Cleaning Business Life

CBL Episode #61 Part 1-Celebrating Milestones and Mastering Goals: A Year of Growth in the Cleaning Business

• Shannon Miller • Season 2024 • Episode 61

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We're popping the champagne and slicing the cake for our podcast's one-year anniversary! Imagine transforming your whimsical dreams into solid goals – that's what we've done this past year, and we're here to guide you through doing the same. From reflecting on the humble beginnings of a cleaning company to the grandeur of achieving a ballet dancer's poise or the finesse of sign language fluency, this anniversary episode is all about celebrating the milestones and setting sights on the stars. 

Our discussion dances across the spectrum—from our very first episode's 10 essential steps to the latest in commercial cleaning tech, like robotics. Delving into stories of resiliency, we're sharing how we, along with our guests, navigated challenges like physical disabilities and ADHD to reach our goals. This episode isn't just a look back; it's a treasure trove of strategies for brain dumping, managing the stress of entrepreneurship, and understanding the nitty-gritty of business, from employee classification to Safety Data Sheets. 

Wrapping up, we want to hear from you. Your stories, your victories, your journeys are what fuel this podcast's heart. As we share our gratitude for a year of lessons and laughter, we invite you to join the conversation, and together, let's keep turning those dreams into reality. Here's to another year of growth, community, and a clean sweep of success!

Questions? Feel free to reach out!

Shannon Miller: cleaningbusinesslife@gmail.com

Join my FB Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1583362158497744
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIjMz_-9YyiFvNVIgb61iYg

To order All-Natural Cleaning Products: www.purevergreen.com
See Shannon's latest courses: www.KleanFreaksUnversity.com

Shannon Miller:

This show is brought to you by the Maids Network. Want to get serious in your cleaning game? Join my group. It's one of the larger Facebook groups just for cleaning business owners. I look forward to seeing you there. Hi Shannon, hello, hello everyone. Oh my gosh, I'm excited to be here. Who would have thought that you, you know, a year would fly by and it would just be like that? We just blew through a whole year of podcasts.

Kimberly Gonzales:

I know I'm like looking back, shannon and we're looking back, we gotta do something special for our year. We didn't even it wasn't even in the agenda and I was like Shannon, we've been doing this for a year and she's like pulling up you know the old stuff like our, you know our, our podcast. I'm like we have to do something special. So we kind of changed everything around so you guys get like two sessions of like what is it of a year in, like review kind of a thing, happy anniversary right, it's a debrief.

Shannon Miller:

It's what my friends across the pond call them Debriefs. You guys are going to be debriefed, which makes my dog freak out Now, close to you here, I don't.

Kimberly Gonzales:

Do you not have a glass of water? It's orange. And I found just a girl who loves peckers cup. My friend made this cup for me and I'm so happy I love.

Shannon Miller:

It's one of my favorite because I love chickens, as you know, and you love chickens. Totally a cool gift, very thoughtful, so.

Kimberly Gonzales:

I guess, we're gonna circle back yeah, I was looking at our podcast because I was like writing the notes and I was like, okay, well, what is it? And our very first podcast was 10 things that you need to know to get started in your cleaning company. And we do know we had over a thousand downloads on that download, shannon. Like that was crazy. That doesn't even count for views. So we're going to go and kind of reiterate and go over some things of those steps and then kind of go into, you know, just kind of like a refresher of go into, you know, just kind of like a refresher Right.

Shannon Miller:

What do you think? They say that the downloads is a percentage of the actual views.

Shannon Miller:

So they hypothetical, and I'm not the expert on this because we're still brand new. So if we had a thousand downloads, that means that over a hundred thousand people listened to that episode. Yay, that's a large impact in our industry and it's impressive and it's on its own right. So thank you. We say we're famous, yet Not. Yet I'm accepting autographs right here.

Shannon Miller:

I don't know if you did this when you were in school. When I was in sixth grade, I got to have an autograph book. I'm totally dating myself and I went around to all my BFFs and got their autographs. I still have that autograph book from sixth grade. It's so corny and at this point I just have to keep it around because it's been around for so long. But yeah, I have that. I have like silly letters from when I was 12 and 13 when I was talking to my friend Mimi Cunningham Mimi, if you're out there, I'm still looking for you. But yeah, it's just, it's an interesting time to have, you know, the handwritten letter or the autograph or any of that other stuff just is very nostalgic for sure. So I would have known I would have be doing what I'm doing now, all these years later, and for those of you who don't know and can't see, I'm actually wearing a tiara and Kim lost her tiara, so she is tiara-less, but has this beautiful rose accessory on the side of her head. It's, you know, salsa or the tango.

