Cleaning Business Life
Cleaning Business Life, is a weekly podcast co-hosted by Shannon Miller, founder of Klean Freaks University, and Jamie Runco, CEO of Above All Cleaning Company, based in Northern California.
This podcast is dedicated to helping cleaning business owners at every stage, from startup to scaling to 7 figures. Whether you're a new entrepreneur or an established business owner, you'll discover proven strategies, systems, and methods that will help you streamline operations, increase profitability, and grow your business.
Each episode dives deep into essential topics such as:
- Effective business systems and structures that drive growth.
- Product recommendations and tips on using the right tools for the job.
- Expert interviews with industry leaders sharing insights and success stories.
- Q&A sessions where we answer your pressing business questions.
- The **latest trends** shaping the cleaning industry today.
Tune in weekly to level up your cleaning business and stay ahead of the competition!
For additional resources, including Kim's exclusive real estate cleaning packages, visit her website at [purevergreen.com](http://purevergreen.com).
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Want to get a hold of us, please email us at cleaningbusinesslife@gmail.com
Cleaning Business Life
CBL Episode 95: The Chris Schwab-INTERVIEW-What is Japanese Osoji, Remote Business Models, and more...
🌟 Discover the heart of Japanese cleaning rituals with Chris Schwab! 🌟
In this episode, we dive into the cultural richness of Osoji—a cherished Japanese tradition of deep cleaning and renewal for the New Year. Chris brings invaluable insights from Japan, weaving a narrative that takes us from the time of shoguns to the modern tidying principles made famous by Marie Kondo.
✨ Why This Episode Matters:
Cleaning is more than a task; it’s a way of life that connects your environment to your spirit. We explore the historical roots of these rituals and learn how mindfulness transforms cleaning into a harmonious, intentional practice.
🎉 But that's not all! Chris shares an intriguing backstory about his unexpected journey into the cleaning industry—complete with Vampire Botox and a twist of love. (Trust us, you won’t want to miss this part!)
🚀 Business Inspiration for Entrepreneurs:
Chris’s transformative journey doesn’t stop at cleaning rituals. We uncover his impactful projects in Maryland, his mastery of remote business models, and the strategies behind scaling operations. From leveraging virtual assistants to balancing automation with a human touch, this episode is a goldmine of practical advice for cleaning business owners and entrepreneurs alike.
🌟 Key Takeaways:
- Why mastering operations is essential before scaling your business.
- How to transition to a remote business model effectively.
- The balance between mentorship, financial planning, and legacy-building.
🎧 Tune in Now! Whether you're an entrepreneur or just love cultural traditions, this conversation will leave you inspired and equipped for growth.
📩 Get in Touch with Chris Schwab:
🌐 Local Business MBA: localbusinessmba.com
📧 Email: chris@localbusinessmba.com
🌐 VA Services: inovalocal.com
📧 Email: chris@inovalocal.com
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Yeah, it's a fun industry to be in. It's not fun at the time, but afterwards the stories are great.
Speaker 2:You can get tickled peak Everyone. I'm here with Chris Schwab and he is coming in from Japan across I don't know how many time zones. What is it? Five or six time zones?
Speaker 1:Oh, much more.
Speaker 2:Much more.
Speaker 1:From Arizona, I think it's 16 time zones.
Speaker 2:So on the other side of the earth. Basically, I've always loved Japan. It's um, I was explaining to my children cause we were talking about this interview coming up and I was trying to explain how it's an island nation and how you know you have to do certain things if you're an island nation and you know there's. We were talking about the. The culture is centuries old and I was explaining about, you know, the shoguns and all of the stuff. And my littlest one, who is totally military, everything camo, everything military. He was like they got to carry a sword, it was this whole because they walked around with a sword. I'm like, yes, they walked around with swords and they rode horses and you know they had combat and all that other stuff and there certainly I'm sure it was not a formal house cleaning regimen.
Speaker 1:We can cover that today. If you want, there is a Japanese style of cleaning.
Speaker 2:I would love to hear anything you want to tell me.
Speaker 1:Well, shannon, lovely to be here. You know we've been connected for many years now, but I don't think we've tangentially. We've chatted, maybe on comments and in groups, but I think this is the first time we've had a one-to-one, face-to-face yeah, I think so.
Speaker 2:I mean, I remember the whole dynamic, um, when you first moved to Japan. So there was a little bit of stuff going on there and then then, yeah, you kind of popped in and out and we kind of know some of the same people and it's just been. This is actually awesome that we can sit and chat and get to know each other.
Speaker 1:It is Gosh you. You know, right before we started recording, you and I were talking about how quickly time went, and for me, it's hitting me right now. It's coming up on eight years since the move, but I still feel like it's fresh in my mind, right.
Speaker 2:Right, it goes by super fast.
Speaker 1:Gosh. Yeah, I was talking to my office manager a couple of days ago because her eight years is coming up with me too, and we were talking about her kids and there's still kids in my mind, because when I met her they were, I think, 13 and 15, so they were still teenagers.
Speaker 1:They would be riding in the car while her and me were talking, but now they're in the Marines, they're adults, they have jobs and I'm just, I'm just like, wow, you know they're kids in my head, but they're bigger than me now somehow. So, anyway, time.
Speaker 2:It goes by super fast.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And you just never know how life is going to pivot. You're just going to have to do these things. I have two adult children and I have two young children. My oldest is 30 and my baby is going to be nine. And it's just this. You never know how life is going to work out. But lots of stories to tell, ladies and gentlemen. We were talking about, we were sharing some stories about experiences from when we were cleaning and some of the things that we went through, and it was certainly very interesting to hear the stories. But let's let's talk about the Japanese style of cleaning and what's entailed and what's behind that, and I'm sure the audience would love to hear all that.
Speaker 1:Sure. So I'm trying to, I'm trying to think of a frame of reference. I think most of our audience will be familiar with Marie Kondo and her method of cleaning and her method of.
Speaker 2:Do I love it? Do I not love it? I know she doesn't say that exact thing, but that's the essence of it, though.
Speaker 1:Thank you All. Right, go away now. I think she's probably the best reference point for this, this type of philosophy. There are different methods.
Speaker 1:One thing the Japanese love as a part of their culture perhaps and I'm speaking very generally here, but this is generally true they love making methods of things. So there's a method of personal finance that most people use. There's a method of cleaning. There's a method of doing various things in your life and we have that in the West too, but it's very omnipresent in Japanese culture.
Speaker 1:There is a way of doing things. That's the standard way for most things, and when I first moved here, being from an individual country, that's quite a shock and it was hard for me to adjust to that type of life. I'm more comfortable with it now, but there's still the part of me that goes no, I'm me and I'm not going to do it. I'm going to do it my way, right so that. But there is a way of doing everything, and, just like there's a way of finance or a way of conducting yourself in public, there's a way of cleaning that people go through, and there's rituals associated with that throughout the year. So one of the big ones that they do, which I like is somewhat similar to our spring cleaning season. So, just like in America, we have generally a spring cleaning season.
Speaker 1:Somewhere between March and May A lot of people are doing the big cleaning for the New Year's. They're opening the shutters, cleaning the blinds, doing a deep clean. They have a similar culture, but at the end of the year and the beginning of the new year and it's called Osoji. Osoji just means like kind of the honorable cleaning or the big cleaning event, and what they do is I'm going to bring my wife in here for a second. Actually, is there a specific date that Osoji happens or is it just generally at the end of the year and the beginning of the new one? So there's not like a day like December 31st, okay, Keep talking, I'm listening.
