Smart Cleaning School

 This episode of the original Solo Cleaning School is one of my most downloaded ones to date. I have personally heard several stories how this episode along with a few others helped someone start a solo cleaning business as a side hustle. I can't tell you how exciting that makes me! I wanted to make one update to this episode based on where I am in my personal business in 2022. If you've followed this show at all in 2021, you'd know that I made the decision after 15 years of solo cleaning to scale my business. In fact, if you'd like to learn how to scale your cleaning business, you can follow this podcast and watch me do it!  

In my original episode, I shared that it costs between $500 - $1,000  to get your basic supplies together. At the time, I was keeping it as basic as possible. Would you like to see a list of the specific cleaning supplies & equipment that I personally recommend? I'll give you an example. I've used 3 products from the Amway Corporation for over 15 years. They are eco-friendly, water and coconut oil based, and the smell sells. The kitchen cleaner smells like citrus and the glass cleaner smells like melon. I have literally sold new house cleaning jobs and at least one office cleaning customer by letting them smell my cleaners during the estimate. Maybe that should be a Funny Papers edition. If you're looking for new cleaners or would like to see what other supplies & equipment I recommend, check out the Smart Cleaning School Resources Page. 

 I brought Molly Moran onto the Smart Cleaning Tribe in December 2021 as the 4th expert in the 7-Figure Series. Molly started Green Sweep NM in 2009. She lives in Albuquerque, NM. She grew her business to $600k in 6 years with basic systems and a split of 50/50 commercial & residential. Molly decided to sell the commercial side of her company to focus on houses. After 2 more years, she built the residential only portion back to $450k, but she was burnt out! Her business was unsustainable because she had few systems. She was working like crazy and the thought of this business at $1M revenue made her sick as she’d have no life. Molly was scrolling late night on Indeed and Facebook when she stumbled upon Debbie Sardone and CBF. She joined Debbie's coaching program in 2017 as a last-stitch effort to salvage her company and regain her peace of mind. CBF usually helps businesses with $100-$300k businesses get to $1M. Molly was way past that, but needed help. She implemented the necessary systems in a year and turned it around.  Molly grew from $450k to $1.2M in 4 years and closed 2021 closing in on $2M in annualized revenue. Molly has opted to be more top-heavy in admin, to sacrifice profit for time. Others opt to be more involved in the business (less admin) and more profit to the owner. This investment allowed Molly to step away more from her business and today she is a certified CBF Coach and helping others turn their residential cleaning companies around and on-track toward a 7-figure absentee business. 

There were many amazing lessons that Molly taught us on this Tribe call. I wanted to extract just a few. The first 15 minutes of this podcast are highlights from Molly's overall business journey and lessons along the way including her decision to join CBF. The last portion of this episode answers a Tribe member's question about her struggles along the way. Molly's answer is delivered in a classroom format, where she systematically unpacks the 4 struggles at 4 distinct revenue levels a cleaning company owner experiences. It is fascinating. Here are some notes from the 4 struggles.

• First struggle: $300-$400k. You have 8 people with field staff. You’re working your face off in your business and you can’t afford to hire someone in the office. This is the fist valley of despair. This was a profit issue and needed to hire office staff to grow.
• Second struggle: $600-700k. She was F/T in the business. This was a people power. You have office staff and need more to get to the next level. There is an insecurity of “is this growth going to continue”? You probably need to add a new admin team member every $300-$350K
• Third struggle: $1M-$1.2M. The people you start with aren’t always the people to get you to the next level. It’s a leadership issue. Be very careful with the titles you give people. Using the word manager can limit people. The manager at $500k can’t manage at $1M.
• Fourth struggle: $1.5M-$2M. Capacity. Certain things that scaled at $700k don’t scale now. Customer service and technology are examples. The communication log (ComLog) - they track incoming and outgoing conversations with staff and customers. The CommLog is the running text of the day. There used to be 10-15 entries and now there are 40-50 per day. This has not scaled. 

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. 

