CBL Episode #139 "Sure, I'll Do That Extra Thing for FREE!" - Words That Could Bankrupt Your Cleaning Business

Every cleaning business owner has faced that moment: You're in a client's home and they casually ask, "While you're here, could you just quickly do this extra thing?" That simple request might seem harmless, but the financial impact can be staggering. 

When we crunched the numbers, we were shocked. If you have just 10 cleaning techs each giving away 15 minutes daily, you're essentially donating $16,250 in labor annually—money that should be going toward growing your business and paying your team fairly. This episode dives deep into why setting clear boundaries around extra services isn't just good business—it's essential for survival.

We break down exactly which services you should charge extra for (windows, ovens, porches, garages) and how to price them properly. Using digital tools like Jobber can transform how you communicate with clients about what's included and what costs extra, eliminating awkward conversations and ensuring your team knows exactly what to do when faced with those inevitable requests.

The sheet-changing discussion alone is worth a listen! From clients who leave sheets in the dryer to those with 27 decorative pillows on one bed, we share practical solutions that maintain professionalism while protecting your bottom line. We also explore the power of building referral partnerships with complementary service providers for tasks outside your

Up your cleaning game, join over 6000 Cleaning Business Owners most of whom are located here in the United States.  

Erica Paynter is the brains behind My Virtual Bookkeeper, a bookkeeping firm for cleaning companies, and the creator of Clean Co. Cash Flow Academy and the Clean Co. Collective. She’s on a mission to help cleaning business owners make sense of their numbers without boring them to tears! Erica’s all about turning messy books into profit-packed powerhouses.

 support@myvbk.com 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Tempo: 120.0

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 2:10

And now a message from our sponsor. Welcome to Pelican Brand Cleaning Products from Long's Products in Louisiana, trusted by cleaning professionals nationwide, from our bold pink fuchsia cloth to the always reliable housekeeper number one, the powerful Quixie Cleaner, and our classic Pine Oil 80. We deliver the tools you need to clean smarter, faster, and better. Pelican brand where quality meets clean. Look for all that info in the show notes.

SPEAKER_01: 2:54

This time, however, I talk to you every single day.

SPEAKER_00: 2:57

And then I'm like, oh it's it's it's pretty good to go. My mic sounds great, right? I'm hoping.

SPEAKER_01: 3:07

We always have to do red leather, yellow leather, red leather, little baby buggy bumper.

SPEAKER_00: 3:13

What are we talking about? Or in this episode, we're gonna talk about when clients always ask for something extra when they expect more, setting clear boundaries. Uh you hear us talk about boundaries all the time, but you always, every once in a while, you'll get a client who always tries to either get free stuff from you or your cleaning tech. And we Jamie and I were just talking about this. If you have 25 cleaning techs all out doing their thing, and each one of them does something extra at 15 minutes, and if they did that daily five days a week, that's a lot of labor. And the question is the bigger picture, you're trying to manage the labor, and they're like, I want more value for my buck. Right, labor is really, really expensive. Jamie's getting ready to have someone go off on maternity leave, and she is responsible for paying for 12 weeks. I look at the maternity leave. She's got the eyeballs going for those. Oh yeah, I'm putting it over my face. Right, she's filtering her face. So there's there's a lot of things that go on with labor. For example, I was just mentioning this the other day. Every year the minimum wage goes up in Arizona, like in a lot of states, and Flagstaff has the highest minimum wage in the state, it's going up to$18.90 an hour. That's for minimum work, minimum work, minimum wage. Same here. Yeah. And I'm not saying that you should not be paying them$18.90, but that puts the marker on where you have your business expenses. So on average, and you guys, I'm not shy about this, and we're kind of seguing all off the topic here, but you need to pay top dollar, top tier pay gets top-tier talent. You hear a lot of people say that in the industry, and it's true. So pay attention to these things so that you can make sure that you're managing your labor. But when you have people who are always asking for something extra, it's because you have not put clear boundaries in place.