Speaker 1:Sure, you're good. So at the end of each year they'll do a big family cleaning event and many people will actually travel home to their parents' places to help with the cleaning every year, and so it becomes a gathering to clean the home that you live in and that you're a part of.
Speaker 2:So everyone helps out. It's not just a one like you're not responsible for your own living space. Everyone kind of comes in as a community and does it.
Speaker 1:Yes, not every family. I think it's changing, maybe with younger generations a little bit. I might have to bring the expert next to be in here a few times for this. It's totally fine. But many, many families do go back home and it's more common than not to go back home and participate in this big cleaning. So people will take a little time off work to do it. And what's really nice is after they clean there's actually a new year meal that they have together. It's a special set meal of many different dishes that they have to kind of round out the family gathering.
Speaker 2:I like that. I think that's really cool. I wish we'd do something like that here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a nice kind of, it's a nice reward at the end of the punishment, so to speak. Right, you're going to do the tough thing, but here's this beautiful family reward together afterwards. So they have this really nice meal and you can buy them from a restaurant if you're not a cook or anything, but they're very expensive. It's a big event. This type of meal. It's a really big kind of capstone for the year. So, anyway, they do this big cleaning, they have this big meal and then they welcome in the new year. So this is one of the parts of that culture I really appreciate is these kind of mundane everyday things that they turn into beautiful rituals. That's something I've come to appreciate a lot in my time here we had something like that.
Speaker 2:Americans live so differently compared to the rest of the world. You know what I mean. It's just, it's a different dynamic entirely, but I think that's really cool. So is that the only cleaning ritual that happens? Is it one time a year and then do you have another one in the spring, or what? It's just the one and done at the end of the year.
Speaker 1:It's the one and the done. That's maybe part one of two, I would say, but the other part is the daily maintenance that is done. So one thing I've noticed is many, many people here really adhere strictly to daily cleaning rituals and it's something that they do every day as a normal part of their day. Now, as house cleaners, that might not sound that special to us, because it's part of it, but for most your everyday Joes, they're not cleaning every day. They might do the dishes every day, they might do a load of laundry, they might clean once a week or something lightly, but most people don't have a ritualistic phase of their day that they go through where they go through the cleaning, and this is something that my wife does as well. So a part of our morning and when I say our morning I really mean her morning, because I'm working early, but a part of our morning is this cleaning part, where we go and we clean the floors and we do certain parts of the home, and we do this every day. So the other part that I think is interesting on a cultural level rather than an individual level is how much a part of daily life cleaning as you go is so one of the tips we, as cleaners, often give each other is don't wait to do a big clean. Clean as you go. Do the dishes after you finish, vacuum as you go right. Do little bits at a time, so it's not a big job. This is something that's been internalized. Little bits at a time, so it's not a big job. This is something that's been internalized.
Speaker 1:Again, generally speaking, not for everyone on a countrywide level. It's part of what they do, just as a normal functioning citizen of society. They clean throughout the day as they go along. They do this in their homes, but they also do this in their workplaces and at school when they're growing up too. So in the workplace, at the end of the day, the different employees will be assigned different cleaning jobs and they'll help clean their office. They'll help clean the bathrooms. At the end of the day, they'll clean common areas that they've all used together. And this is just a usual expectation of being a part of that office and a part of that work group is that you all pitch in and you clean to take care of the spaces that you work in together.
Speaker 2:Interesting Is there a big market for commercial cleaning in Japan itself because of this.
Speaker 1:I don't know the answer to commercial, but I can give you the answer to residential.
Speaker 2:Perfect.
Speaker 1:Because I, of course, running a cleaning company. Many thoughts have come over the years. Should I start here? Should I do a branch of ThinkMates, you know? So those thoughts have come about. I did a little light market research. The truth is, For expats, for immigrants, for people who are not Japanese, there is a market. There are cleaning companies that serve them.
Speaker 2:Interesting.
Speaker 1:But for your everyday Japanese person, even up to fairly affluent levels, it's not something that's very common at all and in fact there's not that many cleaning companies. Even in a large city like Tokyo or Yokohama, where I'm based. There are some. You will pay an immense amount of money to use them. You will pay an immense amount of money to use them, but it's just not much of a demand here as it is in the US. So they exist, but in much less number compared to a similar size city in the US.
Speaker 2:That is so interesting. I'm always interested in different markets and what goes on and what doesn't go on, but yeah, that's just very, that's very interesting to me. I have a friend. His name is Charles, he lives in Uganda and how I know him is he's actually a carpet cleaner. So he it's a relatively new industry in his country and when I first met him, I mean I've never talked to him except for like this and he would move these couches out. He eventually upgraded machines because he started in. You know this whole dynamic.
Speaker 2:So he actually came from a village that didn't have a lot of structure and knew that his children in his village needed education. So he subsequently worked as carpet cleaner to help, you know, feed and clothe his village. And he has just finished the school. It took him five and a half years, I mean we're talking. He purchased the land, he fundraised for it, he cleared the land with ox, no machinery. They did it all by hand. He built the school by hand. I think the 31st of October was when he actually launched and opened the school and you can see all of their faces and how awesome it is. But he and I chat back and forth all the time about what's going on in his country and what cleaning is doing. They don't have house cleaners in Uganda, at least not in his area. They only have carpet cleaning because it's still a new industry. They it's still not thought of yet.
Speaker 2:I would imagine as they develop more, there'll be more of an opportunity wow, what an inspirational guy that is all by himself, like he fundraised, all by himself, fundraised for every single the windows, the, the computers, the bricks, the roof, they all. They did it all by hand. It was. It's an incredible feat and if you remind me, I'll send you the link and you can check it out. It's Save Sarveen Societies in Africa, or something. He has a PayPal account. He did it all by himself.
Speaker 2:And then he would like the village would come together and it's for certain projects, and then he would like the village would come together and it's for certain projects, and then he would fundraise more, and then you know they would all go and then come back. But yeah, it's, it's incredible to see those different things that are going on in different countries and I.
Speaker 1:It's funny, um gosh, it's amazing the things people do in our industry that we don't, we don't think about or know, right until you stumble across someone like charles and you just go wow right, no complaints.
Speaker 2:No complaints here I don't have. You know what I mean. It's Charles has really done it. And then I talked to another person, not in Uganda, not Congo, I can't think of the African country state that is there but when you rent a piece of heavy equipment, it you don't rent just the equipment, you rent the driver too, so you have to pay his wages and feed him while he manages his board, right. So so it's just interesting how things, different things, work in different countries. It's just interesting to kind of learn that stuff. But yeah, when you rent like a backhoe or something, you get a guy and the backhoe, so you're you're paying for the backhoe and then you're paying for the guy and you have to feed him and everything. It's a whole dynamic.
Speaker 1:That's a little more involved but it does make sense in its own way.
Speaker 2:Right, because it's their property, I totally get it. I wouldn't want anyone driving my stuff either.
Speaker 1:Sure sure.
Speaker 2:It's just wild. So the house cleaning industry is not very big in your country that you're residing in and you work mostly remotely here in the States still to this day, and I'm sure everyone is dying to know some of the steps. I'm sure you get asked this all the time on if you were to have, because that's like the, you know, the dream right.
Speaker 2:I want to have a remote cleaning company. I'm like you have to put all this structure in place first and look at things before you run remote. Everyone's like I ran remote after seven months. I'm like great Check Mark. I'll just check and keep my eye on you. I don't know, we'll see.
