANT it. I NEEDED to have time back with my family. And that made all the difference. Most solo cleaning companies believe the only way out is to delegate their cleaning through a team of employees or subcontractors. This is absolutely a path and it's a great one IF you do it right. However, I was wise enough to understand my numbers. I studied them, I tracked my times, evaluated my customers and their locations, and I realized something. There is another way!

It's called the ISO Model for solo cleaners. Did you know that you can earn $50,000 profit cleaning less than 20 hours per week without any employees or subs? It's true and you CAN do it. I know because I've done it twice now in two different states. Our first solo house cleaning company in Upstate New York earned our family $60,000 profit on 2 days per week cleaning by myself. Our second house and office cleaning company earned us $70,000 profit cleaning 2 days per week by myself. I was solo for 16 years. The ISO Model works! Today, we're growing a team to clean professional, financial, and medical office spaces in the Indian Valley of PA through Carfagno Commercial Cleaning. This best-of episode is a flashback from the early days around 2011, right after my wife and I made the decision to optimize instead of scaling. It was an inflection point in our lives. I couldn't keep driving full-speed toward a cliff I couldn't see... overwhelm, overwork, injury, no money bankruptcy, you call it what you want. But that's where we were and the change we made, changed our lives.

I really loved my Monday and Friday mugs that I had in my cabinet. Oh my goodness. It's sad to say now, but I don't have them anymore. One cracked and broke. It was the brown Friday mug with beige lettering. I think one of my kids did it. The beige Monday mug with brown lettering lasted until 2021. I was still using it on Monday mornings. But it cracked somehow and Teresa eventually persuaded me to part with it. It was very sad because I knew what those mugs represented. As you'll see in this best-of episode, these Monday and Friday mugs were only allowed out of the cabinet when I was home with my family on a Monday or a Friday. You see, it was always my dream to be home with my family. These mugs represented slice of that dream. It was amazing! That's what optimizing my solo cleaning business allowed me to do. But I'll tell you... I'm not too sad anymore about losing my Monday and Friday mugs. Today, I could celebrate all 7 days of the week. I have a Captiva Island mug and my wife has an Oasis Church mug now. These represent the two month-long family trips we took in February 2022 & 2023. I like these mugs way more than the Monday and Friday ones. We've earned the dream we once held of being home together as a family. I am so grateful looking back at where we were and now experiencing what we've already accomplished. But we're not done! We're heading toward another dream now! Check out this best-of episode and see if you can find some kind of a mug or anything that represents your dream and keep it in front of you like I did.

Read the rest of this article on the Smart Cleaning School website and hear Ken's BIG ANNOUN

 Josh Melton has been a friend of mine in the industry for several years. We are both Christian husbands and fathers with a heart for men's ministry. Outside of cleaning, Josh has been involved in many side hustles including a coaching program to empower and strengthen men. Likewise, I am an author and was involved in a coaching program to help Dads. Can you see why we'd connect so well? How about this one. Josh built his commercial cleaning business to the level I'd like to attain, which is 6-figures of profit without having to clean. But he did that to earn his freedom to focus on other projects he felt more called to lead. That is also me 100%. During this interview, Josh and I share our stories and ultimately how God has been trying to turn our eyes toward Nineveh. What does that mean? 

Here's the short answer. Read the Book of Jonah in the bible or at least watch this short cartoon summary. It's great! Jonah was sent by God to preach repentance to the people of Nineveh. He chose to turn away from God and go his own way. Essentially, God ran away from God's plan. This decision met Jonah with adversity and destruction. Yup, this is the story of the man that was eaten by a whale! That's Jonah. Eventually, Jonah turned toward God and went to Nineveh and all was corrected. Jonah lived out his life in blessing. Josh and I talk in this podcast about our common cleaning roads to Nineveh. It really connected Josh and I even more. I loved this interview and I know you will too.

Josh Melton is the co-owner of the Athens Cleaning Company and the co-host of the Entrepreneur Adventure Podcast.

Resources: In this episode, Josh mentions the janitorial software Swept that his company uses and loves. He also endorsed the book, "Traction" by Gino Wickman.

 I have been fortunate to interview several visionaries in our industry over the past year. This interview with Ricky Regalado was different. He is such a visionary that he inspired me to do greater things in this amazing industry. Take the time to listen to this one all the way through and then listen again. You will not be disappointed.