SPEAKER_01: 5:05

Correct. And um, you know what? This is where, again, I'm sorry, I you guys hear me talk about it all the time, and that's where I have jobber. It literally will tell them their checklist. We are going to do high and low dusting, and this is just a standard clean, right? I will tell you, it has protected me more times than not whenever my cleaning techs are out by themselves at a client's house. There's only I those phone calls used to come in so often of hey, they just asked me to the other day. Now, this is a new client, so they wanted me, they wanted me to brush off the front porch. Do we do that? And I'm like, no, no, that has to be, they gotta call the office, and that has to be scheduled, and that has to be added on to their bill.

SPEAKER_00: 6:04

That's not it. Actually, it comes from the old school days of Marymaids, because Marymaids used to wipe off the front porch.

SPEAKER_01: 6:11

It was part of the cleaning, and that is probably this generation that this person came from. And there used to be a Molly Maids here, believe it or not. Um, and the only reason why I know that is because one of our clients is fat her father, who's passed away, her father owned a Mary Maids and then sold it here in Humboldt County and sold it and got really burned, I guess. So there used to be a Molly Maids here way back in the day. I heard all about it. And yeah, or or it's just can you get that window? Right. Can you wipe the window down? And it's like, wait, wait, that has to be added on. I can send over how much that's going to be extra. And if you want to call the neck for the next your next cleaning, then we can add that on to your bill. But we it does have to be scheduled. It's it's not something that you know, hey, you're not gonna get my cleaning tech in there right off the bat, and and start saying, Hey, can you do the windows? Can you do this, that, and the other?

SPEAKER_00: 7:29

Let's talk about the math a little bit because you know I mentioned 15 minutes, 25 girls. So I'm just this is off my iPhone, and we know that iPhone calculators are not always accurate. So please do not be the math, not mafia to me. Wait, they're not. Okay, they're not. They can make errors, especially if you don't clear them out. So if if you if each girl, if you had 25 cleaning techs out in the field and each one of them went over 15 minutes of labor for the day, it's an extra six point two five hours, roughly, give or take. Multiply that days a week, that's 31 hours and 31.25 hours in a week. And if you go for the whole year, it's 975 extra labor hours that you're paying.

SPEAKER_01: 8:12

That you're not for that extra 15 minutes.

SPEAKER_00: 8:14

So it's just something that's no big deal. So that could actually on in the long term, you could bankrupt yourself. I mean, we want to have 975 labor hours, and let's just say you paid them$25 an hour. That's$24,375 that you gave away for free.

SPEAKER_01: 8:38

Just because you wanted to appease that one client. And you know, and then just drop it down. Uh not everybody has 25 cleaning techs. Drop it down to 10. Right. What would it be at 10?

SPEAKER_00: 8:56

So that's you know 2.25 times 10 employees, 10 cleaning tax. Because this is where uh 2.5 hours times five days a week, that's 12.5 hours times 52 weeks, times 52 weeks. So it's 650 hours, and if you paid them hypothetically$25 an hour, that's$16,250 in free labor that you have given away. So think about, and I'm not saying no, no, no, no, no. You can away for free once in a while, but when it becomes the expectation of I want you to do, I want you to sweep off my porch, I want you to sweep off the deck, I want you to spit shine my windows, I want you to hand wipe all of my vents in my ceiling, I want you to hand wipe my ceiling pan, those are all extra charges now. We no longer include them because labor is so much money.

SPEAKER_01: 10:09

Right. I always tell everybody in the groups, you'll see me in all of the groups. I'm in uh every you'll see me everywhere in the cleaning groups. And I just tell everybody, I am like the Walmart. You I get your shopping cart and start putting it in. I have it broke down to what I feel comfortable enough so that I can at the end of it turn a profit because I and still have my employees have you know make money. But I at the end of it, I need to turn a profit. Right. I didn't get into this to to hobby out an extra sixteen thousand dollars a year because you wanted your track, you didn't call the office and schedule that for the next for the next meeting. So how do you put that?

