Smart Cleaning School

 This episode has turned out to be one of the most important in my entire podcast episode catalog. I had just joined the Indian Valley Chamber of Commerce after meeting with our Chamber Director, Steven Hunsberger in "I'm the Only Cleaner". A few short months later, I was sitting with new Chamber mentor Ken Byler of Higher Ground Consulting.  Ken is a leadership coach and amazing listener. I was asking him how I should approach my chamber membership. In this episode, Ken tells me the best advice I've received for the C3 business. "Ken, get a name for doing." It was a selfless strategy to build a reputation in the chamber and business community as someone that cared, that got involved, that made a difference. I took that advice and applied it. Now, I serve on the chamber membership committee and have an outstanding reputation with the membership and leadership team. This reputation has also increased our local commercial cleaning business revenue by over $25,000 per year directly and probably another $40,000 per year indirectly. I highly encourage each and every one of you to soak this episode in and take action!

Carfagno Cleaning is a corporation with various divisions. We have a this podcast and the Solo Cleaning School. I serve team cleaners in the SMART Cleaning Tribe. This all falls under my 'consulting' division. My main division is my own solo cleaning business that I am rebuilding in the Philly suburbs after sellling my first one to Ian Traynor of Albany Pure Cleaning. I hope you've been enjoying this podcast and the journey I've taken you on.

This week was a short one as Thanksgiving cut off 2 days and my family was traveling to New Jersey for a long weekend. I started the week with a meeting with Ken Byler of Higher Ground Consulting. I met him and really connected at the Chamber of Commerce luncheon a few weeks ago. This was a fun meeting. I am used to asking questions and listening, but I met with a greater master than I. Ken skillfully got me to talk the whole time and then asked how he could help me. I literally ran out of time to help him. You got me, Ken! Anyway, here's the answer I gave him. "How do I best use or network in the chamber?" Ken's answer floored me. He said this. "Find out the available Chamber committees and see where you can help. They meet once per month for an hour. Pour into it and show your value. This builds relationships with chamber members and raises your level of trust. From here you will Get a name for doing and contributing. Others in the chamber will want to connect 1-to-1. Set the meetings and connect more. This will lead to lasting relationships, leads, and it helps the community through your chamber leadership efforts." This was a drop the mic answer.


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My boys are really into rap music and my second son Kolby has a legitimate passion to become a rapper. He's 11. Kolby is writing, composing, and performing his own material now and wants to get better. We've began studying other successful artists in the Christian rap genre to learn what they did to reach the pinnacles they've reached. These rappers include Lecrae, NF, Andy Mineo, KB, TobyMac, and others! Personally, I'm a big fan of Lecrae.  

Recently, my oldest son was playing a Lecrae song while we were working in the basement together. It's called "Take Me As I Am". As soon as Lecrae starts rapping in that song, I immediately heard 2Pac. It was like 2Pac really came back, converted to Christianity, and dropped this SICK song! And yes, I like rap too. I have gone through so many seasons of music including infatuations with the Beatles, heavy metal, and rap. I've listened to everything. I was a big fan of 2Pac in college and used to play in my frat room. Yup, you just learned that I was also in a college fraternity. It was all before I personally accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I have no regrets and made so many friends during this time in my life. Let's go back to the basement. I stared at the bluetooth speaker totally mesmerized as a podcast idea and teachable moment was forming in my brain. If you ever wondered, this is how it usually happens. I told Kenny. "This is Lecrae. You've probably never heard of Tupac Shakur (and he had not). This Lecrae song sounds exactly like 2Pac. I knew it within moments of the song. 2Pac's rap music was so unique in his style and delivery that I'd know it anywhere, any time because I was a fan of his music. I know 2Pac's unique signature. The best rappers and musicians ALL have a unique signature that separates them from the mainstream and makes them memorable." Kenny thought about that and got it. He rattled off 4 other musicians including some rappers that he would know within moments too because of their unique style and sound. Another Christian rapper that has blown up recently is NF. At first, you would think it was Eminem. Their sound is so similar, yet NF has gone beyond the similarities to create his own sound and signature. Lecrae has as well. I was already doing  research on rappers for Kolby, so I found some articles on NF and Lecrae. It was no surprise to me that NF was heavily influenced artisticly by Eminem and Lecrae by 2Pac. In fact, listen to this excerpt in a May 6, 2016 interview with Revolt.TV. 

"For an artist who often gets pigeon-held in a box as a “Christian” rapper, Lecrae lays it all out in his new memoir discussing everything from domestic abuse, feeing lost in life, an abortion and Tupac’s influence serving as sort of a surrogate father figure in his life. Lecrae states in “Unashamed” that “without any constant male role models, hip-hop artists became my heroes” and “Tupac became my second parent.”