Speaker 1:It's a lot more involved than people make it sound on YouTube, that's for sure.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of systems that you have to. You kind of have to go backwards to make sure these systems work effectively or it doesn't work at all. There's people get into the cleaning industry and they think it's going to be easy. But it's hard to stay in the cleaning industry and make profit. Yeah.
Speaker 1:If you make it past year five, I'd say you're, you're doing pretty good. Um sure, I mean I can give a brief overview of my philosophy on it if you'd like. It's a little bit different than maybe.
Speaker 2:It looks like Jamie's going to come in here real quick. Yeah, I would totally love to hear about the remote model. And then you have your other company as well.
Speaker 3:This time change, it's totally fine.
Speaker 2:No worries at all.
Speaker 1:You caught us right at the start. It's good to see you.
Speaker 3:Yay, right on. How are you, Chris?
Speaker 1:I'm very well. I'm glad to be here with both of you. I'm glad you could join us. How are you?
Speaker 3:Good, good, let's see here. Let me make sure all my thing Are we recording?
Speaker 2:We are recording but it's okay, all right, well, whatever.
Speaker 3:Hi Chris.
Speaker 1:Hey, there I'm trying to think Okay.
Speaker 2:We were talking about remote cleaning is what he was going to discuss.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I am so intrigued by this, I need to, I want to know everything. I've been, I've been telling, I've been going, I've been going over to Shannon and I'm like I like how does he do this, how does he do that? So take it away, chris.
Speaker 1:Sure, well, look, if you want, we can do this in two parts. I can give like a brief overview of kind of at a high level, but if there's specific questions or or concerns you have around the model, we can also tackle those too. Um, so I think my philosophy is a little bit different than maybe some of the other voices in the remote cleaning world, which is crazy to think that it's even a world now.
Speaker 2:Like there's so many people talking about it. It keeps growing and growing and growing.
Speaker 1:I know it's nice. I like it because I don't have to explain it as much to other people. When I did this in 2017, I started a cleaning company in 2016, but I moved to Japan in 2017. People thought they kind of think you're crazy or you're lying or this can't work. You know, like there was a lot of educating you had to do that. This was a possibility. But I think enough people do it now that that barrier at least to understanding that this is something that can work is gone. So the way I think about it is kind of the reverse.
Speaker 1:A lot of voices if you see Johnny and Sergio on YouTube or you see Neil Park, who has done a similar thing to me they talk about doing remote from day one. They say start a remote cleaning company as if from day one it's going to be remote and then you're going to build. Now that's possible, yes, but I think remote is the last step in the stage of building a business. I think it's kind of the reward after a long stage of building your foundation. The remote owners I know who have achieved a similar level of success did it by building a foundation first. They didn't start remote on day one and then make millions in revenue.
Speaker 1:As nice as that dream is, that's not what I teach people and it's not what I think is realistic for most people. What I teach and what's realistic is sort of a five-stage process and it starts with actually launching and building a foundation in your business, first, if possible, you being in the same state as the cleaning company certainly in the same country. Now you want to actually get to a stage where you have a recurring client base, you have reliable teams and a team lead or manager that you trust to actually function while the business is gone, because if you're in one time zone and the business is in another, chances are you're going to be asleep part of the business day.
Speaker 3:If there's problems that go wrong.
Speaker 1:Your cleaners have to be able to contact you. You know it's just a function of being a business owner. People have to be able to reach you unless you have a manager. So so this first stage that I teach people is is about launching. It's about building a foundation. It's learning how to actually be a business owner, how to get clients, how to close sales, how to retain those clients, and the same for cleaners Right, and the same for cleaners right.
Speaker 1:Once they've built that foundation, once they have a functioning real company that's earning profit every month rather than just revenue, I then take them through the second stage, which is scaling up. The scaling stage is several mini stages of different growth milestones. Now there are a lot of people I know now who have a remote cleaning company who are doing like $5,000 or $ six thousand dollars a month in revenue and in my mind personally, that's still a side hustle. That's not a sustainable business. You can't pay yourself a living wage and a manager and your cleaners and your business expenses if you're doing five thousand a month in revenue. It's just not.
Speaker 3:And their families, and no it's just not possible.
Speaker 1:Math unfortunately matters and that math is not favorable. So we take them in the second stage, the scaling up stage, through different growth sections 5K a month, 10k a month, 30k a month, 50k a month in revenue and there's different stages and different reasons that you're going to get stuck at those different stages. When you get stuck at 5,000 a month and you get stuck at 50,000 a month in revenue, your business name might be the same, but everything else is different and the reasons that you're stuck are typically different. So you have to approach these stages wisely, otherwise you're going to just start spinning your wheels forever at that stage of growth.
Speaker 1:So we take them through these different scaling stages to ensure there's a level of consistency and quality and profitability there so that later on that they actually can pay themselves a decent living wage in this business.
Speaker 2:I'm laughing because I've heard so many stories. Not that this is a funny situation, because it's very true about the reality of having different problems for different stages in your business. And I can't tell you how many times in the last year I've spoken to people where they've flushed all this money in their, in their business and they're still not up off the ground. And I'm like they're like I, I spoke to da, da, da, da da and they said to do this? I'm like much money we've learned like 150k.
Speaker 3:I'm like, oh, well, no, they call it the valley of despair, correct, right, you're in the valley of despair whenever you cannot. You can't pivot past that. Certain it's it's still a growth spurt, but you can't quite go through that. You can't get through the rubber.
Speaker 1:Yeah that's a perfect way to put it.
Speaker 2:Earthen pains, that's for sure.
Speaker 3:That's what I've heard it called valley of despair. So say that, okay. Say you're making $ 30,000 pay on average a month. Sure, and you've got all your steps. You know how to run the business. You know how to run the back end of your business. You know what your KPIs are. You know what goals you're trying to hit. What's your next step? What's your next step after that? If you say that I wanted to open up same country but a different county, say that I wanted to do all of Northern just somebody like me all of Northern California. Or I wanted to go into another state like Colorado, tell the listeners what, what, where, where do we go from there? This is great.
Speaker 1:So I do have an opinion. It may not be the right one there's more than one way up the mountain but when it comes to when it comes to expanding to multiple locations, I'm a very firm believer in making sure that you're on top of your shit in the first location. There's a lot of people who who will just start five locations and then.
Speaker 3:I've seen them. I, I've seen it, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's very common now and I don't have a problem in theory with the business model. I did it myself with my cleaning company but there's certain prerequisites you have to meet, right I?
Speaker 2:think that's what you're asking, I'm sorry, we're all talking over each other. Chris, are you still in those other remote locations? Are you just in the one location?
Speaker 1:No, I haven't formally announced it yet, but I did just sell my cleaning company pretty recently.
Speaker 2:Congratulations.
Speaker 3:Oh, yay, are we doing an announcement, do you want?
Speaker 2:to do an announcement.
Speaker 3:The cat's on the back now. I mean it will be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it's not out yet, but it will be. Right, there's no secret, I've just been lazy on making the post to be honest To answer your question. I would say the answer is in getting to stage four or five in this five-stage process that I am waffling on about. I'll condense it quickly so we'll get through it and then I can answer.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I'm a geek. I'm such a nerd over this stuff. I can talk about it all day long. It's something that fires me up. I don't know, I'm weird like that.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 3:I guess I'm amongst great company.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I was just going to say we're on the same page here. Let's say you're 30,000 a month, you're 20% profit margins. They're pretty good. They're not great, but they're pretty good. So you're taking home $6,000 a month after everything and you're starting to think, hey, this business is working for me. I really want to expand to the other side of the state. Right, I know this great town. I think I can really kill it. Great town, I think I can really kill it. I know a couple of good cleaners there. Is it the right time to do that? And I would say it's the right time if you go through stage three, where you systemize the business and you have proper systems in place for each area of the business, and you go through stage four, where you hire an office manager or virtual assistant who you can delegate not abdicate to, which is a point I'd love to talk about in a minute, if we can.