SPEAKER_00: 11:02

It's actually even more of a cost if you think about it, because you have labor, you have payroll taxes, state, federal, all that. Then you have workmen's comp costs, then you have general liability costs, your advertisement costs, your office costs. So it actually is more than sixteen thousand dollars in labor.

SPEAKER_01: 11:16

I just wanted to give you guys a rough roughly about, yeah, because you get your 25 grand that you're giving us. I don't want to scare our viewers about I'm gonna tell you guys, you cannot scale without hiring. It's a part of the gig, right? It is a part of the gig, and uh it's it's uncomfortable at times. It it's you gotta do the firing and you gotta learn how to hire. And uh fire training, all that stuff. Yeah, I was uh just asking one of my clients. We always do a follow-up. How was your cleaning, especially if I'm sending a new cleaning tech to this client's home? I want to make sure that my system is not broken, and I'm still working on that, and obviously, there's still something that is broken in there because they should be almost cleaning as if I was there or that my one of my supervisors, you know, was there. So I don't want to scare anybody about oh my gosh, that's too much money. I'll just stay so solo. That's not that's not what this is about.

SPEAKER_00: 12:33

This is about found too that typically the people who, and this is just my observation, I don't care what way you want to go, right? But typically people who have attempted to hire have control issues and they can't let go of the control, you're never gonna find a golden unicorns per se. You're gonna find people who are gonna do a pretty good job, and but they're you're not gonna find the perfect employee, it's just not gonna happen. And the time frame that people stay now, and I know we're getting off topic again, is shorter and shorter. And we are a pass-through industry like the restaurant industry, even though some companies have proven that they've been there a lifetime. I I I know of a couple companies, there are people who are retiring out of cleaning something.

SPEAKER_01: 13:19

Amazing.

SPEAKER_00: 13:20

Find finding the right individual. So, what kind of things would you upcharge for? Like, if someone what kind of things have people have asked for for free that you should upcharge for?

SPEAKER_01: 13:31

I I have it all right here. Perfect. I'll I I'll I'll let me let me log in real quick. I'm gonna tell you, and it's taken me a little bit to learn this. It's like if you want to people please. Let me add that. Let me add that. Yeah, exactly. So I'm gonna try and let's act like I'm gonna. I don't know if you guys can see that, but I can go create, we're gonna create a new quote, okay? Okay, she's inside her jobber app for those of you who are not and then over here we have uh in an overview, blah blah blah, services needed, and we're just going to we're gonna create a quote, and I have these templates that allows me to create a new quote. Is it a new a deep clean, a post-construction clean, residential? So you have three so it I have five. Okay, I have a move in, move out, deep clean, which could also be market ready, because a market ready is not slightly yeah, it's slightly different. Excuse me. On your jobber, right? If you can, if you're watching this, I can go product sensor, I can introduce who I am as a company. Hey, we're above all cleaning services. I've had professional photos taken. I show a picture of our all natural products that we use, which is pure evergreen, and blah blah blah. Right, then I go over here and you just tap on to the name of the product or service. Okay, I've taken this moment to fill all this in.

SPEAKER_00: 15:26

So how many of them are there nowadays? And it does take a little bit of time to put this in your digital.