 The first portion of the interview covers Ricky's upbringing and deep family ties. This is where you start to feel the deep sense of connection that he has to the blue collar workforce in America. In the second portion of the interview, we shift gears and talk about the cleaning industry and where it's going. We covered the integral values of  hard work, grit, and perseverance that founded our country and is not being taught like it used to. In the final portion of the interview, Ricky shares his vision for the cleaning industry and how we can be a part of rebuilding America.

Here are a few notes and quotes that stand out from this interview.

"If we were going to make this work, there wasn't enough time to have a social life because we had a vision. At some point, we'll be working on this business and not in it."
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"Love it or hate it, you don't get a 10x return on a blue collar business. You get a 10x on a technology company or an invention."

"A trend isn't a short amount of time. That's a risk, a high risk and can turn around on you as fast as it went up."

Where does this generation learn grit and develop a backbone? We learned it from our baby-boomer parents and grandparents, who watched their parents and grandparents survive the Great Depression. We learned it from our immigrant parents who scrapped for everything they had. We learned it from our single moms who had no other way but up.

This industry is so poised to keep growing. We're foolish not to capitalize. Ricky is getting letters from private equity firms all the time offering to buy his company. These firms see the marketplace and see commercial cleaning as recession proof and pandemic proof. For the first 5 years, Ricky didn't like being known as a cleaning service owner. It wasn't glamorous. Now, he shouts his business with confidence and excitement. It generates responses like. "Ooh, I need a cleaning company."

There have been 30,000 new cleaning companies formed from 2006 to 2018. That number nearly doubled in 2020 to 52,000 and 2021 is likely more than 2020.

"I feel like they need to know what it is to walk in the shoes of a cleaning technician before any other thing cause then they'll get that humility." Ricky requires every employee of the company at every level must spend their first 30 days in the field cleaning. "The greatest generals started with basic training."

Ricky's Business Growth (Year to Year)
2012 $80k Coverall
2013 $250k Coverall
2014 $600k Coverall
2015 $800k Coverall Sold, $0 Rozalado
2016 $1.8M Rozalado
2017 $2.4M Rozalado
2018 $4.8M Rozalado
2019 $6M Rozalado
2020 $9M Rozalado
2021 $10M++ Rozalado

Ricky's Vision for our Industry
Rozalado is currently at the top 1% in our industry. 9% of the general labor (blue collar) workforce comes from cleaning & maintenance industry! Think of it this way. 9 of every 100 blue collar workers in the US are working for cleaning & maintenance companies. That is mind-blowing. Ricky believes very deeply that he can make a sizeable impact on the American labor force by strengthening cleaning companies. It goes back to the way of life he grew up in. All Ricky knew was blue collar and now he is able to raise the standard of living for the very people he represents through the most unlikely of businesses.


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 John Disselkamp is the owner of First Class Commercial Cleaning in Louisville, KY.  John was born and raised in Louisville and had a hard-working mentality. This suited him well in his early corporate life and propelled hiim to a bank executive at a young age. John won the prestigious "40 Under 40" Award during this banking stint. In this interview, John shares his transition from corporate to starting a commercial cleaning company in 2016 and growing to six-figures per month in revenue and 50 team members in under 3 years. He then lead his company to $5 million in revenue and 230 team members 3 years later. John is an American Success Story! 

First Class Revenue Story
Year 1 - $90k
Year 2 - $350k
Year 3 - $950k
Year 4 - $1.4M
Year 5 - $2M
Year 6 - $2.4M
Year 7 - $4.8M
Year 8 projected- $9-$10M

John has accomplished all of this with mental illness. Since childhood, he struggled with mental depression and anxiety. 

"We were in growth mode and growth sucks cash. We had intentional moves to make sure we could scale a company." 

John believes that investing into your business is more than just the supplies to fill an office cleaning location. It's in people and in culture. He made sure to keep relationships first, which he learned in corporate, to fuel First Class's culture. John believes that the culture he created is why First Class excelled through Covid and a labor crisis since 2020.

He joined the Strategic Coach Program to up his leadership game. John was challenged with the concept of the 4 boxes that is taught in that program. John early career was spent in the box that represents something that you're good at, but don't enjoy. This is where most careers go to die. John wanted fulfillment and has found it in his cleaning company. He's good at it and enjoys it, a rare combination for adults in the working world.

"What makes a smart person smart or an intelligent person intelligent? It's not knowing what they know. It's knowing what they don't know. And that's always been something that I've taken to heart." 