Kimberly Gonzales:

Yeah, I feel like a little salsa dancer.

Shannon Miller:

It'd have to be a fixture head pretty tight to do the tango. It's a very robust dance, if you've ever done it. Um, lots and lots of practice to do the tango, so you have to have the same partner, the whole deal, um, so it looks like we're going to do a goals recap is what Kim was mentioning and, um, we're going to do that and just like going over the you know 10 essential steps to getting you started.

Kimberly Gonzales:

We're going to kind of re go over it, so right.

Shannon Miller:

So dreams versus goals seems to be the first one. Um, is it? Yes, that's what it has here on my note. Here's my notes.

Kimberly Gonzales:

Wait.

Shannon Miller:

Okay.

Kimberly Gonzales:

Key points I got to get by. So you know I've been on like a mini vacation.

Shannon Miller:

Yeah, she's having a hard time getting back into it. But, yeah, dreams versus goals, understanding the difference of how to how to turn dreams into actionable goals there is a lot to just this piece. We all have dreams and this is going to sound a little woo-woo, um, but uh, we all participate in this woo-woo-ness every time you have a birthday cake and it says, hey, make a wish you're putting forth out into the universe whatever you wish for, right? We've all heard of them. Um, I actually just got rid of it because no one wanted to play with it anymore. I had a magic genie and when you rubbed it it said different things every time. It was a kid's toy. We all have heard the story of Aladdin and the magic carpet and the three things here. So turning your dreams into reality is something that you need to have structure to and, even if it seems overwhelming because it's a total BHAG goal, you can take tiny little steps every day and eventually, if you take tiny little steps towards your goal, regardless of what it is, you will eventually make it across the threshold.

Shannon Miller:

For example, when I was younger a lot of you don't know I was actually handicapped and I didn't know I was handicapped until I went to school, and the reason why I didn't know I was handicapped is because my parents treated me like everybody else. It was just me and my cousins and me waddling along because I was severely pigeon toed and I had to wear those suckers on my legs. I want to say it was forever, but I probably genuinely was like five or six years of having to wear the old fashioned old school you know. They strapped around your hips and you had to wear the saddleback shoes and I wanted to wear van shoes. So every day as and I'm thankful for my mom doing it, but I hated her for doing it so but it was a goal to get out of them. So I would, you know, comply with whatever they wanted. But it came towards the end and I didn't want to comply, I just wanted out of them. But you had to go through the growth stages to hit the hit the marker Right. So every time I didn't have to wear them, I got to go swimming or I dance. That's how I became a ballerina, was accepted into the Los Angeles Ballet. Those types of things eventually worked themselves out, because that was a dream that I had.

Shannon Miller:

I took steps and goals to get where I needed to go. I had, you know, mrs Charlay I believe that was her name. She was very French and she used to take, when we didn't do those plies enough, she would take that stick and she would bounce it right off that floor. And they always made you wear white tights and you'd have to drag your foot up and down the leg. I don't know why anyone would want to wear white tights and make sure they were clean, right, so you could prove that you did work, right. So these are. These are some of the goals that I had as a child, kim. What were some of yours?

Kimberly Gonzales:

Um, I think one of my goals was just I had a learning disability growing up, kind of like you know, I had a disability and I struggled in school and I think now, looking back, I had ADHD growing up as a kid and obviously it wasn't diagnosed, you know, back then. But now as an adult, I actually can look back at all those things and I struggled at all those things and I struggled and I just remember telling myself like I'm going to do this, I'm going to go fight through this and I'm going to learn and I'm going to learn the way I need to learn and I'm going to be successful. Like I told myself these things, and you know, I ended up learning sign language, taking sign language classes, so I'm fluent in sign language. I was an entrepreneur at heart from day one. Milk oh, did you ask her about that? Did you show her the sign Like yes.

Shannon Miller:

For those of you who are not watching, my nine-year-old is in Sign Language Club it's the last meeting was yesterday and she would come home every week after learning something new. So we would practice what she learned and sometimes I got it right and sometimes I did not. And I was doing the symbol for milk to Kim, who is very fluent in sign language.

