CBL EP #155-Holiday Boundaries: How to Say No Without Losing Clients

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Holiday Boundaries: How to Say No Without Losing Clients

The holidays can turn small client requests into big schedule problems fast. In this episode, Shannon and Jamie break down how to set clear holiday boundaries, protect your schedule, and support your cleaning team — without sounding rude or losing good clients. We talk about common boundary triggers, why “being nice” costs you money, and simple scripts that make saying no easier. If you’re ready to stop letting clients run your business during the busiest season of the year, this episode is for you.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Tempo: 120.0

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:44

Welcome back to Cleaning Business Life, the podcast for cleaning business owners who want better clients, better systems, more profit, all without the burnout. Burn, baby, burn. I'm Shannon, and today I'm here with Miss Jamie, and we're talking about one of the biggest make or break skills in your business. Holiday boundaries. How to say no without losing clients or your mind. If you want the script, systems, and no fluff training to back this up, head to cleanfricksuniversity.com. All right, let's get to it. Right. Welcome back, everyone, to Cleaning Business Life. Miss Jamie, long time no see. Oh, mean yes. I in weeks. Total inside joke. Today we're gonna talk about holiday boundaries and saying no without losing clients. And we've kind of touched on this topic before in another podcast. I believe it was called, Hey, I can do that for free, or something to that effect. Don't quote me on it. But having established boundaries and being able and being comfortable to say no is huge because a lot of us squirm because we're we're women, right? Most of us are women and we have a hard time saying no because we're people pleasers. There's guys out there that are like this too, but it's mostly be it's mostly us women. And it's we don't want to disappoint anybody, we just want to make your house, your space sparkle. We want to see the before and afters. We don't want to lose.

SPEAKER_01: 3:15

Yeah, and we also don't want to lose clients, and we're afraid that if we say no, we might lose a client. So that's what we're doing is holiday boundaries saying no without losing the client. Because we are we're afraid of losing that client if you know they keep asking for something, and those are up charges, too, right?

SPEAKER_00: 3:41

You know, and let's be honest, there seems to be more difficult clients out there than ever before. So not every client is your demographic, and if you have someone who is really high maintenance, and I often and I haven't said this in a while, Dan Kennedy, who is resurfaced, he is the ad copy guru of the 80s and 90s, has made millions of dollars. He's a good old boy, super duper nice guy. I've met him. He he has a reference in his books. I've read almost all of his books, and it's the if it's this analogy, and this is kind of crass. So for you guys that are women, if you don't want to hear this, then plug your ears. This is your chance. If and his mentality is if we if I wake up three mornings in a row and I and we are not sleeping together, you need to go. And the premise behind that statement is the fact that if someone is taking up that much space in your head and you're not getting anything out of it, it's time for them to go.

unknown: 4:39

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 4:40

Well, I've heard that, and that was even before what is it, after three days, your family start, you know, whenever they come to visit, it starts smelling like fish or something, something to that weird effect. I remember hearing that growing up, and and uh that same same scenario applies to clients, applies to clients, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 5:04

And if you're not good at sounding boundaries, this might be the season that you do so. Um, and I wouldn't start with a whole bunch of boundaries. Maybe I would do one or two boundaries. Your most important boundary, if you had to prioritize out of all the boundaries. I'm not talking about eating the snacks or going to the bathroom. I'm talking about your schedule. That is your moneymaker. Your schedule and your cleaning techs are the two most important things in your business. You need two separate systems for them to run smoothly. And if you don't have those set up, I would work on that. You know, hashtag goals2026. But it's it's important that you protect your schedule because if you're not protecting your schedule, your cleaning techs who are directly related to your schedule, who earn money from you, who make you money, are not going to get the hours they want. And guess what? The next shiny object over the hill is gonna be where they go. And you've got$1,200 or more uh invested in this individual, right? And they've hung out and they've done great things. But if you don't, if you have disruption in your schedule, then it gives disruption to them and their paychecks, and they won't hang out. And you want people who want to spend time with you in your business so you can grow it to where you want it to go, right?

SPEAKER_01: 6:13

And that but that also you also, you know, it's not always about money, but it's also about the flexibility, the peace of mind. It is, and the culture that then this is what I'm working on right now as we speak is my company culture. I know how to grow the business, I've learned how to do all those steps, and setting boundaries for not just you know what I tell my cleaning text, oh just tell the the client, oh, you've got to call the office for that.