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 Do you remember Claudia Adriazola of CMA Cleaning and Organizing in Onalaska, WI? I did a free coaching call with her, which became "The 4-Week Rotating Schedule". Claudia took my advice and implemented it quickly. Then she joined the Solo Elite Membership and began my ISO Model Course. I offer quarterly coaching in this membership, so Claudia and I were back on Zoom for coaching. She had changed so much since our last call just a month prior. She added 8 new clients at higher prices and sent out price and schedule changes to others. This lady is on a mission to change her family's future. I'm so blessed to get the opportunity to help her.

It happened again. On this coaching call, there was a portion that I asked permission to share. She was struggling with how to present a price and schedule change to a longer-term customer that has referred her multiple clients. I really felt her options were great wins for Claudia, but losses for the client. This is where I asked to press record and teach how to use the art of the Win-Win in price increases. Claudia now has a document that she can be proud of sending. She presented the client with possible win-win options and put the ball in her court. If she agrees to the changes, they both win. If she passes and fires Claudia, it's not big deal either because Claudia has already replaced her with a higher priced new client. Enjoy the mindset in this behind-the-scenes coaching call with Claudia.

Are you a new or struggling solo cleaner wanting to create financial peace from your solo cleaning business? The Smart Cleaning School has resources for you! Check out the ISO Model Course and the Solo Elite Membership on the Smart Cleaning School Solos Page at www.smartcleaningschool.com/elite. 

 I've been in the cleaning business for 17 years. I was a solo cleaner for 15 of those 17 years. As I was first exploring the cleaning groups in 2016, I got the impression that solo was viewed as "so low". We are just trunk slammers that buy our cleaning supplies at Walmart and advertise our services on the laundry mat tack board. We are amateurs without any real knowledge of how to run a business. In fact, we aren't real businesses at all. We have cleaning jobs and yet we say that we own a company. A solo cleaner is thus a lowly title to many. If this is you, you're not alone. There are over 50,000 new cleaning companies entering the industry each year right now. In all likelihood, probably 40,000 or 80% are new solos. There are definitely companies that start with the intention to build teams from the onset as well. My point is that we are an army and for the most part feel like we're alone and the minority. We really feel like we're below the other companies. We are SO LOW cleaners. Do you relate? I know you do because I surveyed over 100 solo cleaners in 2019. I found the top struggles then to be #1 lack of money & time, #2 loneliness, and #3 feeling so low.  

This was tough for me too. I was a highly educated mechanical engineer and part of the corporate leadership team at one of the biggest companies in the world from 2000-2005. I seemed to have it all from the outside. But I wasn't happy. I felt so low there. This caused mild depression and ultimately lead us to start our first side-gig businesses. A few years later, I was fired from my engineering job and fought each day to put scraps on the table and drops in the gas tank to survive through a new job of cleaning houses for a profession. I was embarrassed. I felt so low and I was. My friends from high school and college were buying houses and I was barely able to afford rent. My friends were becoming managers in their companies and I was cleaning toilets. I even ran into old work colleagues looking for house cleaners. I felt so low. Why would I go through this? Why would I sacrifice the prestige of the corporate life for the so low life?

The answer is simple. I wanted freedom. If you're listening to this podcast and you feel like I did. You have a really good job by the world standards. Your family is proud of you, just like my grandparents and parents would brag about their son and grandson working for GE in his big time job. But if you're also like me with all of that status and accomplishment you feel trapped. You don't know what you want to do, but it's not what you're doing now. That was me. I never knew I would ever in a million years end up in the cleaning industry. But I did. I went from an engineer to a solo cleaner. There wasn't a lot of money in the solo cleaning business in the beginning. I tried to go back to my engineering degree a couple times with no success. Even though my income was about half as much as my corporate job, I had something I didn't have before. Choices. My children were young and I didn't have to go to work at 8:00, 5 days a week, bring my laptop home and do more at home. I didn't have to think about the job on nights and weekends. I didn't have to ask for time off. I called the shots. I made my own choices as to when I wanted to work and which jobs I wanted to take. I traded income and status for a small dose of freedom. Was it really so low? Not at all. As I started gaining more choices and freedom and income, I started feeling more hope and excitement on the potential of this solo business that wasn't so low anymore. I stopped caring what others in my family thought of what I was doing for income after nearly completing a masters degree in mechanical engineering.