Speaker 1:If you learn how to delegate rather than abdicate to your VA or office manager and they're actually managing the location for you at that stage, if, after all your expenses and your business is systemized and you have someone in the office other than you who can command the cleaners and the schedule and the clients, at that stage I would say it's fine to expand to a second location. But if you were to do it before that stage, where there's still a lot of chaos happening in your main location, I think you'd just be doubling the amount of chaos in your life and you'd be letting down a lot of people once you inevitably start to burn out by trying to run both locations. I think if you do it too early and you're more profit focused than you are focused on building a sustainable business and brand, I think you'll be in for a very rough time.
Speaker 3:Right, there is a lot of chaos that goes on with this, I mean, but it's so. I feel that it's so important that you have to have everything systemized. We're fully automated. I, you know, and I tell all my employees I said my job for you guys is I get you the work, I get the work I call you know you guys do the work, I get the work I have. I have a manager, we have a. You guys do the work, I get the work I have. I have a manager, we have a.
Speaker 3:You know some team leads, we have employees and you know, sometimes it gets a little they because we're taking care of not just making sure that I'm paying my mortgage and taking care of my family, but we're paying everybody's wages. You know their little families, their little kids, are depending on us too. You know their cars working and their mortgages getting paid. It's a lot, but yes, and Shannon, she has a program that I have taken, not once but twice, and I went through it and this is how I was able to get up to I believe we've grown. I think the last time I looked since working with Shannon, 501% time I looked since working with Shannon 501% oh yeah, no, it's massive. And so I'm always on my soapbox talking to everybody like, hey, man, get you a mentor, get you a coach so that you can start structuring.
Speaker 3:So that I ran this by her so many times about do you think I could open up in? Like Colorado? You know my sister lives out there. She works in the banking industry. I don't know, but I think that's a good segue to walk into. You were talking about VAs and I'm the one that has held out forever. So far I know Shannon finally dipped her toe into it and she knows how to utilize. She keeps telling me so you own, do you own a VA service?
Speaker 1:Yes, I own Innova Local. Actually, it started when I moved to Japan too, because I was documenting that publicly. And then everyone was messaging me hey, can I get a VA too? And I thought, well, okay, this business is building itself. So I started a VA agency and we've been running that ever since. So we provide VAs exclusively for cleaning businesses, since that's what we know best.
Speaker 2:Does anyone really need a strong individual, either VA or the office manager, to take control of the ship? Because if you don't, all kinds of shenanigans can go down. I mean, we've all had, you know, experiences with good employees and bad employees, or you know all had you know, experiences with good employees and bad employees, or you know you just need to make sure that you're getting someone that you're solid with for sure, because it can it can cause all kinds of issues, that's for sure.
Speaker 3:Right, right. I believe it's very important for you to know all these things before you jump right into and getting a VA. I obviously I'm getting to where I do need to delegate some of this. I'm bashful about it, but that's cool that you have something that is specific to the industry the cleaning industry for the VAs. Yeah, it's been a pleasure to build Gosh.
Speaker 1:it's funny because it's such a different business in some ways than the cleaning industry. But we still serve cleaning companies right, because we're running cleaning companies for the owners and so we've been able to get these really interesting insights about how different cleaning companies are run all over North America. Because we serve Canada and so on too, it's been a tougher business in some ways. There's a higher level of responsibility. If you're sending a cleaner into someone's home, there's a level of responsibility that comes with that potential for accidents and risk and so on, for accidents and risk and so on. But there's a in some sense, even though it's virtual. There's a bigger tier of responsibility when you're managing a VA for someone, because they're managing the teams more than just one team, right, they're managing a team of teams. So there's like a seriousness with it which I didn't find in my first business. So they're very different businesses in certain ways. Sorry, I know this is meant to be about cleaning.
Speaker 3:It's just a no, no, it's still. Yeah, no, this is very important, I think.
Speaker 2:PAs, you are offering an extended hand for most people because, like I mentioned, everyone wants the remote model and if you have someone who can take the reins, and they're trained and they kind of know the ins and outs of a cleaning business, the hardest part like when I my VA is different. She doesn't run anything, she just does my social media, she does a lot of the backend stuff but and I have a bookkeeper and all the normal stuff but your VA is actually manage the ship. They're running crews, they're the point of contact for customer service, they're following up with emails, they're doing all of the day-to-day operations so that you can be remote, which is key for a lot of people, especially when you hit a certain point in your business and you're producing the volume to cover the expense.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, I'll be honest, I went a little extreme with the delegation early on, so they there wasn't much for me to do left at the end of it. I kind of at that time I was obsessed with efficiency and systems and delegation, so if there was something that could be delegated, I was delegating it. Right, there's a balance to everything. So my views on it have changed a little bit, and the way that I talk with owners about when it's time to get a VA has changed a little bit.
Speaker 1:I think there's a responsibility that we have to owners, because everyone's overwhelmed and burnt out and tired, right. So everyone likes the idea of a VA or an office manager coming on, but you have to instruct people and impart to them if it's truly the right time for them to bring someone on or not. And that's a difficult thing to talk about with some people, because you might have to tell them we'd love to work with you sincerely, but you're not in a place where you actually can bring someone on yet and then two weeks later you might see them go with another agency and then have a bad experience, right, because the agency was just focused on getting a client. So there's kind of an art to knowing when it's time to bring a VA on. I think.
Speaker 2:I know that there is integrity is always questioned in our industry because it's a very transparent industry that deals with a lot of personal items. But that that was a total integrity moment for you and your company is saying, hey, I'm really sorry you're not there yet. And then when they do go with another agency and they do have a bad experience, at least it doesn't make you and your company look bad. You said, look, I tell people no, all the time I'm like I don't think I'm a good fit for you and it's important to know what you correlate and you know mesh with versus not getting along with someone. It's already hard enough as it is in our industry. Why make it more difficult?
Speaker 1:Sure, and I would add to that too, shannon, make it more difficult. Sure, and I would add to that too, shannon. There's an educating process you have to go through, where you teach people how to work with someone as a manager, because working with a manager is different than working with a cleaner. And one of the things we found is probably the most important thing besides kindness, which should always be there, besides kindness, which should always be there probably the most important thing is learning the difference between delegating to someone and abdicating your responsibility onto someone else, and what I mean by that is there's a maturity that you, as a business owner, have to learn very quickly. When you bring on a manager to manage your company, because suddenly there's someone else who can do the work for you, how do you actually impart the work to them in such a way that they can succeed? Are you just how?
Speaker 3:do you get them in your brain?
Speaker 1:Right, right, yeah Out onto here.
Speaker 3:I know to put it out here and you know, have it typed up. Step one you know, it's basically like our SOPs. You know, I just want people to be able to open up a book and say, okay, this is how I do it. Huh, here's this book, here's this video of me doing this, you know, or something along those lines. I don't know, my head's going somewhere, but that's it. Is that that? That would be very, it's very hard to get what's inside of your brain, because my brain's like this constantly it's going, it's firing all the time. All these ideas, and I can still play around with that. Whereas you bring somebody in, it's got to be really that. Where, as you bring somebody in, it's got to be really tried.