Kimberly Gonzales:

Yeah, like, my goals were just, you know, and I'm still having goals, and I I want to take a moment because when we did this a year ago for talking about dreams versus goals, what were some of your goals, shannon, that you had last year? I know we talked about that last year what were some of your goals that you feel like you have made and accomplished versus maybe you're still working on?

Shannon Miller:

Some of the bigger goals, and everybody has this goal. Like I want to pay. Like this house that I'm in, I actually paid for cash the first time. Then, when my brother got sick, I had to refinance because my mom needed a lot of cash to basically, we bankrolled my brother's death and so I had that goal. But as far as business wise, when I stepped into this full time, full time, full time, like over full time like every other business owner, I didn't have a lot of products to sell. I only had me. So I relatively my goals. I literally created the first year 25 products and then the second year I created another 20 products and this year I'm probably only going to do 10.

Shannon Miller:

But those are goals, standard goals for us, like having this podcast be popular and getting a sponsor is a goal. So if you know of anybody who is interested in sponsoring us that is related to the cleaning industry, I'm not interested, and this is no nothing personal. If you're one of the biggies in the cleaning industry, I'm not interested like you're, if you're a popular business coach or you're you're on the top one percent. This is a podcast that's catered to you guys, to all the guys on the bottom, that support the top, so that you can eventually gain value from all of our experience and some of our stories are really crazy and some of them are really funny, but it's real advice that we have both experienced with our businesses.

Shannon Miller:

It's not the. This is what you need to do to hit the seven figures. Yes, there are steps that you can take and if you, if you do it right, you will get there. But we're here to help raise everybody up, not just, you know, the one percenters. We want everyone to be successful and that is a goal for me personally. I know, kim, you and I have talked about this.

Kimberly Gonzales:

We just want to be your support system and we kind of wanted a different podcast than the other kind of podcasts that are out there for the cleaning industry Right, and we wanted to not only make it fun but just a learning experience and kind of get you thinking. We don't want to just give you guys all the answers, we want to kind of get your wheels turning Right Like you can figure stuff out, because that is what we love and we love you guys Like we truly love what we do and we look forward to this and I look forward to people messaging me saying how much they love the podcast. Like that just fills my cup and I know that was one of our goals was to do this for a year. You know, try this out for a year and it's. I think it's doing good.

Shannon Miller:

I think so. It's um. So that was one of my goals. Um, another goal I had, which I did not make, was to lose all the weight that I gained when I broke my foot. Still working on that, okay, personal goal Um. Other than that, um, what other goals did I have?

Shannon Miller:

I really wanted to make myself known in the industry, which I have done. I was actually one of the people in the maid summit last year. This year I'm actually considering going to ISSA and I was considering having an informal meetup like cleaning and cocktails, but not like all of the. Those guys have like nine or 10 speakers. I just thought it would be fun to cruise around on the convention floor and check out what is new and going on in our industry. It's always good to check that out.

Shannon Miller:

There is a lot of robotics happening for commercial cleaning, so you need to be made aware of what is going on with that. So, having goals, regardless of what your goals are usually financial goals are the first right. I want to gross 100K in your very first year, which is very doable if you do it right, but you have to have the systems in place to do that and you have to attract the right clients, A lot of the you know the biggest thing is selling, learning how to sell and then you get told a lot, a lot and know a lot and that can be discouraging, but you got to keep at it. Because I often refer back to this and I know, kim, I've mentioned it to you, your husband actually bought one is the Kirby vacuum. Kirby vacuums were sold in the 90s for two thousand dollars you much money.

Kimberly Gonzales:

That was in the 90s and they did it door to door and Kim's husband bought one and when I moved in.

Shannon Miller:

You can sell anything. You can sell snow to the Eskimos and.

Kimberly Gonzales:

I remember when I moved in I was like, nope, there's a gotta go. I'm like, don't ask me to push this thing and vacuum with it.

Shannon Miller:

Right, kirpies are not my fave, but whoever came up with the selling pitch to sell them was a genius, an absolute 1000% genius. To sell a $2,000 item in the 90s was a phenomenal thing. By hand, door to door, no internet involved. There was not any of that other stuff. This was good old fashioned door to door salesman. So you know.