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 I grew up with a mom that corrected all of my spelling and grammatical mistakes. It was painfully annoying, but she taught me that sending your draft is not what professionals do. Professionals send the edited and final version of their work. This was taught and backed up in my schooling too. I always checked my work and would be embarrassed if my work that I turned in had spelling mistakes. Enter 2022 and the age of social media, instant feedback, communication through a gazillion devices, and automatic text correctors. Many of these communication formats still rely on the written word and professionals are caring less and less on accuracy. I am totally guilty of this and so are you!  

How many times have I wanted to send response to a message or text so quickly that I hit send before I re-read it? It's embarrassing the stuff I've actually sent and then apologized for. We all do this now as I have received messages from just about everyone with mistakes... and yes... even my mom! It's the great irony of the times we're in. First impressions are still as important as ever. Let me share this simple example. I got a resume from a candidate looking for part time cleaning job. I only hire professionals with resumes that want a side-gig cleaning the professional offices we serve. This candidate is very professional, working as a case-manager and touting communication skills on his resume. His initial communication to me was this. "Hood afternoon." This is super silly. I know what he means. Do I give him a pass like I do for my friends and family? Well... let's think about it together. He is applying for a job that requires the small details to be handled with care. There are many opportunities in cleaning a professional office to miss an important detail that could make all the difference. If this candidate is sending his first impression email to me with "Hood Afternoon", how many other details is he not double-checking? Don't let this happen to you. How about the funny papers story I shared in this episode? That young man didn't impress me with professionalism. He was eager and that's a great trait, but he had no questions for me and I want someone who can think, figure stuff out, take ownership. It's a core value. Here's another example. What if I spent hours and hours for the opportunity to do a walk through estimate for cleaning with a top-tier wealth management company and then sent a professional proposal asking them to spend $1,000 per month with C3 and my email started with "Hood Morning." They may overlook it, but they may not and I could end up losing thousands of dollars because I wouldn't double-check my work. This is something that I've been working on more and more in this fast-paced culture. I am a professional and I use spell-checker. I'm like Santa and check my list twice. It takes moments to check yourself, yet the rewards versus consequences for not checking are huge.

This episode was meant to be short and sweet. Slow down in your communication and impress with being different by being accurate. It mattered in 1963, 1993, and it matters in 2023. 

 Recently, I had the opportunity to share an educational piece with a local networking group. It was a follow-up to a talk I did a few weeks prior on setting new habits that would transform their lives. It was 2 weeks later and I started out purposely finding out how accountable the members were to their new life-changing habits. The outcome was encouraging as over half had taken action. They were accountable and for a local group of successfully run companies, I was not surprised. These members knew I was doing a second talk 2 weeks later and perceived that I may ask the accountability question. They were prepared. I have done this same talk in other venues. The overwhelming #1 habit people want to change relates to their health. I observed a similar result. The groups that I returned to had over 50% implementation and accountability. The others had less than a 10% rate of implementation. Accountability is vital. Let's link this back to "Goal-Setting IV - The Accountability Roadmap" Only 17% set goals! 3% write them down and less than 1% have accountability around their goals. The success rates are as follows: 10x for goal-setters over non-goal-setters, 30x for written goals over non-goal-setters, and 100x for accountable to goals over non-goal-setters.  

In the spirit of accountability, I'll share a short update from my life. I set several goals in "2 Rewards and 1 Consequence". Here are my stated October 31, 2022 goals:

1. C3: Add 4 locations (to 20) or add $2,500/month revenue --> We added 2 locations at $1,925/month revenue and lost 1 small one totalling $200/month.
2. C3: Add 2 Team Members (to 6) --> We added 2 Team Members and lost 1, so we have 5 total.
3. Health: Do my 3x3 workouts weekly, be 90% gluten-free, complete a 10-day water-only fast, and sleep 8 hours per night to achieve 165 lbs, 20 chin-ups, half-mile treadmill at 9 mph, and 100 calories burned for 15 minutes at resistance 10 on the rowing machine --> I CRUSHED every one of these health goals!

Teresa and I celebrated with a 3-day getaway to Amish Country as our reward! Now, we're going for the next 90-day goals sprint to secure our 2nd month-long family trip to Florida! What are you being held accountable to? The Smart Cleaning School has a great resource for you! It's called the Smart Cleaning Tribe, where the 1% of the cleaning industry meet weekly to create goals and hold each other accountable to achieving them! I'd love to connect with you and potentially invite you into this Tribe!

Here's a clip from that talk I did with my local networking group for you to hear the interaction in the room.

Check out my interview with the T-Bag Company Founder, entitled "Respectful, Reliable, Responsible with Damon Washington". You can purchase any of the T-Bag products at a 10% discount through the Smart Cleaning School Resources Page at smartcleaningschool.com/resources. 