Speaker 1:And true, right, very much, yeah, very much, but not too much, otherwise it will scare them away.
Speaker 3:Right, yes, bye, see you later. Oh, I know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, cause we've had moments where we've given someone everything and they went whoa, this person's too much, this company is too much, you know, because you gave them too much early on. So you have to I don't want to say drip feed to people, but but kind of have to you have to be selective in what you have them focus on at first, and then there's stages of buy in.
Speaker 2:Like. It's like with cleaners. Right, I'm going to do this really cool thing. Who's excited? No one's going to raise their hand. Shannon's just going out the deep end. You have to kind of bring them to water and say, hey, this is going to be great, right, when you first talk about pay for performance. Right, everyone's like what you want to do what to me?
Speaker 3:Why are you?
Speaker 2:wanting to do that, right, wait, huh, yeah, I remember it's a crazy dynamic of you. I went to this conference and, by the way, we're going to do all these things, aren't you excited? And they're like no, I was perfectly happy over here, but, yes, I definitely. Um, I could see that happening and it being too much so in stages is definitely recommended with anything.
Speaker 3:That's a. That's a great way to put out for me. That's a great way to put it Drip feed. Yeah, no, take it a little slow yeah yeah. Fill out your vibe to write, just kind of slow it down. So you've been in this almost 10 years. Huh, been at this for like years now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's. It's bizarre how yeah For like eight years now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's, it's bizarre. How yeah, isn't it, doesn't it? I know I had my son. I went to kid pickup today and you know they're on their two week vacation for for Christmas and I was like we got to stop by. You know I got to do some things For everybody. So I'm getting all their my employees little um gift bags all made up and I'm looking and I was like Bodie looked up at me. That Bodie is my son.
Speaker 3:Bodie looked at me, up at me, and he goes mom, you did all this. And I don't know I'm going to start crying and I was like you know what I did. I was just like so taken back that you know they're. And I was like you know what I did. I was just like so taken back that you know, there, he's paying attention, like he's only 10 and he's paying attention and I just I felt at for that moment I felt like a superstar and he, he, just I was like, yeah, so how, how, how did you get over to? You're obviously not in the States. Yeah, you're in a whole different day right now.
Speaker 1:This day.
Speaker 3:right now I have lighting.
Speaker 2:Chris was saying that he's 16 time zones ahead of us. Oh wow. I believe, you're an hour behind, so that would be be 17 times.
Speaker 3:So what time is it there now?
Speaker 2:It's somewhere in the AM, I would imagine.
Speaker 3:Yeah well, yeah, it's definitely. It's in the coffee cup. He's got the coffee cup.
Speaker 1:It's my 11am Saturday, so the next day morning it's my 11 am Saturday.
Speaker 3:So the next day morning. Isn't that so weird. That's so just like. And here we are, just I. So I love it. And how'd you get started in this industry? How did was? Was you born into it? Was you know? I hear a lot of people say, oh yeah, like Bodie will probably one day and I'm when he takes it over Exactly.
Speaker 1:Funnily enough, I was born into it, but I didn't know it until after I started my cleaning company. So my dad used to run a cleaning company many, many, many years ago. He's in his 70s now, but in his 30s he was running a cleaning company, but he'd never actually mentioned that to me ever until I told him I started a cleaning company. And then he told me about his cleaning company. But I started it originally as part of a way to see my wife. So my wife and I had met the previous year in South Korea and we really loved each other.
Speaker 1:But at that time in 2016, remote work was still kind of very, very not much a thing. People were talking about it, the whole digital nomad thing, but it wasn't common, unless you were a travel blogger or a web developer or an SEO guy. You still had to go to an office and do a job at that time, and so there wasn't really options to do remote work. But it was kind of good timing because there was the infamous Reddit post on how to start a cleaning company that I'm sure some of us will be familiar with, posted by a guy called Local Case Study, and he posted his process for starting a cleaning company and at the time it was the summer of my final year of university and I was sitting there thinking how can I go over to Japan to be with my wife? With a psychology degree, I'm pretty sure I don't speak Japanese, so I don't think anyone's going to need a Japanese.
Speaker 1:How do you feel? You know, I don't think I would have been a very successful psychologist over there. So I was. I love the degree, by the way. It just wasn't very compatible with the job market. So I was thinking how is it possible for me to get over there and be with her so we can continue this relationship? Because if I get a job here here was DC at the time that's probably going to be the end of it because she's a flight attendant for one of the companies here. So I happened to see this post and I thought you know what Screw it? Why don't I give it a go for three months and see? Why don't I try and start a clean company? Why don't I see if this gets any traction? Why don't I see if I can approach this a little bit differently? So what I did was I didn't have any money at the time. I started writing SEO articles on vampire Botox for for doctors, I know.
Speaker 3:Is that what funded?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what funded the cleaning company. I earned $700 and I used the $700 to start the cleaning company and and we just got a website up, we got some Craigslist posts up and we got a few credits on Thumbtack and I thought, okay, I'm going to work my ass off and I don't know how, but I'm going to, I'm going to get my first cleaning jobs and I'm going to do this and I'm going to, I'm going to find some way somehow to get over to Japan with this business. And that was the spark for starting. The business was really more of a love story. Fast forward a few months. We we were very lucky to grow quickly. Some somehow my clients didn't hate me. They stuck around and I I tested the waters by hiring a virtual assistant and it worked. So I took a week long trip to Japan. I ignored my VAs, I didn't check my email and I hoped that when I came back the business was not burning around me.
Speaker 2:I came back.
Speaker 3:I don't recommend it, I got you. That is not a recommended step to do, but I did it. Oh, it's still going All right, we're good, we good, yeah, so I came back.
Speaker 1:It was working and I said, okay, in March I'm going to move if this business is still running. And then March came and it was still running, so I moved and that's kind of the origin story, for Japan was vampire, botox and love.
Speaker 3:Vampire Botox. I love it Vampire Botox, that's awesome Botox, still a thing.
Speaker 2:I know it was like you know the Are you joking?
Speaker 3:They have Botox parties out here. Oh do they? All these girls, all these? Like you know, they have good cleaning parties with the Botox parties.
Speaker 1:So it's like a baby shower, but for your face like a Botox.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess, so I don't even know what to say to that one, but that's pretty wild.
Speaker 3:That's so interesting. That's so interesting, I'm so intrigued.
Speaker 2:So you sold it, officially, unofficially, and it's always exciting to get to that milestone of like you know, like when I sold mine there was so many things I like would have done differently the second time, right? So you just go over this dynamic of you know, taking copious notes so that you can remember, because I always say I'm going to remember and then I don't. I'm like where's that file? I know it's here, somewhere, somewhere. So was it a smooth transition for the, for the buy, or did you get a broker? How did that go for you? And I know we're getting close to your time, I don't want to keep you if you have something to do so it's Saturday, I'm all yours guys.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, I'll stay until you want to wrap up. That's, that's fine. And, to answer your question, it was smooth in parts, not in others. So my business actually ran in multiple locations. So what we were talking about earlier, jamie, we established the Solid Foundation in DC. Then, when I felt it was ready, we branched out to Texas and Florida and we did a similar thing there. So we had this multi-location cleaning business and I actually ended up selling the different locations to different people.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, it wasn't my big purchase. Okay, very nice, no Okay.
Speaker 1:It's kind of hard to you know when you're selling a small local business. It can be hard if you're selling multiple state locations unless it's like a big, you know VC firm or something selling multiple state locations unless it's like a big VC firm or something. So I decided to sell different locations to people in those states who were already growing quick and wanted to expand. So we sold the DC location to one person and then the Texas and Florida to someone else who was operating in those states. It was mostly smooth.