SPEAKER_01: 15:32

It does, it does. And if anybody ever decides to go with Jobber, please get a hold of me. I've been where you're at. I know it can be like, uh, but it's it's so easy. It just kind of walks me through, and I'll show you how easy it can be. So inside windows, we charge$7 per window pane. Now we're gonna add that, right? This is not only does this go to the client, but this is also my employees checklist. Right. They go through. Oh, we got inside windows, you guys. So we're gonna add another. So what are we? We'll add another lime item. Okay, inside oven. Let's add inside oven, okay? Inside oven. We charge$125 for the inside of your oven. Like again, we are the these are we'll do them. We can definitely, but it has to be scheduled. Right. It has to be scheduled, and it has to be charged for because I've had all this happen. Can you get the window? I've even added, remember I just was talking about the front porch. Right. Add line. Okay, we're gonna add a line out. Porch porch cleaning. We added$50 for that just to sweep your porch to get the cobwebs. You're on your way out. We've added that for$50. Inside a garage, usually those start at$150 and go up, just to sweep out your garage. Because I've had people say, Hey, you're already there for a move-in, move out cleaner or whatever. Can you just go ahead and sweep out the garage? And here it is, the three-car garage, and it's like with spider webs. Oh, I and I've had that's that one that I had where my spoo was all over. So I ended up charging for biohazard kind of because I had to stop what I was doing, go to the office, which I call the the my storage. It's the office, yeah. So had to go to the office, grab the special shop vac for the the mice poo, and I said that's it. We're we're adding this on to a service. So I have all windows are seven dollars, and it'll explain down at the bottom what it entails. It'll tell them inside oven, clean inside oven. We'll use it for an industrial strength oven cleaner. We will clean all windows. This this will include all tracks and fills, and this is per window pane. So if it slides, it's$14 for the inside, and then for the outside, first floor, and it says first floor, first story only. I charge ten dollars a window pane. I've gotten to where I started charging for screens, the screens. So I charge four dollars a screen, but we clean them really, you know, we scrub them nice and easily. I don't know. Christopher does the all that, the outside stuff, but yeah, those are all extra use, you guys. Those what other things have people tried to get for free from you? It was the garage, the outside storage areas, boxing up things.

SPEAKER_00: 19:25

I've had that happen. Boxing up things. I don't want you to clean just yet. I want you to pack first, and they're not ready to pack or ready for cleaning, and they want you to pack first and then clean them. Like, we're not here to do that.

SPEAKER_01: 19:37

What about their curio cabinets?

SPEAKER_00: 19:39

Right, no, we're not here to do that either.

SPEAKER_01: 19:42

What? And they have all these beautiful like little trinkets and that gene it is up down, up down, up down. Nope. No way, uh and I was like, I really don't feel oh, oh, a chandelier that is in the middle when you know, whenever you walk into some house that that they have both those spiral on both sides, the spiral cases, and then you look way up and there's a chandelier, right? Do you have like you know, I haven't had that cleaned in well since I've been here, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 20:19

Or the windows, yeah, or the windows by the chandelier, they want those done too. Oh, on the ladder that's non non-level.

SPEAKER_01: 20:26

But honestly, that's whenever I took in what I was like, I can't clean it for you, but I can dust it. All those cobwebs and all those flies that got caught in the cobwebs, or out here is a lot of ladybugs or roly pulleys. I can that's where I got the dot the docker pole, and that is on my line item too. Uh it's called a docker pole D O C A, and it has it's a 50-foot, so I can take it. And boy, let me tell you, when you have high ceilings like that, and you get to going, it's so labor intensive.

SPEAKER_00: 21:01

So your head's heavy, and you can knock things down and hurt things.

SPEAKER_01: 21:06

And that's whenever I realized that a man is really good to bring on jobs like that, and he's like tells me all the time, he goes, Man, yeah, you guys work for it. But I'd bring him on deep cleans and and he loves it, deep cleans and move and ready's and anything outside, like first floor only.

SPEAKER_00: 21:28

So with the chandeliers in the 30s and 40s, actually, even before then, chandeliers weren't permanently mounted in the ceiling, they actually were on a pulley, so that way the servants could lower it down and clean it and then put it back. Well, what happens? Yeah, I did electricity hooked up to it as well, but it actually went up and down, and that way the the servants of the time or the era could actually lower it and and clean it and then put it back up. I don't know why they don't do that today, if if for the grand houses that are still around, but um, yeah, you can go into any historical home, and more than likely if they have a chandelier, they'll have one that goes up and down. Yeah, I imagine they're on the table and boom.

SPEAKER_01: 22:11

Yeah, that would be so and then then we can talk about cleaning it like that, of course. I have a chandelier and it's within within arm's reach, and I'm just like, I can't stand, I cannot stand this chandelier, but it came with the house, you know. You see the little bug poo on there, and I get it. I because I can feel for the client, but whenever I'm sending a one of my cleaning techs in, we don't touch those. They do have professions here. I don't know if there's a professional chandelier cleaner in Humboldt County.

