Smart Cleaning School

In part 1 of Teresa's expert call from the Smart Cleaning Tribe, she dives into what it is like "Living with an Entrepreneur". In today's episode, Teresa unpacks a few key lessons the Carfagnos have implemented to achieve balance between the family business and the busyness of the family. I hope you find these lessons useful yourself.

 This phrase is one of the most used when I'm training a new C3 Team Member along with "We don't clean everything every time. We clean everything  over time". I wanted to dive into some mindset to encourage you, regardless of whether you're on the C3 Team, a solo cleaner, or a cleaning company figuring out the basics of growing a team. Let's first explore what it means to put in your reps as I lay out the construct known as the 4 Stages of Competence. I will use cleaning vernacular and share bits and pieces of the C3 training system to help anyone listening. 

Stage 1: Unconscious Incompetence - You just started cleaning professionally and barely know what you're doing. You're just doing what you think is right. If you don't have anyone training you or mentoring you through this stage, you'll never get out because you won't ever know that you're terrible! Most solo cleaners and cleaning team members start here. This stage doesn't exist in the C3 Experience.

Stage 2: Conscious Incompetence - You know you're not a good cleaner. This awareness is conscious. You want to get better to make your business viable or make your employer happy they hired you. You're following checklists and training videos and everything is still confusing. I talk about this stage in "Where is the Flavored Water?". This is me in the grocery store. I want to be better at finding items. But I'm woefully awful and my wife knows it.  This is where most cleaners truly begin. Don't fret at how slow you clean or how poorly you do it. Are you following the system, the checklists, the training? You will improve. Be okay with being not okay at cleaning yet. This stage represents a brand new C3 Team Member going through orientation, training videos, and in-person training. In the case of a standard 3-hour office in the C3 model, you're probably getting Excellence scores around 6 and taking 5 hours to finish. 

Stage 3: Conscious Competence - Ah, you are finally a quality cleaner. You've been following the cleaning checklists and training videos. You get it all done and you do a good job. You're competent at cleaning. Congratulations! Don't rush the process. Don't try to get faster yet. Just keep following the checklists and training. You will continue to become more competent and at some point it will just CLICK! Your brain will store the program and you'll move from conscious to unconscious competence. This stage represents a C3 Team Member after a few solo cleans. In the case of a standard 3-hour office in the C3 model, you've achieved the Excellence score of 8 but you still take 4 to 5 hours to clean! You're doing great! Remember, excellence before efficiency.

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 It is so critical for each one of us to align or be congruent with how people see and perceive us as a business person in our communities. Before there was an online aspect of doing business, all we had to do was be out in the community building valuable relationships and adding value wherever we could.  This got us referred. Our branding was all about who we were and what we did in person in the community. In the early 2000's, websites started becoming a prominent branding component for cleaning companies along with Google, Yahoo, and even (dare I say it) MySpace. Social media then erupted on the scene in the 2010's and now our online branding may be the most important side of our branding.  The reality is that for most cleaning companies, more and more people are finding us through our online branding first. I want to keep this episode short and sweet. There's two scenarios that can happen: 

1. Scenario 1: Great In-Person, Bad Online - Your in person branding is awesome. You can easily convert prospects into new clients and people want to be around you and refer you because of your overall level of service and excellence. But your online presence and branding is terrible or maybe just okay. I have a friend from my local networking group with this exact scenario. You'd meet him in person or at a networking group or see his work and think how amazing he is and how impressed you are. But then you search for him online and you're less than impressed. This is a huge opportunity for this business owner to get congruent and have their online align with their in-person brand. You have an online marketing issue. It's easily corrected with the right professional help.
2. Scenario 2: Great Online, Bad In-Person -  Your online branding is amazing. You are attracting a TON of interested prospect customers and employees. But your in-person branding is not. When these prospects meet you after seeing your website and online social media, they are less than impressed. You are not true to what people perceived of you online. Either your character is not good or your business savvy is not good in person. It's possible that you're just not good with people. Whatever it is, you do not align with your online brand. This is a bad scenario as you will lose almost most of the prospects that meet you. Eventually, your online brand will crumble as well. This is not a marketing issue. It's a character or personal growth issue. This is not easily corrected. You need a coach! If you're in this scenario right now, you have to make up the gap as fast as possible. You've got to be perceived online and in-person the same.