"It's a pretty simple business. If you treat people well, you work hard, you do what you say you're gonna do, you're halfway decent at communicating and building relationships... You're better than most and I've still found that to be true 6 1/2 to 7 years later."

John had a playbook for how to start a cleaning company and couldn't find it. He was going to St. Loius with his future wife and decided to cold call a local company to see if he could learn from then. He called Spencer Commercial Cleaning and a guy named Scott Bader answered the phone. Scott met with John for over two hours to mentor him. John is so grateful to Scott for helping to launch First Class Commercial Cleaning. John still uses the contract templates, pricing strategy, and a few other systems that Scott has taught him. 

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 Michael Brown is the founder of Swept Janitorial Software, which is an all-in-one app that integrates employee scheduling, tracking, customer supplies, and quality control. As many of you know, Josh Melton has coached me from solo to a team of commercial cleaners over the past two years. Josh personally uses Swept and introduced me to Michael a few years ago. I've been following his journey and had to get him on the show. Michael is brilliant and I couldn't wait to listen to his mindset. I also have to mention this. We've now used Swept personally since 2021 and there is NO way we would have been able to to take 2 month-long family trips to Florida in the middle of winter without this amazing tool. As of the time of this interview, Swept had over 40,000 users in a market of 1 million janitorial companies. They have a lot of space to grow and they will! 

In the first portion of this interview, Ken and Michael dig into training up our kids to be life-long learners and critical thinkers. Michael shares a story of a local friend with a large security guard company that designed a program to "give them their brains back". He found out the unique talents and skills of his workforce and utilized them. This made the employees enjoy their work more and it saved the company from investing in specific job functions and roles. Michael encourages other employers to look outside of the typical roles to find gold on your team.

"People will overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten." - Dan Martell

"Dream Manager" book is a favorite of ours. Michael says it was based on Mary Miller's janitorial company Jancoa out of Cincinnati. This company has an incredible culture that the book was based on. 

Michael grew up in rural Nova Scotia with no money in the family, so he sought to earn through his own businesses at age 8. He has been a life-long entrepreneur. His dad was a government worker with an incredible work ethic. He was work-oriented and that really shaped young Michael.

"If you have nothing to lose, you can take risks." 

"People will give you the advice they would take." 

His first business was a rain gutter business in college that he built a million dollars and sold it. He started a commercial cleaning company  in 2014 and struggled as we struggle. Michael started Swept for his own cleaning company as an internal tool to support the growth of the company. The software grew from there to where it is now at over 40,000 users worldwide.

"Everything that we want to do is already in us." Michael finds his big ideas and plans while out in nature without devices. Being away unlocks these ideas. "We, as humans, have the ability to figure it out."

"There is a difference between a Leadership Mindset and a Survival Mindset. One is scalable and the other is not." 

"I'm fascinated by people. They want the end state, but don't want to do the pre-work. Some would rather risk the money than take the time to validate it before they spend the money."

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 We discuss a wide array of topics in this podcast episode anchored on our belief system. What is the underlying characteristic that has helped Debbie Sardone succeed in each of her businesses? It's her belief and conviction that what she is doing is right and is helping people. This conviction creates the self-confidence to take massive action and the massive  action leads to massive results. It's this simple. You hear this woven all through Debbie's entrepreneurial journey that spans multiple decades. You hear this conviction rise up during the pandemic in the metaphor of the cow and buffalo and in helping cleaning company owners through the Valley of Despair. Here are some quotes from the episode.  

"That's when I realized that there is a solution for everything. But you do have to go find it, you need to invest in it, and you need to follow it. And that's what I did. I'm a very good student."

"The fear was always worse than the reality. You can borrow my confidence until you have it."

"If you believed you could do it, you would pursue it."

At the end of the episode, Debbie and I referenced a mutual friend, "It's Grace for a Reason with Kevin Smith".

Debbie Sardone is the Founder of several companies including Buckets & Bows Maid Service, Debbie Sardone Consulting, and her non-profit Cleaning for a Reason. 

Debbie and her team at CBF are offering an incredible deal to listeners of the Smart Cleaning School. Are you scaling a residential cleaning company to $1 million or would you like to learn how? CBF Live is the largest residential cleaning training conference and will give you the boost you want. This event on April 12th, 2023 in Dallas is $697. Go to CBFLive and enter the code "KENHALF" during registration to get half-off the ticket price!