Kimberly Gonzales:

And you can make that a goal, like learn how to sell without being salesy. There's so many ways to doing it and I love to sell stuff when we go to events for my products, or just when I'm reaching out, talking about you know other things you can sell, but you could sell with, like, I guess, just a goal in mind, that you're not going to be salesy. Like people will come to you when you listen to them and you just, I don't know there's a different way of doing it, so don't be afraid about I know so many people are like I don't want to go to networking events or I don't want to do this because it's scary and it's. You know it's getting on the phone is scary and it doesn't have to be. Make it a goal to like learn how to sell without being salesy.

Shannon Miller:

There is way back when, when I was doing jewelry and we used to do over a hundred shows in the summer and all that other stuff. Learning to have eye contact and smiling at your potential client is such an icebreaker that you know. Oftentimes we have shows here on our square where the courthouse is, and half the time nobody will give. They're busy on their phones and they won't give you any eye contact. So I actually won't buy the table. They don't want. They don't want to say anything to you, they just want you to buy it and then be done with it. But I won't buy from anybody who doesn't acknowledge me and say good morning or hello or how can I help you. If you have any questions, reach out or anything about the benefits and features of whatever I'm looking at. It's important Trust, right. You know it's kind of an interesting dynamic. So what are some realistic expectations to have as a goal, ms Kimberly?

Kimberly Gonzales:

realistic expectations to have as a goal. Ms Kimberly, not setting yourself up for realistic expectations for me would be not setting the goals up so high that you can't reach them. Like you're making a million dollars, I'm going to make a million dollars my first year, you know, and then you set yourself up for failure and you set yourself up for disappointment, and then where is that going to put you, you know? So setting those realistic expectations is maybe like, okay, I'm going to work on trying to get maybe 15 new clients this week, depending on where you are in your business, you know. Or I'm going to try to hire on this person, like three people this week, and then train, and so like, setting those realistic expectations, to not set you up for failure, is huge. You guys, you have to like set yourself up for success.

Shannon Miller:

Right and and having viable markers for that is so important, Like, for example, if you had, we'll just do. We know I can't add math while I'm doing any sort of live. Let me turn off this.

Shannon Miller:

We both cannot do math, live Right. So if you had 150, hypothetically only, because it's an easy number If you had one of those times five, 750, 150 times 17. So you have to goal yourself. So if you wanted to make 3000 a month and it's just you you would divide the 3000 by $150. This is a hypothetical number, not the number I'm recommending, I'm just doing it for easy math. You would need 13 clients. So how are you going to get 13 clients? Well, you would have to go. If you divided 13 clients a month and there's 31 days, right, 31, let's see 31 days divided into 13. So you would need to acquire roughly two clients a day, hypothetically speaking, or attempt to hypothetical, to meet your, your financial goals. So when I say that you can gross 100K in your very first year, you just have to do the math backwards. It ends up being either 600 per day or more, depending on what you're doing, and the only way you can get that money is if you're charging a flat rate price. So that can be a goal, financial goal.

Shannon Miller:

When I hit the seven figures for the first time, I had it like I P taped it right there on my computer. I also had it on my bathroom mirror. I also had it on my car dash. My it drove my husband nuts, I had all of these like $1 million for gas. Look, keep her cleaning. My husband's. Like these are all over the fricking house. Why are they everywhere? Like these are all over the fricking house. Why are they everywhere?

Shannon Miller:

I'm going to hit that marker and I, I the first time I did it. I came home and I'm like, I brought champagne. I'm like, oh, look what I did.

Kimberly Gonzales:

Right, I didn't know those realistic expectations and not overstepping like higher amounts. I mean it's great to have those, but maybe make those for, like, you know, the five-year plan, you know three-year plan, set those up for later on. Like, I have a dream board and some of my stuff on my dream board. I haven't finished but I'm okay with that. My dream board's been I don't know. This one has probably been I don't know. I want to say maybe three, four years old. We'll go grab it really quick, shannon, because it's kind of cool For the people that, um, and I've actually accomplished a lot of these. So I've got to like do another dream board. So those of you guys are watching.

Kimberly Gonzales:

I just did like a little cardboard, um, like a little poster board, and then I got a magazine and I just put little things on it. So one of them was a golden retriever. So now I have not one, not two. And guess what, shannon, guess what? What? We may have puppies, oh, so you're going to have more than two. Oh, yeah, I was gonna have more than two, but it was not planned. So, yeah, we might have puppies, golden retriever puppies. So I might have to add like 12 more of these hopefully one.

Shannon Miller:

I know she's a little young, so that one one should be good right exactly one.