SPEAKER_00: 22:50

I think you would have one that's hours away, I would imagine.

SPEAKER_01: 22:53

Probably that's a good chandelier.

SPEAKER_00: 22:56

All right. Yeah, just like you know, when to in teaching your cleaning techs that these are extra add-on charges, don't be shy and telling them what it is. I know some of us are a little afraid of well, they're gonna find out the price, they're gonna figure out how much I make. In reality, a job is a job. Top-tier talent requires top-tier pay. They they need to know that you're charging extra for these items: the refrigerator, the oven, the chandelier, the blinds, the wet wiping of the ceiling fan that revolve, you know, requires a ladder and a spotter because it's over four feet, doing the patio, doing the patio furniture, those all are add-on items that's on there. People who wanted us to do gardening or feeding the animals in the back or what other crazy organizing the garage on a regular maintenance mic, no. Well, I yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01: 23:46

And uh, you know, I'm gonna tell you, especially with people that have been with me for a long time, not not if you're just starting off. I'm pretty transparent about what the business needs to make in order for them to get a paycheck, but still, you know, uh me as the business owner, I I still need to turn a profit. But so everybody on our team thus far knows that uh I'm pretty I'm transparent and they know that otherwise they cannot, especially my cleaning techs are or I'm sorry, you know, field managers, whatever supervisor supervisors will not learn how to put together a proper estimate. Right, and we can talk about it. And I am trying, this is something that I'm working on now. I'm trying to delegate that. So they do need to know they have they need to be transp you need to be transparent. And stuff like an extra 15 minutes here, an extra 15 minutes here will hurt us, right? Will hurt us in the long run, and we don't want that.

SPEAKER_00: 25:02

So watering the plants. If uh we had someone one time, hey, can you water the plants? Well, one of the plants leaked, yes, and then it became the and I I was an employee at the time, then it became the cleaning company's problem. So I had to go back and pick up all the leaves that fell from the watering, and then the water had he had a container that held the actual water, but it had had a leak, so somehow that was my fault. And I'm like, I this is you told me to water it, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01: 25:29

Yeah, yeah, water giving dogs treats that I will do because I just you know that doesn't take the the the dog is you know getting to know you, and so we put in jobber in the client notes. I mean, I try to find out as much as I can about the client to use Jobber to relay that to the cleaning tech so that they have a clear understanding of what they're walking into, a little bit about the client, and I'll even put may try to push for extras, please have them call the office, right? That and if you have I don't know, let me call the office.

SPEAKER_00: 26:20

I don't know, let me call the office, and they get you on the phone and they have to hand the phone over. But it's at least you have a a way for them to communicate, but they don't the cleaning techs aren't gonna know unless you tell them they're people pleasers too, so they're gonna be like, okay, let me get this wrapped up, right? I she told me to do the inside of the curio cabinet. I need an extra hour and a half. Well, you're supposed to anything over 15 minutes or 10 minutes or five minutes requires a phone call, you know. Below, I'll do it for you this time, but next time laundry. Yeah, laundry. Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 26:54

Here we go, you guys. This is a uh this is a new one for me. In my thing, in Jabber, I say, you know, with your bi weekly only or weekly, you do get one bed change.

unknown: 27:13

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 27:14

Please strip the bed and have fresh seats out. That that's part of that's what I have. The past two times that we have gone there, I I I the past two times that we, my company, went out there, the bed is not stripped, and the sheets, the fresh sheets, are downstairs in the dryer. Right. And this is the house with the booties. You gotta wear the booties to go in.