Speaker 1:I had bought and sold businesses a little bit before, so I had a general idea, but I'd never done anything on that scale before. They were all small, very tiny micro businesses. So I had to learn a lot there. But what we did was I created a really big ownership transition checklist that's not an official term, that's just what I called it where I put everything about how to run the business, account details, different processes, how to work with our VA, important tax notices and things you're going to have to take up throughout the year. I made this giant list over several months as a template and then, when they sold, I started to work through the new owners with them. So in that sense it was smooth, step by step, but there were sticking points throughout the process that were a little bit painful, but you know that's also business, so it was okay.
Speaker 3:Now I have seen I've seen a couple of posts in here and there in some of the groups with you You're kind of like the stepping stone of making those connections for people. It seems like you do work with some smaller companies. I feel like you see the potential, that you have the eyes for that, that you do see the potential of a booming business, a booming cleaning business, and I think that I you can correct me if I'm wrong I also see that you have kind of made some introductions here and there have kind of made some introductions here and there.
Speaker 1:That's very perceptive, I have To be honest. This is not like an official program or anything that I do, but I have this local business MBA program that I teach people. So I have a base of students and clients who are all building and at different stages of growth in their business. Sometimes people want to sell their businesses for whatever reason, and it can be a perfectly good, solid business, like mine. I sold mine because I wanted money for a very large down payment for a house that we're going to buy and this was a great way to get a large infusion of cash in one go.
Speaker 1:So people have reasons that they sell their businesses which may be unrelated to the performance of the business, and so I try. It's not anything that I do like I don't spend time looking at or searching it out, but if I see it in our groups or if I know people who are looking, I will connect a seller and a buyer together and I will facilitate that process, obviously for a fee, but I will facilitate that process. It's not it's not really a business broker relationship. It's more of a finder's fee and it's more of a neutral expert coming in to those two parties and then just talking through with them. Is this good? Is this beneficial for you or?
Speaker 3:not Mediator. Basically, yeah, a neutral mediator Exactly, you're not for either side. I love that. A neutral mediator Exactly, you're not for either side. I love that. That's so great. And it's just a trial and error. I just love one day, just that you can open up like that and peek in and be able to say I'm going to sell this. No problem, I think I can. We can do it all over again If I want it to, if you want it to.
Speaker 1:That's a good point and, Jamie, I would just add to the people that I have told that I've sold think I'm leaving the industry and I'm not. I love this industry Like this is what it was what we do, you know, so I'm sticking around.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I'm addicted to it too, um, and I'm addicted to watching people grow and I just I addicted to, uh, I really like I know who, the who's who of the industry, because I have done so much research. And it's just like I said. As soon as we got on here, I said I'm a geek over this stuff, I geek out on it.
Speaker 2:I do have a question, and I don't want numbers per se, I just want a little bit of strategy. So and I'm curious, when you sold your individual companies and you broke it up, did you accept a payment? Because sometimes it's all one lump sum, other times it's payments, sometimes there's owners stay on to transition. Did you do any of that with the recent sale, or was that you just sold it all in one lump sum and just got a nice cash payment?
Speaker 1:and just got a nice cash payment. Sure, so it depends on the size of the business that you're selling and the funds that the owner has access to. So if you're a VC firm, you have access to more money. If you're also a small cleaning business owner, you probably don't have access to whatever amount of money.
Speaker 1:What I did for I actually did a different schedule and a different amount for the different locations, but conceptually it was the same thing. I did different milestones unlocked different amounts of cash. So what we did was we had an initial payment when we signed the contract within it was either seven or 10 business days, I don't remember, but seven or 10 business days we have an initial percentage of the payment due in cash. Then, at the end of the ownership transition window, once I've taught them everything I know, once they're running the businesses they've got all the account details and everything's transitioned to them, Another percentage, a large percentage of that is unlocked in cash. Next, we had a 90-day schedule. One of them was, I think, a six-month rather than 90-day schedule, but a 90-day schedule where every month they would pay me a certain remaining percentage of the cash and then the following business year they would pay the last, I think it was 10% or something like that. So we had a schedule of cash payments.
Speaker 2:I thank you for breaking that down, because I know people are going to be curious as to because every one of them is a little bit different and how that works out, so that they have a general synopsis of how that breaks down for them, should they want to sell that type of thing.
Speaker 3:Yes, oh sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 1:Go ahead. I would add where I'm standing. I thought accepting cash payment rather than a gradual buyout is a better deal, because once you hand your business over to someone, they're responsible for it and they might be a very competent owner or they might not be but if your payments depend on their performance, of their now company, you might not get paid as much as you were hoping when you signed that contract. So for me, I was willing to accept less of a valuation slightly for cash payment over a certain amount of time than a larger settlement for some sort of gradual buyout deal. To me, the cash deal is the safest option to lock in what you've earned for building that business.
Speaker 2:Right, that sounds good too, and there's a lot of markers for that right there's if they own a building, with it and there's a client number. There's a lot of attributes for the sale in each little different business, correct? Yes, different business correct. Yes, obviously. If you own a building, with it it's worth more because you know a solid foundation.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I was always taught that you know what this business is to either sell it whenever we're like I can't do it anymore, I don't want to do it anymore, I've put the structures in place, I've done all this or to gift it and make it a legacy To my son, or and whatever he wants to do with it. Yes, I was always taught that that's Been drilled into my head, that this, this, it took me a long time to because it was just like I was always just in the here and the now. I couldn't see past week, you know. I know that whenever I started this, I knew I was onto something, but I didn't know how to get to it right and I knew I was like there's something here, there's something here I got, I'm like digging around, digging around, trying to find that oil, I'm trying to strike that oil and I finally found that vein, you know, and we're starting to. It's starting to. You know, we just purchased our first house.
Speaker 3:I it just all with all, with uh and Shannon. Honestly, she helped me, coach and mentored me. She told me she was like they want me to come up with all this money in like 30 days. I couldn't, I couldn't. I was like I don't got that much. She's like oh sure you do, she's on her calculator, you just need this much a day, no big deal. And I did it.
Speaker 2:So I was like what staffing is not recommended? But it was. It is not. But it.
Speaker 3:I, I think I got bit by that entrepreneurial bug and I knew this field. Yes, it's easy to get into, but once you start hitting those high markers it gets a little. You feel like you're kind on a tight rope. You know, on skyscrapers, holding plates, on all you know and don't like you're trying to balance everything and you just I think that's whenever you need, and not just the one coach.
Speaker 3:There's so many people that have so much great information, people that have so much great information, and I just it's a lot to juggle, because I've never I mean I've never, nor had my parents ever made this kind of money or ran a business or, or you know, was in um in charge of people's livelihoods and stuff growing up. So I, I don't know, I didn't know any of this. I, you know, I knew how to clean, I knew how to, I knew how to clean. I um, of course, no longer do that, um, I mean, you know, once in a while I'll go out and do it, but yeah, it takes a lot of pivoting and yeah, I, just, I, like I told you I'm I'm a weirdo about this stuff. I, I've always known that there was something to this industry and I, I knew the second, my first house. I did. I knew instantly I want it to be big. It's like I got this, I could do this, I can do this, so yeah.
Speaker 1:That brings up a good point. I don't know how much time we have, but there's a good point there to make briefly about meaning in your business. I think so for you. You wanted to know, you knew you wanted to go big.