Kimberly Gonzales:

I know one for me of camping. So I set like little goals. One of them was a Subaru. I always wanted a Subaru and I finally got my Subaru. I wanted a farmhouse sink and I got my farmhouse sink, which it's white and now I hate it. But you know, I still want to go in a you know canoe. So I still have stuff that I want to do. I want to do more yoga and practice self-love. So it's like you guys can have your dream boards but you may not have accomplished all of those. But that's okay If you didn't. It's. It's a work in progress and life happens, like Shannon's had things happen in her life. You know, when my husband had cancer, I had to put a lot, we had to put a lot of stuff on hold. So it's okay not to reach all of your goals at one time, because life happens Right.

Shannon Miller:

Have to be okay with that. And reviewing what those goals are too, is an important sometimes at the beginning of the year. I usually follow Jack Canfield's success principles. So you, you create X amount of goals per year and usually every quarter, like some of them, I just throw down because I think I like it, and then by March I'm like scratch this, this one is not, this doesn't suit me or I'm not interested in any longer. I just like the whole philosophy behind what it was presented to me. Or sometimes I'm just not in the right spot. You know, and my dog Max was still around I wasn't in the right spot to do a lot of extra things. It took a lot of extra time to care for him and make him comfortable.

Kimberly Gonzales:

So, and it's something that I've experienced, I will say, shannon, in this last three weeks. It's been a struggle because I've had a goal to having a storefront and having a back spot like an actual space so I can reclaim my basement and reclaim my house. And I found like the perfect place, and I mean like it was perfect from the front of the store to the back of the store, literally perfect, exactly what I needed. My goal was to have about 1800 square feet and that's exactly what it was. And then just stuff started changing.

Kimberly Gonzales:

You know like I'm like in the process of trying to hire more help and you know like I'm having, you know, my gal, some gals are leaving and I'm okay with that. You know that's their, you know that's their life. It's like changes. But now I'm like my goal for me to get a storefront is kind of like diminishing because things aren't playing out in the cards, right, like it's not working out and you have to be okay with it and just kind of roll with it and other things will come your way. That's maybe meant to be or maybe something down the road we can't see right now. Right, it's going to happen. So I'm just like I have to be okay with those things.

Shannon Miller:

And it also proves that the universe listens right. The almighty up on top is listening to whatever it is that you need, whatever you're calling the almighty, and it's there. It's presented to you Doesn't mean you need to jump on it, it's just there. So having goals is half the battle. 90, what did they say? Like 90% of people don't even have goals that every year and everyone's goals are slightly different. So it's kind of you can just a la carte everything that you ever wanted and slap it on a board and focus on how to get there. Sometimes you can reverse engineer it, sometimes you can't.

Shannon Miller:

I can tell you just due to my experience you have to have proven systems in place that work. I know there's a couple of people who are new in our industry and I'm like is this written by AI? They're totally sweet. I'm not trying to bag on another person at all, but really consider where the experience is. If the person has never owned a cleaning business, probably not going to be a good thing. And if they're going to AI to generate ad copy for whatever, that's different than coming up with actual content and really knowing what you are talking about.

Shannon Miller:

I can smell a fraud a mile away and I'm laughing because I'm nervous and I don't like talking bad about people, but the reality is is make sure that you are vetting whoever it is you're talking to and you're getting advice from. There are several people out there, the industry is getting a little crowded, which is fine, but make sure that you pick someone who resonates with you so that you can get to your goals faster. I'm at a point where I just want to pay to get from A to B. I don't want to have to invent the wheel, and then there was times when I was younger I didn't want to pay and I wanted to invent the wheel. So, wherever you are in your life cycle, pick and start. Don't wait for the next opportunity to present itself. The next commercial property that presents itself to Kim will be utterly perfect and she won't be able to walk away from it. I guarantee it.

Kimberly Gonzales:

So it comes at a time and you just have to be prepared for whatever comes and there'll be perfect fits. Like you know, a lot of people will go to Shannon for the coaching and maybe their personality won't match up with her, but that's okay, that's not her, that's not her person. It wasn't to be. Just like when you have customers that call you, not every customer that you're going to land is meant for you to be, and that's okay. You have to be okay to walk away from that customer because that customer was not a good fit for your company, and that is okay, totally Okay. Same thing with employees.