SPEAKER_00: 27:49

So that's and and how you handle that, it's it's and you really do need to either limit it to one or not at all and charge extra for it. Because it if you go, if your cleaning tech arrives, they're in a hurry. They have a mindset of getting done. And this is huge. If the sheets not are not pulled off and the sheets are not waiting, we actually will not look for them. They have to be waiting on the bed. If you don't have that, we'll just make it. We won't, we won't change, and then they'll be like, How come you didn't change the sheets? They weren't sitting on the bed. I'm really sorry we didn't have time to go because then you go into their linen closet, which is not organized, and you know, you're looking for the one token pillowcase, always, always one pillowcase is missing, or it's an off color and it doesn't match, and you're trying to find, and then 30 minutes goes by and you're like, Oh, if this has just been sitting here. So, yeah, if they don't, if you walk in and and you're giving away one free one uh bed change, sheet change, then it needs to be it needs to be ready to go. You need to have the the sheets or need to be off. We don't have a problem walking them downstairs to the washer dryer. They can throw them on the floor, but we don't need to pull them off your bed. No, you can get the opportunity to find all of the things that you have on your bed that you've forgotten about snacks, books, all kinds of other adult things that we don't want to do. But you guys know what I'm talking about, so that way it gives their, you know, their private lives are settled before you guys come in. Some people will not change sheets unless there's gloves. So you either glove up or not glove up, whatever your preference is. Right. And you also need to know when you're changing sheets that are you taking B100 shots? Because sometimes they are so low on energy they forget, and the syringe is in the bed, you don't want to jab yourself with a sharp, right? So you got to be really careful and ask these questions when you're doing sheet changes. Is there may please strip your own bed so that I don't get poked? Right. Um that's important because they forget, and you who wants that your whole mind starts to uh expand and you start to freak out.

SPEAKER_01: 30:32

I would, I mean, I could tell you anybody Taylor right now. I can just I could totally Taylor would be like, Oh my god, I'm dying. I want to for this, this, this, this, this. Right. And that's without her being pregnant.

SPEAKER_00: 30:45

So if they just follow the protocol and they remove the sheets themselves and carry the downstairs themselves, then then the sheets are there, and all you have to do is make it. It's just it's you know, it's a 30 minutes versus five, right? Really, and really have to limit the amount of pillows too that you make. I have one client who has 27 pillows, 27 flipping pillows on her bed. I have to photo and jobber. And I'm like, this is what it should look like. And you know, it's just it's retained. Who puts 27 pillows on your bed? If you were with people, I want to hear from you.

SPEAKER_01: 31:24

We'll just put them over on the side and line them up. Like here, you put them how you want to be. Oh, well, I mean, like you said, I take a snapshot, put it in jobber.

SPEAKER_00: 31:34

Realistic expectation. So yeah, right. And I'm hearing we'll talk, that's a whole different pocket. And if you're looking for more than one, she changed. Because maybe they had guests in their home, whatever. We charge$40 a bed. I have one person driving around right now doing sheet changes. All she does all day long is change sheets. And again, the the sheets, the sheets are already off, unless it's a special circumstance, and we've already okayed that with the cleaning tech. And they and they get paid, they don't get paid an hourly wage, they get 50% of every single sheet change. So my one girl is pulling in 250 on a day. It's a win-win for everybody, right? Everybody's not everybody's gonna pay the$40, but she's it's all and I've located them all on the map. So they're all like you know, rotated. She's in and out in 15-20 minutes.

SPEAKER_01: 32:29

Gosh, you know, now nowadays they have those route optimizers. I've never used it before you had to use the whole map thing and figure it out probably. I'm like, no, no, you guys, I'm I'm very helpful whenever it comes to setting up jobber. If you're using route optimizer, hit me up and show me how to how to do that because I would love to learn that part, especially if I'm sitting here telling everybody that I can I can help you, but I can't help you on route optimizer, route optimization yet. Give me a minute. Um, but no, we're telling you this so that you guys understand that we need you need to have if the client doesn't know, they don't know that they're not supposed to ask, right?

SPEAKER_00: 33:22

So, you know, so you have to just put it's like going up to the plumber in your bathroom. So how's they got there five minutes ago? So how's it going? Right? Leave the plumber alone, don't try to supervise the plumber by watching over their shoulder. Right, or roofer, hey, well, how's it going up there? Getting up there with them.

SPEAKER_01: 33:39

How you doing over there?