The FAA requires a runway length of 7,500 feet for a 747 airplane to take-off and land. This length adds on considerable margin for slippery surfaces from poor weather or possibly malfunction. Have you ever noticed how exact air traffic control and schedules are? Your plane has an exact take-off time. It takes a few minutes to depart from the gate and taxi to the assigned runway strip. Then it stops, awaits permission from control, and then barrels down the runway lifting off into the great blue. There are so many great analogies and metaphors that speakers and writers have used over the years to compare this airplane take-off process to some process in our lives or businesses.  I was on a coaching call with Josh Melton in early November 2021 and he said this. "Ken, you need to learn how to clear the runway." 

 

Let me explain the issue first. I had booked a month-long trip to Florida over the summer and had 6 months to accomplish a significant goal. This is explained full in "A New Freedom Vision".  Essentially, I had to add 5 new buildings in my commercial cleaning company and delegate them to 5 new team members. But I would need to delegate and develop systems as a foundation for this all to stay together while I was gone. This seemed very doable once Coach Josh started guiding me. I was taxiing onto the runway and ready to take off. There were just a few giant obstacles blocking my take-off. 

• I had agreed to a major undertaking in the Royal Rangers with my son Kenny. He was going for National Scout and needed to earn his Wilderness in the Frontiersman Camping Fellowship (FCF). I decided to do it with him. This required a 24-hour survival vigil in the woods, building our own shelter, cooking our own food, and staying awake the whole time with no talking. And that was just one part of the testing for Wilderness. There were several other skills we had to learn like black powder muzzle-loader shooting, flint & steel, knife & hawk throwing, primitive navigation, assembling our frontier outfits, and much more. This took Kenny and I all August, September, and early October to accomplish. The Wilderness Vigil was on October 16th, 2021. We both earned Wilderness and Kenny was elected as the National Scout, one of 8 in the whole country and the highest Royal Ranger level of leadership for Rangers under 18. It was worth it. But it took a ton of time and I was not able to devote the time needed toward my cleaning business during that time. Tick-tock...
• I was trying to help my uncle close the estate of my grandparents. We had to sell the family house that my manic father was refusing to leave.  We had to initiate a lawsuit, deal with the lawyers, and try to formulate a plan with the realtor all at the same time. Meanwhile, I had a father who was a threat to himself and others. This made the summer and early fall of 2021 extremely tough. I took multiple personal days away from work to deal with the following: meetings with the lawyer and realtor, helping my brother move out of the family house, taking my dad to the ER to clear him for drug rehab (once he was ready for help in October), coordinating the moving company to empty out the family house, and sell the house. It took a lot of time, but my uncle and I sold the family house on October 20th, which would have been the 65th wedding anniversary of my grandparents. My dad went away for a month, which bought my uncle and I the time to do the "business end" of the estate. I prioritized this and the cleaning business slipped. Tick-tock...

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

 I have shared highlights and interactions from the Smart Cleaning Tribe that I facilitate every Monday. This past week's call was wide-ranging in topics, but one issue spoke to many in the Tribe. Communication. When you run a solo business under $100k, it's fairly easy to maintain all communication of email, texts, and online messages with your customers. For the most part, solos have under 30 customers and they don't have many emails to address. It does get much harder to be responsive and accountable to ALL communication as your revenue grows. In this episode, this issue comes up big time in 2021 to bite Mark's business. He doesn't ignore his emails. Mark runs a very successful janitorial company over $1 million in revenue and gets up to 50 emails per day from customers, employees, and vendors. This is not a task that Mark could or should do on his own. He has tried and it cost him 2 customers in 2021. Here's the irony. Mark (like others in the Tribe including me) are guilty of procrastinating on their communication. They respond quickly to the email, but not fully. This buys us time to come back to the email when we have time. The problem as you may have guessed it. We don't have the time to come back to it. Therefore, we drop the ball and the communication procrastination hurts our reputations and bank accounts.  

Lizzy identified an interesting reason for her communication procrastination. She is a perfectionist and waits until she has all of the answers perfect before she replies. This may not happen because of time crunching. Her irony is that she has GETMO quotes all over the wall. Go back to my episode called "Perfection is the Enemy" to hear more on this. Michelle shares her insecurities and failure in this area as well.