SPEAKER_00: 6:52

Blame it on me, blame it on me.

SPEAKER_01: 6:54

Yeah, blame it on me or or get a hold of me. And and usually nine times out of ten, it'll drop right there because then they know that oh that's you know, there's only I don't want Jamie involved, she's gonna get mad. Yeah, but they're only scheduled for so long. Right. And if we do just, you know, the wiping of the the the dog bowls or uh the inside of the fridge, a quick it's always a quick wipe down of the fridge. The inside of the fridge, those are all the doing all the fronts because you're getting ready to host a Christmas dinner or a Christmas party, and you want all the fronts of your cabinets wiped down, that takes a lot of time, and you're not gonna get that detailed of a clean without scheduling a deep clean with me through through the office.

SPEAKER_00: 7:51

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 7:52

I'm the office, right?

SPEAKER_00: 7:54

And and with kitchen cabinets, you can spot them. That's typically what the standard is right now. But to to physically have to wipe each one without being compensated for it because it's gonna push them back for their second house. So you're thinking about you know that too. There's a lot of elements without establishing the boundary. So say no, as we discussed in another podcast, you practice in part of the mirror if you're not comfortable saying no. No, no, no. My kids heard from me all the time. No, no, mom said no. Do you think that dad will say anything? Do you think he'll say yes? I can hear them discussing it. Like, well, she said no. Let's go see if he'll say it, right? And then he'll say, Well, what did your mom say, right? It's that whole dynamic. Well, um you think he'll say yes? Do you think and then they could like you can hear them going back and forth, weighing it up.

SPEAKER_01: 8:39

And just wing it when you go in front of a crowd of 150 people and are so nervous that you almost drop the mic, but you get better, you get better and better each time, and your pitch because you know the conf the confidence comes because you know what you're talking about, it does, yeah. And and the it the easier it becomes. So continue practicing that little baby steps out of your comfort zone for those hard conversations. And again, we have uh I'll say it probably almost every podcast that we do is chat GPT is one of the biggest and best tools that we can use right now outside of a booking platform in our businesses, because you can bounce those ideas of be make it pretend that it's the client and and or or gosh, even my son, even my son, will will you know, I'll bounce it off the he's 11, you guys. And he just he's so used to it, and he was like, Well, what if the client says this?

SPEAKER_00: 9:57

And it's I'm only gonna be an entrepreneur later.

SPEAKER_01: 10:00

Yeah, and I'm like I I just so you can you can have practice even with your your future entrepreneur, who you're gonna who who's gonna either take over this company or he's gonna sell it. Whatever he's gonna do with it, he's gonna do with it. I hope he got takes it further than I can. I already see that happening, but he's also a person that I can bounce ideals off of, whether he's 11 years old or not. I feel like he has a mind, a different mind. You know, I might get some heat for this about oh you're you're like some child labor law or something. No, no, he's uh he knows his mom, which you know, and same with his dad, my husband. We bounced ideals off of each other, and and I'm always telling him now, oh, that's sounds ridiculous. This is how I'll do it, you know, and that's where some of my greatest ideals come from, is just and networking, networking like this. Uh, it's where the best boundaries that come into my head, and now that if you listen to the podcast before this, last week's podcast, we were talking about, or maybe it was the week before, we were talking about how we can take our phone and throw in a voice clip into our notes, and just that quick, so that we have an brainstorming idea of these ideals that come to us and and about setting these boundaries, especially during the holidays, because clients will push you to your limits, and they will put if you have cleaners in the field, they will walk all over on them and you gotta protect them. They you you want to prevent them to get burnt out.