SPEAKER_00: 33:40

Right. You know, just be ready, prepared, and then that way you don't have you know problems, right?

SPEAKER_01: 33:48

I think we've put up yeah, you're always going to get a little that one client that gives you that little bit of pushback, and that's you're up to you to take that client on. I know that in the beginning we want to take every single client on. We I I was the same way, and then I learned like the clients come, the client that you're looking for that will pay your prices, that they always end up coming. Always. The phone doesn't stop ringing. Uh, you're you know, especially if you're out there marketing and everything, but make sure that you have something. I even went in in the very beginning with a hard copy, paper, a paper copy of a contract. That's a and they I I'd make two. I make one for myself, where they would sign, and then they get they got to keep one so that they could look it over later on in the night. So, and then we've grown, we've grown to this, and I never called it a contract, I called it a welcome, a welcoming package, your welcome package, you know.

SPEAKER_00: 35:03

So, are there any other things that people have tried to get for free? I think we've come. I'm sure, yeah. I'm sure you're crazy or hey, can you do this? Occasionally, we have a couple of elderly clients and they have they're older, and they the K can you help me with my dog?

SPEAKER_01: 35:20

That doesn't take very long, usually, unless they're and I but again, again, I will have it. This is a special circumstance client. It has to be in the notes. It has to be you you have to you have to be able to tell them, and that's a great way, a great tool to do communication. I mean, put in as much information as you can about these clients so that your cleaning tech isn't going in there blindsided by so we do, we have a a lot of elderly that are special circ circumstances. We go to one whole, it's a 55 and up place in that community, and the whole the whole place is special circumstances. And we take uh one day, one day a week about and go and get it done. So we're in there constantly, but yeah, you just want to draw those boundaries right from get-go with what your client is to expect and and basically how they're supposed to behave. I don't like to say it's basically training the client.

SPEAKER_00: 36:43

Hey, when you come on with us, this is how we do things, just you know, right, and it can be that you need to get referral partners, collaboration over competition. The Maid Summit talk was the number one talk. Yes, I when you told me that, I think I cried first. I I just but it talks about collaboration over competition, and and part of that is a your referral partner network. So if you have someone going, Hey, can you pick up Fluffy's poop in the backyard? No, but I know a great scoop pooper scooper that can do that, and that would be a referral partner, right? Definitely got window clean if you don't want to do windows because you don't want to carry the insurance because whatever reason get partner with a window cleaner if you don't want if they want their cartes, yeah, blinds, the blinds or detailing organization, there's so whatever you want to do.

SPEAKER_01: 37:36

Carpet cleaners, that's a whole different business. I mean, you know, it is. It's a you can do it, but it is a different bit. But yeah, I get a lot of referrals from our big, huge, the only people I really consider a competition, I get a lot of referrals from them. Oh, we don't service that area, or oh, I just got a call the other day from somebody down south that we're always in contact with each other, always. It's just what we do. I don't know. And you find that whenever you collaborate with people, and it don't have to be in your specific house cleaning, commercial cleaning, carpet cleaning, uh, whenever you're out there, your your your name and your brand is out there, and people recognize and they will refer you so quick, they will refer you so quick.

SPEAKER_00: 38:35

So I think we've covered all of the the I can't think of anything extra that we might have missed, but for our audience out there, if you if we have not mentioned something, I would love to hear from you. Go ahead and email us at cleaningbusinesslife at gmail.com and put the subject line cleaning extras in there so we kind of know what you're referring to because we do get a lot of emails every single day, and we'd love to hear from you. And don't forget to subscribe to our podcast so that you have a notification and we love reviews that tells Apple or wherever you're listening to from this drum that we are worthy of your attention, and it moves them.

SPEAKER_01: 39:20

Right, and it starts showing up in other cleaning business owners. Their their social medias. We start, we start showing up. So reviews, emails, yeah. Let's upsell and make a profit, you guys.

SPEAKER_00: 39:41

Definitely, right?

SPEAKER_01: 39:43

Talk to you soon. Right. We'll talk later. Bye, you guys. Bye.