When I get to Bryan, we were all surprised to hear him say. "I am strong in this area." He has dropped the ball in the past and has implemented a delegation strategy. He hired a VA to do various office-related tasks for his company. One of those tasks is to monitor all inbound communication and hold Bryan accountable to his full response to every message. Bryan is the one responding. However, he delegated the accountability to a VA and now he is never unresponsive. Mark's solution is similar but also very different. He is hiring a full-time office person to take over all communication. It will their job to never let what happened to Mark ever happen again. Mark will check in with his employee to hold them accountable. He is keeping the accountability piece and delegating the communication. In both solutions, delegation with accountability is the answer.

Would you like to learn more about the Smart Cleaning Tribe? Check out our testimonial videos and free content on the Tribe page! 

 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. I am proud to announce that Debbie is also the newest sponsor to the Smart Cleaning School Podcast. 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. 

 It's time for another Tim Ferriss Podcast reference. Oh my. David Blaine the magician was such an entertaining 55 minutes!  There were so many actionable words of wisdom. The one that got me to stop and listen again was this one. David told the story when he was a young magician doing street magic. He was in an airport and he got some bags mixed up because they all look the same. He said I think you've got my bag to a nearby traveler. One of the guys in a business suit said, "No I think that guy over there in the in the white limo has your bag." David had no family left after his single mom passed away. He had nothing to lose, walked over to the white limousine, and knocked on the window. The window rolled down. It was Iron Mike Tyson holding up his fist in the prime of the Tyson era! Iron Mike said, "Hey man, what do you want?" Mike Tyson ended up letting David into the limo and they went back to Mike's hotel where David did a bunch of cool magic tricks. Mike was thoroughly entertained and gave him some life-changing advice. He said. "You know I wasn't supposed to be the heavyweight champion of the world. I was too short. My reach was too short as well. But you know... when you have nothing else to lose, you have everything to gain." 

I just meditated on that for a while as I was vacuuming an Animal Hospital floor and sucking up gobs of hair. When you have nothing else to lose, you have everything to gain. It's the same concept as hitting rock bottom. A lot of addicts and people with a lot of distress have to hit the worst point in the life before they can truly get better. I know people that start side hustles but yet they never make it work. Do you know why? They have everything to lose and very little to gain. They may have a 6-figure full time job with great perks, but they want freedom. It's hard for them to make it. I love the Rocky franchise. Look at Clubber Lang vs Rocky Balboa in fight 1. Clubber had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Rocky had very little to gain and everything to lose.

When I was in my first year of cleaning, I was David Blaine or Iron Mike Tyson or Clubber Lang. I had everything against me and everything to gain. I had already lost it all. I had no where to go but up. This motivated me beyond belief and I worked my tail off for scraps. I kept doing it over and over and over until we started getting some traction. If I go to the other end of my first cleaning business, we had a cushy set up in a nice rental house in a nice cul-de-sac. We made good money and I only cleaned 2 days per week. I had a lot to lose and not much to gain (in my mind). The truth of the matter was this. We weren't making it. I should have kept the same intensity throughout my business instead of letting up. I love this advice from Mike Tyson. Where are you at? Do you have nothing to lose and everything to gain? Go hard. Fight your fears and win. Or do you have everything to lose and little to win? This is dangerous as it causes complacency. If you stay where you're at, you will eventually lose what you have. Trust me! 

 Welcome to the next Solo Saturday! I'm here for you solo cleaners. Have you enjoyed these bonus episodes just for you? We're just coming off the Christmas Season, New Year's, and now we're hard at work setting 2022 goals. I want to share a scene from one of my favorite movies, "It's a Wonderful Life". This scene is a turning point in George Bailey's life as he decides to follow his calling into the great unknown to help people rather than bowing to the almighty dollar that Mr. Potter was offering. See if you recognize this scene. I'll act it out! 

[Quite a cigar, Mr. Potter.

You like it? I'll send you a box.

Well, I, uh, I suppose I'll find out sooner or later, but just what exactly did you want to see me about?