Shannon Miller:

Yes, sometimes there's good employees and sometimes there's bad. But, like I like the example goal of acquiring 100 bi-weekly clients. That's a sweet spot to be in. 200 bi-weekly clients, 300 bi-weekly clients and then when you hit the 400, guess what? That's the seven figure mark. So just keep on moving, try to.

Shannon Miller:

You know, keep going, and I know it's a weird time in the economy, but I was listening to a guy on YouTube and he was talking about jobs and how. You know, there's this form of measurement that happens that they, whoever's in charge, says we created X amount of jobs per month. Well, the reality is is, yes, there's all of these jobs that are created, but no company is hiring, especially for full time. So you could say you have a hundred thousand dollar jobs or a hundred thousand, not a hundred thousand000 jobs, 100,000 jobs available, but they're on a hiring freeze and they're laying off. You can start to look at little dribbles that are happening.

Shannon Miller:

I took it as there's 100,000 people plus who are looking for jobs and that we, as cleaning business owners, will be able to find superior cleaners for our businesses. That's how I took it, but he brought up some valid points. But yeah, he basically said that just because there's a number that says we've created X amount of jobs doesn't mean they're actually looking for a person for that job, it's just the number they're throwing out there. Or sometimes you'll get an actual response from the HR department and they already have 1,000 applicants who are far more qualified. So you could still throw your hat in the ring, but they're just not looking right. They're just not actively looking to fill those jobs. So that's something to consider as well.

Kimberly Gonzales:

And then go ahead. I was going to say that I know one of the big things that I like doing and I don't know if you do it, shannon is brain dumping. I love brain dumping, I like brain dumping I do it often.

Kimberly Gonzales:

My one is one of my. I've been doing brain dumping for years and we don't know where the term came up. I just have always used brain dumping because I just have it. So those of you that like to wake up at the three o'clock golden hour in the morning and shut off, I highly recommend keeping like a notebook, like you can have any notebook, but I just, I mean even, like you know, just get a notebook and like keep it by your bed and put a pen there and brain dump whatever's on your mind.

Kimberly Gonzales:

And I try to brain dump in the morning and I try to brain dump at night or about three o'clock a little an hour. Um, because sometimes I think our greatest ideas come when we're brain dumping. And then for me I have ADHD. So for me, when I see that long old list, it kind of gives me a little bit of anxiety just seeing all this stuff, because I'm like, oh my gosh, there's so much that I have to do. It's just putting those in priorities and really putting down the most important thing that I have to do and the thing that I don't want to do the most. So like there's some things that I really need to do today that I really don't want to do, but I've got to get it done, so it's at the top of my list right now.

Shannon Miller:

Right and or you know. The brain dumps happen for me a lot in the showers. The shower gods deliver great ideas. I don't know why.

Kimberly Gonzales:

I guess it's because I'm in there by myself.

Shannon Miller:

There's no kids. It's just like I don't know why. But yeah, the shower gods blessed me with really cool ideas in the shower. So I have to step out and I have a dry erase marker on the bathroom mirror, which also drives my husband nuts. But yeah, you never know when those ideas come to you for sure.

Shannon Miller:

And then showing gratitude this is a mind shift thing and being grateful for what you have. I mean, if you compare us, our lifestyle here in America, to other countries, we live a really good life. You know, I had friends who were in Russia during the time of the Berlin Wall falling down and with Germany and all that other stuff, and there were bread lines before when Putin first took office and started to do his things. We've always had a really good life here.

Shannon Miller:

So you should always be grateful for the opportunities that are presented and it really does shift your mindset. It's not this whole and I know we see a lot of it is advertised on TikTok it's the gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme. You owe me, you owe me, you owe me, you owe me, you owe me, and I would like to believe that there still is some humankind out there that is wanting to do the right thing and is grateful for the opportunities that are presented to them. So, being grateful, however you do it, you can vocalize it, you could write it down, you could say it in your prayers or however you want to do it, but you, you do need to be grateful for what you have.

Kimberly Gonzales:

Be grateful for the things that maybe did not work out, like you know building, you know it didn't work out for me, you know, and I'm still being grateful because there might be something better that comes away. Or being grateful that you get bills, like electric bill. Being grateful for that electric bill that comes in, because that's what's putting electricity over your in your house and providing heat or gas. You know, it's being thankful for the little things that maybe we don't look at. We look at them as like negativity. Be thankful for those little things because that's, you know, it's just showing gratitude so you can have growth in your mind.