Speaker 1:So this was a big growth business for you that hopefully maybe you can pass on to your son, right, if he gets the itch for the industry too. That was something that was really important for me too early on was my businesses all have to have a meaning for me. I didn't want to just build a business just to build a business. I mean that's a great pursuit in itself, but it felt kind of for me at least a little meaningless to just build just to make whatever For me.
Speaker 1:I actually assign goals to my businesses, like life goals to my businesses, like this business is for you know, whatever then this business is for this, like I have goals beyond the business that the business is a tool in my toolbox to get me towards, and that's something that's returned a lot of motivation for the businesses for me, cause when you get to a certain stage of growth in your business where you're not that actively involved anymore, it can be very hard to stay motivated to continue caring about the business because you're not putting as much of yourself into it Right right, Lots of stimulation.
Speaker 2:What am I going to do now? I think it's awesome that to have individual goals I never really gave that a lot of thought about. You know, being a tool, it's not the end of the means, it's just to get you to the next level of where you want to go automation, and everything is automated. I've spoken to I don't know dozens of people this year and they want to automate everything and I keep having to explain to people and I don't know if you've experienced this yourself that we're still very much a human-based industry and I know that AI has kind of poured through everything and I know that the VAs are helping and we're doing remote stuff, but I don't know if it will entirely be erased out. What do you see as the future in your perception of the house cleaning industry itself?
Speaker 1:I had a conversation with Matt Ricketts about this recently.
Speaker 2:I didn't get a chance to watch the whole interview. I started and I had screaming kids so I didn't finish.
Speaker 1:That's fine. That's fine If you get the chance. That really is a.
Speaker 2:Matt is such a visionary.
Speaker 1:He's legitimately legitimately one of the go-to guys for understanding where industry is going. So I had a good conversation with him. Automation, systemization of basic systems, is essential for functioning just from a functioning business standpoint. But trying to automate and take the human out of everything is a huge mistake. And the way that I talk about it with people is I say, like when you try and call your bank because there's an issue with your card and you get the stupid automated voice that you have to go through the really long menu, you get infuriated Like you get angry, like let me talk to a person you know.
Speaker 2:Which word do I have to?
Speaker 3:do to prompt you to get me to a human.
Speaker 2:What do I have to say? Which word is it which?
Speaker 3:word is it? There's no glossary of terms.
Speaker 1:Right. You should do that to your business. That's a sign of over-automation, in my mind, where you've degraded your customer experience, where your customers are angry because you've over-automated. That's actually a real thing, that happens, but you won't be aware of it. If it's automated because you think everything's fine, you'll be off somewhere else doing golf or something you don't want to do. That that's way too much automation for your business and that's becoming-.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they want you to automate your messages, a text message, and I'm like what here? If the client asked this, what should I say? And I just, you know, AI is fairly new. It sounds like you were like ahead of your time a little bit. I know ahead of your time a little bit Because I know well now, but like that, I feel like that's kind of like I don't know. I just that that's neat. That's neat to me that that you are just way ahead of your time because AI is we were just talking about thisannon um gosh just in our industry. You only heard this at the beginning of year a little bit. Now it's just, people are left and right selling um automate, you know, text messaging automation, email automation, and it's like you said, it can be overly, overly automated the new thing now with chat gpt is they search your business on ChatGPT.
Speaker 2:It's like the yellow pages. Have you guys done that yet, may?
Speaker 3:I ask both the questions.
Speaker 1:I'm curious for your take on something. So this is about students actually, and people new into the industry because we're all coaches here in one way or another. New into the industry because we're all coaches here in one way or another. And one thing I've noticed with students since I started back in 2016 and now is what they're good at is very different. So before, when I work with people, they were good cleaners. They were good at doing the service that was required to actually run a cleaning business. They needed help with the business side of things. I think that's kind of reversed now, where people that are entering the industry, they may be very smart, they may be very tech savvy, they may be great at a lot of the AI, text automation, setting up their booking software and website, but they can't attract or hire or communicate with cleaners and clients well, they don't know how to clean. They can't do these basic things of running a cleaning company. So almost like they're, it's reversed in some way. I haven't seen a similar thing.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, it's really, it's, it's pivoted to that side, it's, it's. It's upsetting because you see, these, they get in because they they're like this is going to be easy and they do all the tech side and then they throw all this money at it wanting to have a totally automated, non-human experience, and then they can't get the cleaning tech part of it right. I'm like so, and I've, I fully have called out people on booking koala. I'm like so, have you? You know, I tried to private message them and sometimes they won't listen. I'm like so, have you ever cleaned a house before? And they're like no, I no. I'm like okay, so how are you?
Speaker 2:You know, ensuring quality? You have to. Is there? Do you have a system in place? And they're just hiring 1099s and sticking, throwing money on the wall and hoping it sticks, and then, when it doesn't, they come running back to me. I'm like I can't help you. I've tried to give you a suggestion on what you need to do, but unless you change your business model, it's frustrating because then they come back and they keep asking the same question over and over again and I, unfortunately, I just can't respond anymore because that's like they're not taking the help they come asking We'll come over, and then, if it doesn't work with her, then they'll start coming over into my inbox.
Speaker 2:Totally flipped on its head. A lot of the people who are getting the industry have never cleaned before. A lot of the people who've gotten into the industry have. They don't know how. They only know how to do this right. They have this.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't know how to do this or this. They, they only know how to do this. So they're over here doing this thing and they're like well, why isn't this working?
Speaker 1:And I'm like where do you start?
Speaker 2:I don't know if you know, and it's hard because they don't and then they don't have eye contact. I'm like you have to be yourself right, you have to be genuine in this industry. We're such a trust-based industry. If we don't have trust, we don't really have an industry, because we, like I said, we see things that nobody houseguests don't even see. The stuff we see Very intimate.
Speaker 2:I blame this, Even though these are like the newest technological advantage. Whatever, I think it's stunted the growth of a lot of humans. That's a polite way to put it.
Speaker 1:Very true, you have to remember we're running a cleaning agency with automations. We're not running an automated agency that does cleaning and I know that's like a. I hope you know what I mean by that.
Speaker 2:I totally know I agree with you.
Speaker 1:We're doing. We're doing cleaning at the end of the day. So I try and tell people like I you might have something similar, but I, when I see people in the group saying they want to start remote from day one, I tell them I think you should put in the work for the first year and then go remote. If you can learn how to run a cleaning business and build a cleaning business and then go remote, you're going to be a happy guy or girl for many years to come. But if you start it from day one, try and be perfect, you're going to burn through so much money and so much time. Shannon, I think we commented on the same thread a few weeks ago. Someone was saying they're doing like 3K a month and they're spending 12 hours a day running their business, or something like that. I saw that. I'm like, oh my gosh. I thought how is this possible? It's not possible. You can't be spending that much time on this. You do like one clean a day.
Speaker 2:I don't know and I never found out what ended up happening with that particular individual. And I never found out what ended up happening with that particular individual. And it can be frustrating because you can, you genuinely, as teachers, we want everyone to succeed, at least that's. You know. My whole philosophy is that we need to take the industry, put it in the structure it needs to go into and push them along the ways, because for so many it was always the Mary Maids and the Molly Maids did this. And then you know you had speed cleaning kind of came out of nowhere. Then you had the Debbie Sardone and then you had all these others that kind of came on afterwards but there wasn't any uniformity to what's going on. And now we're starting to see that. Now it's exciting because, hey, if you want to have remote, you probably shouldn't be doing it until the first year. You should actually maybe clean a house.