George, now that's just what I like so much about you. George, I'm an old man, and most people hate me. But I don't like them, either, so that that makes it all even.You know, just as well as I do, that I run practically everything in this town but the Bailey Building and Loan. You know, also, that for a number of years I've been trying to get control of it or kill it. But I haven't been able to do it. You have been stopping me. In fact, you have beaten me, George, and as anyone in this county can tell you, that takes some doing. Take during the depression, for instance. You and I were the only ones that kept our heads. You saved the Building and Loan, I saved all the rest.

Yeah. Well, most people say you stole all the rest.

The envious ones say that, George, the suckers. Now, I have stated my side very frankly. Now, let's look at your side. Young man, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, married, making say...forty a week.

Forty-five!

Forty-five. Forty-five. Out of which, after supporting your mother and paying your bills, you're able to keep, say ten, if you skimp. A child or two comes along, and you won't even be able to save the ten. Now, if this young man of twenty-eight was a common, ordinary yokel, I'd say he was doing fine. But, George Bailey is not a common, ordinary yokel. He's an intelligent, smart, ambitious young man, who hates his job, who hates the Building and Loan, almost as much as I do. A young man who's been dying to get out on his own ever since he was born. A young man...the smartest one of the crowd, mind you, a young man who has to sit by and watch his friends go places, because he's trapped. Yes, sir, trapped into frittering his life away playing nursemaid to a lot of garlic-eaters. Do I paint a correct picture, or do I exaggerate?

Oh, what's your point, Mr. Potter?

My point? My point is, I want to hire you.

Hire me?

I want you to manage my affairs, run my properties. George, I'll start you out at twenty thousand dollars a year. Twenty thous...

twenty thousand dollars a year?

You wouldn't mind living in the nicest house in town, buying your wife a lot of fine clothes, a couple of business trips to New York a year, maybe once in a while Europe. You wouldn't mind that, would you, George?

Would I? Y-You're not talking to somebody else around here, are you? you know, th-this is me, you remember me? George Bailey.

Oh, yes, George Bailey. Whose ship has just come in, provided he has enough brains to climb aboard.

Holy mackerel! Well, how about the Building and Loan?

Oh, confound it, man! Are you afraid of success? I'm offering you a three-year contract at twenty thousand dollars a year, starting today. Is it a deal, or isn't it?

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

 After a networking meeting, I was out in the parking lot chatting with my friend Gary Volpe as we were both making our way to our vehicles. The topic of telling our story came up and Gary lit up!  

"Ken, we have a great salesman who is selling windows for $1,200 each that normally go for $800 each. He sells them at a 65% closing rate. This is insanely good in this industry and probably any industry. But this highly successful salesman had a run of three missed sales in a row. He pulled over on the side of the road and was forced to ask himself the question. What did I change on these last three? He realized it immediately. He didn't tell the story." Gary then shared his own company philosophy and story. They are one of the same. Gary started the business in 1970 with his brother and he often tells about carrying shingles on his shoulder and doing all the work himself. He has so many memories of those early years where they had to grind out so much. He wasn't the big name he is now. He was just Gary the roofer, a basic laborer in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania. He connected with the everyday guy. Over the years his story has grown to bring in his kids who now run the company. In fact, when you go into their showroom an entire wall is devoted to their story. It's a big timeline with pictures across 50 years of their history. The first time I was in the office I sat on a comfy chair and a showroom facing a fireplace. I turned to the front entrance and I could see Bible verses and this picture timeline. I loved it and I looked at every single picture. I even walked up to see some of the pictures and captions below. I asked myself the question. This is really cool but why is this here. There has to be a reason more than just showing people how long this place has been around.  Gary went on to tell me a few more interesting tidbits. When they hire a new salesperson, they put them through a six week intensive program to train them how to sell their product. The very first portion of the training is knowing and learning the story to the point that each salesman can tell the whole story themselves. Gary also told me another example. When a sales guy is presenting the product at a home or business, they are sharing the story of the company first. Just like Gary shares the story at the front entrance's building, his sales training probably invests 10-20% to the story of the company. Also, the selling process itself invests 10-20% of the salesperson's time to tell the Volpe story. Gary said. "The story sells the job. My top salesman forgot to tell our story for those 3 sales presentations. It crippled the process. It's that important. Telling the story makes us more relatable to real people out there trying to afford improvements to their homes."