 These initial episodes were done before the 2020 pandemic. They were important then and I believe they are even more important now.  We need to have  purpose in what we do or we'll never have the passion and commitment to see it through. In this replay episode, I help you identify the Why in your life so you can jump onboard the goals train! Have fun! 

This was a breakthrough week for the Big Picture of what I'm doing. I have business SMART goals that I set for my solo cleaning business on 1/1/20. I share this mindset in my goal-setting series (What is Your Why, Why Set Goals, Make Your Goals SMART, The Accountability Roadmap, and Kill Parkinson). The lessons and reminders from this week in business forced my hand to create a 6th installment to this series.

As many of my podcast listeners know, I have other streams of income. I run the SMART Cleaning Tribe for team cleaners. I host this podcast and the connected Solo Cleaning School Elite Membership for my students to learn my ISO Model to hit their goals.  I am also at the beginner stage to consulting large cleaning companies with employees that would like to scale with optimized solo cleaners or Solo Teams. I'm also a published author of an interactive book for fathers to read to their kids called "Arctic Land".  In past years, I have struggled with holding it all together and being productive with multiple irons in the fire. This year is different. I have figured out a way to prioritize and follow through. I call it reverse engineering your dreams and I hope this podcast will help you find a similar system that works for you! 

I knew (prior to COVID) that this year needed to be our breakthrough year. We needed to build a new solo cleaning business to become an optimized part-time 6-figure income. There were multiple reasons for this:

1. To teach our kids the "family trade" by working with dad, earning income, saving, giving, spending, and investing.
2. To show YOU (the listeners) that my ISO Model works by building and optimizing a second solo cleaning business to the same level as my first in a fraction of the time.
3. To earn a main income source in the schedule I was willing to clean that would provide everything our family needed too thrive in 2020 & beyond, not relying on any online income.

Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website

 These initial episodes were done before the 2020 pandemic. They were important then and I believe they are even more important now.  We need to have  purpose in what we do or we'll never have the passion and commitment to see it through. In this replay episode, I help you identify the Why in your life so you can jump onboard the goals train! Have fun! 

I'm calling an audible to my original plan. We started this now 5-part series with Goal Setting I "What is Your Why" and talked about the most important aspect of goal-setting. It's your reason for getting up and doing what you do. The "5 Why's" exercise is an effective way to peel back the layers of your reasons to get to the core of what makes you tick. We are not robots, but emotional creatures. Mike Michalowicz, in his epic book "Profit First", shares why rational accounting doesn't work. He uses an example of plate sizes. Do you know that the average size has grown from 9" to 13" in diameter. That's DOUBLE! Over the same time period, the average American male's weight increased from 160 lbs to 190 lbs! Why? Mike goes to say that humans consume everything they are given. It's human behavior. They also use every available amount of time to finish a project and every dollar to fill their budgets. This is why Americans don't have 'extra' savings on hand or 'spare' time or 'uneaten' calories. There is a name for this. It's called Parkinson's Law.

Parkinson's Law states that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." We have to fight against this human behavior to win and learn how to Kill Parkinson!

Our SMART goals are subject to Parkinson's Law too. If you set a SMART goal with a 'T' of 3 months, you will either miss the goal or make it just in time even if you could have done it faster. This is human behavior. I want to encourage you to set goals so that you can complete them in the beginning and get the wins. However, you need to get more aggressive as you progress. I'm going to use this example. I interviewed my friend Courtney Wisely of Rescue My Maid Service on a FB Live to help her set a SMART goal. She wanted to complete a technology course for cleaning service owners to help them be more productive and automated. I asked her if she could get it done by December (12 months away). Her answer was "Heck, yeah!" Then I asked if she could have it done this month. She said, "Heck, no!" I asked about June, which was 6 months away. "Um... yes." She wasn't as confident, but knew she could. Then I said April or 4 months away. She was very uncomfortable, but believed it was possible. I encouraged her to set her SMART goal for April. Here's the psychology behind this and it looks at the 'A' in SMART or 'Attainable'. I pressed Courtney and discovered she could achieve this massive goal in 4 months. However if she set the goal like most people for 12 months, Parkinson's Law would kick in and she'd allow the work to expand to fit the time. That would waste 8 months of potential goals or create a huge Opportunity Cost. Courtney won't do this. She will set the goal for 4 months and kill it this year. Just keep in mind that Courtney is a hyper-focused goal-achiever. We're not all there. So start where you are. The 'A' in the SMART goal has to be defined by YOU depending on where you are in your goal-setting journey. What's barely attainable now will be a joke in a year, so you cannot continue to set the same goals.

Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website

These initial episodes were done before the 2020 pandemic. They were important then and I believe they are even more important now.  We need to have  purpose in what we do or we'll never have the passion and commitment to see it through. In this replay episode, I help you identify the Why in your life so you can jump onboard the goals train! Have fun!

 We're at part 4 of our goal-setting series. You should have a great handle on your Why, why you set goals, and how to create a SMART goal. These are all vital steps in getting traction and achieving. However, there is more to the equation. Let's talk about an accountability roadmap. Think about a huge map of the country. There's a car off on the side of the map. Where do you want to go? Well, that's a silly question. We first need to know where you are now on the map.

Step 1: Know Your Numbers! You have to know your business numbers, which includes your key performance indicators (KPIs) or scorecard, profit & loss, and where you want to go. This will help you assess exactly where you now compared to your goals and allow you to have the measurables to set solid SMART goals.

Step 2: Know Your WHY! Now that you're car is off the side and on the map in the location of where YOU are, you can pour the fuel into the vehicle and set the direction you would like to travel.

Step 3: Determine Your Route! You will need a series of milestones every 90 days in the form of SMART goals to create the dotted line on your map to get you from where you are to where you want to be.

Step 4: Put on Your Wheel! You need wheels to make your gassed-up car to roll to its destination. My friend Courtney Wisely of Rescue My Maid Service uses these 5 areas to measure the health of your cleaning company: Human Resources, Operations, Marketing, Administration, Finances. I added a 6th area and that is Goal Setting & Accountability. We can place these 6 criteria as 'spokes' on a wheel. Simply segment the spokes with 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. Then grade yourself on each to start your journey and connect the dots. You can see this exercise done on my FREE SMART Goals Masterclass. You will need to create a circle so your 'wheel' can get you to your destination.


Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website

 These initial episodes were done before the 2020 pandemic. They were important then and I believe they are even more important now.  We need to have  purpose in what we do or we'll never have the passion and commitment to see it through. In this replay episode, I help you identify the Why in your life so you can jump onboard the goals train! Have fun! 

Goal-setting is a science and an art. We covered some of the art and the emotion of why to set goals. Now it's time to dive into some science. The S.M.A.R.T. Framework is a methodology of setting goals that allows you to measure and track your progress. Without a system like this, your goals are likely just wishes. Check out my free "SMART Goals Masterclass" to get a great recap on the Why of goals and for an in-depth explanation of the SMART Framework. 

In this episode, I want you to grasp that each letter in SMART has a greater purpose. However, I don't think the letters are in the right order. For the purpose of an acronym, SMART makes sense. The true order should be RASMT.

• R = Relevant - This is the most important letter in the goal. It must get you closer to your Why! It must be relevant to your BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal)
• A = Attainable - The Slight Edge requires slight inputs. You need to get the ball rolling with small wins. Set your first goals small and always make sure they are realistic otherwise, you will not do them.
• SM = Specific & Measureable - This combo makes the goals easily tracked with numbers or scores. As they say, "What gets measured gets managed."
• T = Time bound  -This ties it all together and makes it accountable by giving your trackable goal  a deadline. Without a deadline, nothing happens.

SMART Examples: 

• To grow my book club to 25 members. S, M, A - This is NOT relevant to your cleaning business and there is no deadline!
• To grow my book club to 25 members by 1/31/20. S, M, T - We added a deadline, but it's not feasible to add 25 members in a week. It's not attainable. And by the way, this isn't relevant at all to your cleaning business!
• To grow my cleaning business. A, R - Now we have a relevant goal, but it's too vague. It's not specific or measurable and there's no deadline. By the way, you could literally pick up the phone and call one prospect, get a no, and say you took action that "grew" your business.
• To grow my cleaning business by $1M by 1/31/20. S, M, R, T - This is the first goal that seems to have the whole package, except one thing. It's not attainable! Thus, it's not SMART and you won't get traction!
• To grow my cleaning business by 5 new biweekly clients. S, m, A, R - This goal is relevant and specific. It's also attainable. But, there is no deadline and it's not fully measurable. It's not productive to keep a scorecard and only measure the results. Adding 5 new clients is a result. You need to understand the entire process from the initial marketing to the first message to the estimate and sales. Do you know the level of marketing activity to achieve "5 new biweekly clients"? Once you do, swap in the actions and your goal will go from 'm' to 'M'. If you control the actions, you can control the outcome!
• To create 25 cleaning leads (for 5 new biweekly clients) by 3/31/20. S, M, A, R, T - Bingo! We finally have a goal that is SMART. Do you understand why? Read these notes and listen to this episode until you do!