Let's all get brutally honest. Which scenario are you in right now? Do you need to increase your online or in-person impression? Decide and take action!

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. 

 In March 2021, I brought my wife Teresa Carfagno onto the Smart Cleaning Tribe as an expert to talk about our decade plus of homeschooling. The call went 2 hours and we ended up covering 4 topics that were of interest to Tribe members, which included Living with an Entrepreneur, Work / Life Balance, Healthy Eating Habits with the Kids, and Homeschooling. As this podcast approaches 300 episodes, I wanted to FINALLY introduce my secret weapon. Teresa keeps me grounded. She nurtures me and helps me when I'm feeling overwhelmed and under stress. She loves me no matter what. She walks the life of a disciple of Jesus Christ with me so we can bring up our kids in the way they should go. We are a team. This podcast wouldn't be possible without her. In fact, many of you know that it was Teresa that started Carfagno Cleaning in 2005. 

I recently went back to this expert call and loved it! I decided to cut it into 4 parts and release it to the Smart Cleaning School. I hope you find as much value as the members of the Tribe. This first episode is called "Living with an Entrepreneur" and covers the first topic from Teresa's call. 

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. 

 This episode is mostly for C3 Team Members, but I wanted to share it with the Smart Cleaning School. In the episode, "Introducing the C3 Experience", I laid out the company mission, vision, and values. When I first released that episode, I had no idea it would become a mandatory piece of the C3 Team hiring process. I truly believe that episode was the single most important one that I recorded in the past 18 months! It shares so much about who I am as a follower of Jesus Christ and steward of His business. I remember starting my career with General Electric in 2000. I was so excited to work for GE. I joined the Edison Engineering Development Program (EEDP) and was thrilled to pursue my dreams in my new career. The onboarding process was basically checking off boxes and part of that process included me getting the GE core values on an index-sized piece of card stock. I glanced at it and then pinned it to my cubicle wall. I never looked at it again. I didn't care. That wasn't important. The work was important. The engineering was important. I mean, that's why I was there. Most of America enters corporate settings the same way. Core values are part of the onboarding process, but no one really "lives" them out. That's a problem and most don't even realize it.  

Fast forward. Teresa and I started Carfagno Cleaning in 2005. It was a way to earn income so our family didn't starve as we spiraled out of control financially in 2005 - 2008. It become my full-time career by default and out of total necessity. I never created a mission statement and certainly no core values. Who cared? They were lame at GE and didn't help me make money. But then we started having kids and raising a family. As our oldest entered Kindergarten, we opted to homeschool after much research and prayer. This was in early 2010 after putting Kenny in preschool for a few months. We barely scratched the surface of putting our son is school and we were done! We made decisions all along the way about how we wanted to raise our kids. We thought hard about the type of adults we wanted to put into the world. We wanted to teach and model Christian discipleship in our homeschool and family. We wanted our homeschool to result in independent, creative, problem-solving, entrepreneurial leaders. Without even realizing it, we had created a mission for our family and homeschool. The mission was the table top and the core values were the legs. We then put bible verses to each of the legs or core values and put this up on our family room wall. We truly cared about the future of our kids and realized that we needed to design what that would look like. That's when I looked back upon the core values from GE and realized something very profound. I never cared about their core values because I was never a fit for GE! I wanted to be a part of GE because they were touted as the #1 place to work for engineers. It was the best career opportunity. But in all of my research, I NEVER once read their mission statement or examined the legs of their table. I never read the core values. I wasn't a culture fit for GE, so I shouldn't be shocked that I was fired in 2005. So many young people make the same mistake. They go to work for the biggest company with the best benefits and highest salary and best advancement. This is important, but what if they don't fit into the culture like I didn't fit into GE's?