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

 I ended the November Freedom Report with peace. We had brought our plan to go to Florida to God and asked Him to show us the way. We had over 20 job applications come in with no new hires. I personally connected and made initial connection to 240 local office cleaning prospects and followed up with close to 100 phone calls to find out if they had a cleaner in house or outsourced and if they were happy. This lead to 7 interested prospects and 4 proposals sent. But the net result of all of this effort was 0 new team members and $0 in new revenue with 65 days left before Florida. Josh gave me a challenge. "1 & 1 and we're having fun." Can I add 1 new office and 1 new team member by the end of November. I recorded the November Freedom Report just prior to month end. Let me just say this. God answered our prayers and broke the dam loose! A lot has changed in 30 days! 

2 exciting things happened on November 30th. Around lunchtime, I got a call from the HR manager from one of the 4 proposals I sent to an insurance agency. They accepted my proposal, signed the contract, and wanted to start service on January 1st! And get this! It was one customer and two buildings for a total of $950 per month. I interviewed a promising candidate named Joanne the day before. I talked it over with my wife and Coach Josh. We decided to send Joanne a job offer on Tuesday afternoon. She accepted. For the first time in months, things were looking up. That's 1 new customer and 1 new employee. We met Josh's challenge of "1 & 1 and we're having fun" with hours to go in the month. 

We were ready for December... we thought. Let's do the bad first. I did a poor job with selecting Joanne. She worked with us one weekend. Her work was good, but something about the job wasn't a culture fit with Joanne. I can only speculate that she wanted complete autonomy sooner and that she didn't like the family business aspect. I had two of my kids working and helping me teach Joanne our cleaning system. Ultimately, I made a bad hire and this will happen a lot. I just need to keep working my hiring process to attract and repel for culture. Josh helped me work through so much of my hiring system in December.  He helped me turn a bad into a good! The clip for this month's Freedom Report is an epic step-by-step on what Josh is looking for and how he attracts them. Here's a recap of the elements of my hiring system we added in December. Josh also issued a new challenge. "2 & 2... it's only a few."

1. We added a 2nd job on Facebook and Indeed. The first was for "Weekend Side-Gig Office Cleaning". The second one we added was "Weeknight Side-Gig Office Cleaning". Josh predicted I'd get more applicants looking to do side work after their full-time job during the week. He was right. Our Indeed ads alone captured over 30 leads in December.
2. I set up multi-step process to get to an interview. I had 5 no-shows in a row in November, then 1 that showed up after setting up a few hoops. I offered her a job in late November but she ghosted me. I had 7 more interviews in December with only 1 no-show or 8 total booked. Each of these candidates completed a 15 minute questionnaire, 15 minute DISC assessment, and 30 minute podcast sharing my company's culture (mission, vision, and values). I wanted to hire each one of them.

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

 This episode was the turning point of my 2021, where I publicly announced that I was changing my business model from solo cleaning to building a team. If you're new to this podcast, here's why this is so significant. Around the cleaning industry, I have been known as the solo cleaning expert. I have built 2 solo cleaning businesses to $60,000 income per year on 2 cleaning days per week without employees or subcontractors. I started the Solo Cleaning School Podcast and Elite Membership in 2019. I have followed 2 of the 3 paths of the Optimized Solo Cleaner. I have "Stayed" a solo. I have "Sold" my solo business in 2018. This podcast was the announcement that it was time to complete the trio and "Scale" my solo business. We had a New Freedom Vision to be in Florida for a month as a family and I would need a team to complete this vision.

At this point in the podcast, I stopped my weekly updates in my solo cleaning business and moved to a monthly Freedom Report with Coach Josh so you could follow me toward this vision. Please take the time to listen to this Best-Of episode to go back in time to last summer. This will set the next episode really, really well.