Shannon Miller:

Right, I'm not exactly thrilled with my lecture bill, but, yes, I get exactly what you're saying, Thank you. Lights on, which is lights are better than no lights. We could do a podcast that and internet, so I'm grateful for those, definitely. So, yeah, that's the basic structure of having some goals for your business. Like it could be that you want to hire your first helper. There's decisions that need to be made on what kind of helper you're going to hire, because that depends on how you're going to handle them.

Shannon Miller:

There's way a lot more differences for W-2s versus 1099s and there's a probability that you might be operating illegally and you don't want to get audited. It could be that you want to change chemicals and you want to use Kim's product and you still need to carry an SDS sheet. You just go right to the internet and your cleaner should carry those around. God forbid, they get it in their eye and they're all screaming. That's the worst thing ever, right? Having simple, accessible, achievable goals is way better than having that. I'm going to pull in 10 million a year off my cleaning business If you can grow to that, and I've seen it happen but it's going to be trial by fire and no one says hey, hey, hey.

Shannon Miller:

It's like when you go to the islands and you see the movie stars like we're going to walk across these cold, and you look at your friend and you're like I don't know if I'm going to walk across those goals, and they're like you can do it. You can do it. Like no, I don't. I don't know, I got some pretty tender feet. I got these Pradas on. It's just like I don't know if that's going to happen. And they're like yeah, yeah, you can walk across those coals.

Shannon Miller:

I'm like I don't know, I don't know I got my Birkenstocks Right, it's just so. There's a dynamic there. I still to this day, have not walked across coals. I don't know if I actually have the wherewithal to do it, I'm just too wimpy. But I've done a lot of other things, Like I've jumped out of a plane, I've base jumped. I've done all kinds of stupid things in my twenties that I don't care to admit right here. But I don't know. Walking across the cold is probably not one of my things, but it could be yours, right? A lot of psychological things that have to happen to get that to happen.

Kimberly Gonzales:

And it comes along with the fears. Getting over the fears and I know, like a lot of people, that we both Shannon and I both see is getting over those price hurdles. Like going over the biggest hurdles and getting over those pricing fears, like knowing to trust your instinct and trust the things that you've learned and seen, being able to price and not having that fear to like jump out or jumping out into. You know growing your business. Don't be fearful, you guys can do it. We got you, we're holding your hand, we're going to start pushing you and be like you guys can do it.

Shannon Miller:

You can so decide. Are you going to walk on those hot coals or you're not going to walk on those hot coals? Either way, you're going to get to the end. I'll just go around. I'm not going to go through, I just, you know, I just can't. No, I'm just too much of a wimp. There's no way. But yeah, that could be like an inside joke. Maybe one day I'll be like look. I ran across that coal. Can I sprint?

Kimberly Gonzales:

I can walk out on the platform and not pee my pants as I'm doing that because I'm so surprised.

Shannon Miller:

Oh my goodness gracious. But yeah, those are some goals. Um, we, we, of course, love each and every one of you. If you have any questions, you guys all know that you could just reach out. I'm happy to chat with you. Um, if I do ask for you to call me over the phone, I'm not trying to ply you with something. It's just way faster for me to give you 15 minutes of my time than to go back and forth and messenger and try to figure out what it is that you're trying to say, or I'm trying to say. I would rather do this, do the 15 minute conversation. I'm not, I'm not trying to pitch you anything. I just want to solve your problem.

Kimberly Gonzales:

For me. I can't text and I'm so busy like going to and from places so and I'm one of those people that I cannot text and like walk at the same time because I am clumsy, so that's a big thing for me. You have to call me on the phone or I'm going to be running into polls and stuff, Definitely.

Shannon Miller:

I guess we're a little old fashioned that way. But yes we look forward to hearing your comments and, obviously, if you have any questions, reach out.

Kimberly Gonzales:

Thank you guys, and we just hope you guys make those goals and you'd love to hear them. So reach out. If you guys have new goals or if you've accomplished those goals, reach out to us. We'd love to hear from you. Have a really blessed day everybody.

Shannon Miller:

Thank you. Cleaning business life is sponsored by Pure Evergreen Cleaning Products. That's P-U-R-E-V-E-R-G-R-E-E-Ncom. Pure Evergreen Cleaning Products.

People on this episode

Contributor

Jamie Runco

Host
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Shannon Miller

Host
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Kimberly Gonzales

Co-host