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 I shared this episode as a personal C3 business update and hopefully serve as a teaching lesson on how to incorporate core values into your company. I never imagined that this podcast would become a keystone piece in our C3 Team hiring process. Shortly after the original release of this episode, C3 added 6 new locations totalling $4,000 per month in new revenue just 2 months left before the Carfagno Family left for Florida. How would we find amazing people to fill the C3 Team spots? That was a question that Coach Josh and Ken talked about a lot. In the end, we decided to use this podcast episode to my advantage. Make it a required listen in the hiring process to even qualify for an interview. It worked so well. Here's what I've discovered. I put my mission, vision, and values out there to such a level in this episode that C3 prospects either wanted to be a part of the team or wanted nothing to do with us. There weren't any luke warm candidates. Thus, this podcast has served as a tool to filter the right people in and wrong ones out. What does that mean? This podcast shares our team culture and the right ones are attracted like a magnet. The wrong ones are repelled. Needless to say, this episode is the most  downloaded of 2021/2022 in the Philadelphia Area. My hope is that you'll get an idea from this episode on how you could incorporate a podcast, video, or even a blog on your website to serve the same purpose.

If you're interested in our C3 Experience and want to check us out. Our website is www.C3xNow.com. We are professionals that clean professional spaces with ownership, excellence, and safety. 

 In the last episode, we touched on a few controversial subjects. I encourage you to check out "Poor Character Produces Long-Term Pain" and let me know your thoughts. I want to take a more positive approach in this episode. Just as poor character produces short-term gain and long-term pain, good collaboration produces short-term pain and long-term gain. Before I share my stories, let me explain. It's hopefully clear that the 2 example stories from last episode created a short-term solution. It made the cleaning companies more money in the short-term. But in my opinion, it hurt them long-term in reputation and ultimately revenue. When a company is less referable, they will create less revenue. Collaboration is an act of generosity and focuses in on one of the "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey. Stephen calls it, "Habit 4: Think Win-Win". When we collaborate with another local company, we build a bridge between us. Our customers can become their customers and vice-versa. It allows us to stay in our lane and service the areas we are best able to serve, while allowing our collaborator to do the same. This ultimately creates a better outcome for the customer that we share as well. Let's go back to the past example. The house cleaner that decided to add carpet cleaning was able to earn more revenue on each customer, but she wasn't providing the best carpet service. She was also spreading herself thin and potentially watering down the quality of the main lane she served. If this occurs, the customer receives a lesser house or office cleaning along with a lesser carpet cleaning. This customer is less happy and less willing to refer the business. Let's examine these two stories from the C3 Experience. 

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 Over the next 2 episodes, my desire is to show you real stories from my local business network of how we can control whether we experience long-term pain or prosperity. This episode will focus on two stories where poor character produces long-term pain. The next podcast will focus on 2 stories where collaboration produces long-term prosperity. Each of these episodes has the thread of selfishness vs. generosity woven through them. Let's go!  

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 When I started this podcast, I predicted certain themes would come up often like pricing, people skills, leadership, business owner mindset, and cleaning efficiency. But I never saw the theme of overcoming fear emerging so often. In "Yeah, That's Fear", we explored the 3 Failure Diseases of Excusitis, Detailitis, and Procrastination. Go back and listen to that episode to refresh. Fear disguises itself in so many ways. Fear causes us to stop taking action or never start. I want to share a story in this episode from my friend James Hardy of the Carpet Guys. He is such an expert in floor cleaning and carpet & upholstery restoration that it's preventing him from scaling his business to the next level. This was me for years as a solo cleaner. First I'll share the story and then we'll unpack it. This will become part 4 of the Perfection Series, which includes "Excellence Vs. Perfection", "Accept the Uncertainty", and "Perfection is the Enemy". Each episode has covered different angles of how perfection crushes our productivity and growth.  I encourage you to go back and re-listen to the previous 3 episodes as you have the opportunity.  