Speaker 2:I've had lots of conversations. They just they did. They're not interested in cleaning. There's the? What's the one guy, I can't remember his name. He's totally remote down in Mexico. You see the Facebook ads and he shows his friends and they've got cash and he's like yeah, I made, I made 65% profit off his job've got cash and he's like yeah, I made um, I made 65 profit off his job.
Speaker 2:I'm like he's clearly not paying his cleaning tax any money in europe I'm like that's not gonna last very long and I'm on his mailing list. I can't remember because I'm always curious as to what's going on, but he, he's always got his friends, a bunch of college kids. They got cash, like yeah, or the um, there's the. They got cash and they're like, yeah, I have that. Or there's the other ones, you see them, they're in Paris. I saw another one today. They were in Disneyland and they were offering they're cleaners, they offer remote cleaning, and I've seen where they didn't have because they tried to make their own teaching spectrum all automated. When you teach this, there has to be like face-to-face or over the phone. There has to be some sort of human connectiveness or you're not going to understand.
Speaker 2:You can go ahead and give as many videos as you want, but there's the nuance of knowing. Because I've had a lot of experience, I've had a lot of blunders. I've screwed up in my business I don't know how many times and that's how I know. All of the things I know is because I've screwed it up really big. When I got into this, there was legitimately there was no Facebook groups, there was no mentors. There was like Molly Maids and Mary Maids. But hey, I know you just bought this franchise for a half mil. Could you give me some suggestions on how to run my business.
Speaker 3:It's all cold calling. Going to the phone book the white pages, the yellow pages, Right.
Speaker 2:And then I'm like, well, there's books on that. So then I still have the two books that I started with, and neither one of them talk about house cleaning or margins or any of it. It's just like how to start a house cleaning business. It's just like that's what I had to work with. I had to hit the ground running. There was no like, hey, I'm going to go to so-and-so in this Facebook group and hey, what do I? How do I price this? Or why is this person yelling at me? Or what happens this?
Speaker 2:I mean, I've had so many we were talking about that before you hopped on, Jamie so many experiences with unusual people and the way they live. It's just crazy. Some of the things I've seen. I'm like, oh my God, switch back the other way. How did we get them to be motivated enough to take the initiative, to want to clean, to want to learn? Hey, you can't use a Puma stone in a black toilet, or you can't directly spray chemical on someone's furniture, and you have to use fresh towels in each, in each home. How do you get people to want to learn that? And then then they have to learn the back end too. I mean, you know what are your margins. What's the margin? Well, do you? Have you done your books?
Speaker 2:Are you making any money? Students like that, or is it just me?
Speaker 1:I get a lot of interested students and I have an honest conversation with them up front about what this business is and entails, and then after that I say would you still like to join? I'm shooting myself in the foot a little bit because obviously the conversion rate is then lower for people who purchase, but the people who do purchase are genuinely more dedicated and willing to work for it and I'm happy to work with them because they want it. I think to try and answer your question, I have some fragments of an answer, but it's a difficult problem. I would say to wrap this up and bring it back to Japan, actually, one of the things I love about this culture is the craftsman mindset that people bring to their jobs. You could be a train driver, you could be an EMT. You could be a train driver, you could be an EMT, you could be a house cleaner. It doesn't really matter what your job is. People take real pride and dedication in knowing every part of their job and how to do it well, and I would love if we can find a way to instill that value in these new generations of business owners, where they're not just starting the business for money or for time freedom. Those are valid goals. Those are reasons that I started the business. So I'm obviously in support of those goals. But where they want to learn about this business and their employees and their families and they want to take pride in what they do and they want to understand the inner workings of what goes into running this business.
Speaker 1:If we can find a way to instill that craftsman mindset into a business owner, I think that would be part of the answer. I think maybe possibly another part of it would be being present with where you actually are. So I hear a lot of people talking about their goals for their business or what they want the business to do, but when I talk to them about where the business is, it's usually not in good shape, which is fine. That's why they come to us as coaches is to help them get it into good shape. But they're so focused on the future that they want for their business.
Speaker 1:I find some people have a lot of difficulty being honest about where their business is and the steps involved to actually get to that imagined future. And so if we can impart almost a way of teaching people, almost in a meditative sense, on how to be present with the problems in your business and sit there and get comfortable working through them. I think that that cognitive skill is an essential skill for a business owner to impart. A lot of people now, particularly with Gen Z and I'm not trying to dump on the next generation at all, but a lot of this generation because they grew up the way that they did, they're not able to sit with uncomfortable problems for very long before they got to run away. And so, because of that business is difficult.
Speaker 1:Yeah, business is difficult. That's part of why we do-.
Speaker 3:Being uncomfortable and learning to be uncomfortable is what really makes us grow, right.
Speaker 1:I totally agree, and if you can find a way to impart that skill, I think they'll be much more successful. So I know that's not a business specific answer. It's more of like how do you develop the person? But if we can find those qualities we wanna develop in the person and help them develop those qualities alongside the business coaching, I can virtually guarantee the outcome will be much better.
Speaker 2:I agree and, on that note, we've had you here for a mere 90 minutes. Why don't you give people your web address, how they can get ahold of you? And I just want to say thank you so much for spending your Saturday with us. I've gotten a lot of good laughs. I've really enjoyed our conversation. We're definitely going to have to do this again, I really yeah same ditto.
Speaker 1:We have an unexpected guest. Oh hi, fritz.
Speaker 3:Oh my goodness, hey buddy. Oh hi Fritz. Oh my goodness, hey buddy. Oh, I just want to pet that face. What is what's?
Speaker 1:her name. She's Vitti. It's a Finnish name, v-i-t-i it's a nickname for a full name. The full name is kind of white, fluffy snow in Finnish, because she's white and fluffy, she's reaching her limit for for how she she could patiently wait.
Speaker 3:She's begging for attention. Oh, they're such great.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love now she's next to me. I'm such a dog person to answer your question, shannon.
Speaker 1:I want to thank you both for having me on. This was a pleasure to get the chance to to finally talk to you guys in a in a I was to say one-on-one, but one-on-three setting. Now I can be reached a couple different ways. If you're interested in learning how to delegate, if you're interested in hiring and training a VA, my company is inovalocalcom-n-o-v-a and then the word localcom. My email is just chris at inovalocalcom. That's the best way. That's the one that I check the most. If you're more interested in business coaching, if you, what I've talked about in the way that I coach others resonates with you, localbusinessmbacom is the place that you want to contact me. It's a bit of an older website. I do need to update it, but that's the way to contact me.
Speaker 1:Otherwise, facebook I'm in all the groups, so you'll probably see my face pop up. I spend too much time on there despite talking about. I'm guilty. I'm guilty as charged too. So Facebook, if you just want to stay connected and follow what I do and talk and ask questions. I'm very open. I don't charge for questions or anything like that. Just drop me a line and say hi. Just reach out on. Facebook is the most casual way to do that.
Speaker 2:Definitely, and you're also there. You have quite a few videos. I did a quick search before I hopped on on YouTube so you can also. There's an athlete and then, um, you, and then there was a. There's quite a few, chris. There was the interview with Matt Ricketts. I'm like, oh, I got to finish watching that, but yeah, you're on YouTube as well and you've been in the maid summit, um, so that's, that's pretty cool as well. So, yes, thank you so much. I appreciate you taking the time to chat with us and I loved it and I had a good time, and I hope that you had a good time as well.
Speaker 1:It's been a pleasure. Thank you both so much.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much, merry Christmas.