Here's my James Hardy story! Jim apprenticed as a carpet cleaner at 17-years-old and moved into his own business soon after. We are the same age, so that's over 25 years in the trade. Malcolm Gladwell penned mastery of a skill after 10,000 hours of hands-on training in his book "Outliers". By that measure, Jim is far beyond at 50,000 hours of carpet, upholstery, and floor cleaning. Jim knows the science of floor cleaning better than anyone I know. He has a reputation in our area as the Cadillac of carpet, upholstery, and floor cleaning services. In fact, Jim does restoration cleaning which "restores" the carpet to its original condition. I've seen him work and he's truly an artist. A couple weeks ago, Jim asked me to breakfast at Sammy's Bullfrog Cafe. Backstory... In early 2020, I released "Apologize with Action". I was submitting a cleaning proposal to Sammy's at this time and also made an introduction to James Hardy. Sammy never hired our cleaning service, but he did hire Jim for carpet cleaning of the cafe every 6 months. I said yes to breakfast and asked him why the sudden invite. "I was out at Sammy's on Monday night and I just wanted to see how the carpets turned out. Would you come with me?"

I had to make a pit stop at the vacuum cleaner store and met Jim after. He was already surveying the carpets and shared this. "I moved all the tables off the carpet and cleaned it once like normal. But it was really dirty and I wasn't satisfied. So I ran the machine a second time. It looked good, but I know that the final presentation of the cleaned carpet doesn't set for 24 hours. I usually get out to as many jobs as possible the next day to do an inspection. I didn't really feel that good about this job Monday night going home and wanted to see it this morning. I felt weird coming here alone. Thanks for coming."

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 In part 1 of this 2-hour interview, "Conspiracies in the Cleaning Industry with Ed Selkow", Ed shared an incredible 50-year career in our industry. He shares so many great stories and lessons that will help you in your business. Ed also shared some incredible criminal stories that I called "conspiracies" that are a must listen! In this episode, we dive into the second half our interview. 

Ed shares the past, present, and future of the cleaning industry. Do you want to grow with the industry? There are predictions and recommendations that Ed suggests. Here's a few notes from the interview.

• "You've got to be honing your skills, expanding on what you know how to do."
• "Where there are a whole bunch of companies that are missing, that's an opportunity for me."
• Why are so many new cleaning companies starting out post pandemic. "Desperation drives a lot of people to start cleaning businesses because it costs so little to start. It's possible to grow a cleaning company with no money, but it's also possible to walk from NYC to LA!"
• "Commercial real estate is the mother's milk of the industry." Ed explains that if no developmental growth is happening, cleaners are just trading accounts around as there is a finite amount of buildings to clean.
• Find the country economic people for networking to learn when and where new buildings are coming. Ed believes this is a huge opportunity and better than the Chamber of Commerce.
• The disinfection revenue explosion will normalize like previous fads.
• Ed gets into the intersection of "Big Data" and "The Internet of Things" (sensors),  for computer models of building traffic to determine how much cleaning has to happen. This could become cleaning-on-demand.
• The increase in technology will drive cleaning prices down over time. This is what happens with every industry that technology improves. Robotics are one of these advances. For example, there are robots that can empty deskside trash cans. Couple this with cleaning-on-demand technology, and cleaning revenues will likely go down. Ed is predicting this so we can get ahead of it.
• Winning cleaning companies will be the ones that combine of technology and open systems for cleaning.
• Ed highly recommends that we all understand Seth Godin's book, "Tribes". Those that understand this mindset will survive the future.
• Ed highly recommends that we, as building contractors, link up with the BSCAI (Building Services Contractors Association International) as our professional trade association. They are dedicated to the services versus the manufacturers (ISSA). They were also influential to getting the cleaning industry labeled as "essential" to get us back to work during the pandemic.

You can find Ed Selkow at Janitorial Growth Solutions and on multiple social media outlets.

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.