SPEAKER_00: 12:09

I mean, well, having strong boundaries, excuse me, I'm losing my voice, improves retention. When your crew sees that you'll stick up for them and that they got you got their back, that's like because in a lot of places, unfortunately, not everyone's a good employer. I mean, I've worked for dozens of horrible managers, horrible employers. I mean, dozens, dozens and dozens and dozens. So once they see that you're gonna catch their back, then you know, because the you they the cleaning techs are your golden unicorns, they are where you generate your income. And that's why I always say that there's a high that sometimes there's a hierarchy between the office and the cleaning techs. I'm like, you actually are not above, unless you're the office manager, you're actually not above the cleaning techs, they have priority because they're the ones generating revenue, you guys are taking revenue. So, um, and sometimes that needs to be, you know, a firm, straight line. And sometimes they get it, sometimes they don't. Sometimes you have to remind them. But it it really does help with retention. And it's not rude, it's professional because then you know what the parameters are, right? When you go to Chick-fil-A and you order the what was the fancy lemonade that the kids wanted? It was the lemon lime minimum, and maybe that was Sonic, the lemon lime lemonade that they only have certain times of year. There's a boundary because there's a date, right? The date from the beginning of November 1st to November 30th or whatever month it is. That's the only month they have the lemon lime lemonade, right? So then that's a boundary. So we have boundaries everywhere. And the reason why is so that we know where we can bounce along, what we can do, what we can't do. And when you don't have that one, everyone runs amok. I mean, you I'm guilty of giving people a long leash. I'll let you run and run and run and run and run. And then at some point I'll get tired of whatever you're doing. I'll just yank the leash back. I'm like, okay, playtime's over.

SPEAKER_01: 14:49

Yeah, yeah, no, it it can be challenging, but it's just uh it's something that you work on. You work on trying being an introvert in this, which I you know, I don't know if I've ever been an introvert. I think I've always been an extrovert, but you gotta stick up for yourself and you gotta stick up for your employees if you want to scale.

SPEAKER_00: 15:18

Right. And policy first matters. So having the policies in place, like we know that we can't shout fire in the theater. We know that you can't bring a cap gun in a in a bank and fire it off because people are gonna drop to the floor and be mad. There's just certain policy first, right? You have to not wear a mask or a hat when you go to the bank. You certainly can't show up in a Halloween uniform outfit that's fully covered in a bank. They get they get about there's a policy, these are policies in place, and there's reason for them. So when you start to establish your SOPs, having policies in place, help things run smoothly. You guys have heard me say it a thousand times. No one likes to run a shift with trial by fire. Everyone wants smooth running shifts. They want to just show up, do their thing, leave, go to the next house. But when you have trial by fire, people are like, I don't know, Shannon's pretty like it's rough, right? I don't know if we want to do this day after day. It's just like groundhog day.

unknown: 17:05

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 17:05

And what's great, you know, uh these uh these I and now I'm speaking for myself, and I'm hoping that I'm speaking for a lot of you that if you followed along, that you're getting to a place where you're hiring. I I have some great team members that will take a sword and for for this company and protect it like you know, do they protect it? And the least we can do is protect them the same same same same thing, right? Maybe have a have a before this holiday season really gets kicked off, have a a sit-down with your team, your team leads, and get get a game plan going. Uh, because a lot of clients and we have to train them, you know, they're just crappy sometimes. You have to they're just you just crappy and they're not thinking, they're they're only thinking of themselves. Oh my gosh, I just gotta get past this. Um I'm doing this, I gotta wrap present, I gotta host, I gotta do this, I gotta do that. Just get this reform for me, real quick. Can you see how overwhelmed I am? You know, so you you gotta kind of keep your your employees or your your clients trained, managed. Yeah, it does. It takes a little bit of training, and there's some boundary triggers too. Yeah, what are they? What are they?

SPEAKER_00: 18:48

So some boundary triggers could be early arrivals, unexpected guests, same-day emergencies. And I'm telling you right now, and I've said this in two other podcasts today don't do last-minute cleans over the holidays. You will bite it every single time. Unrealistic expectations. So you do the emergency clean, and then they're ungrateful for what you did because they expected you to work so much faster. Because after all, it's just a broom sweep and a wipe, right? How many times have we heard how we're gonna start a t-shirt club as a quote? After all, it's just a broom sweep and a wipe. What's the big deal?

SPEAKER_01: 19:22

Some some post-construction chaos.

SPEAKER_00: 19:26

This can be challenging, especially if you've never done post-construction. I don't think that you should dabble in post-construction in the middle of winter if you've never done it on top of your holiday schedule, unless that's what you do all the time or you have a separate crew that just does post-construction. It's too much chaos on your schedule, especially if you're a small teamed business. It's it adds too much chaos. I would just politely turn it down and refer it to somebody else. Maybe they can give you a referral next time. But having those and early arrivals, sometimes the schedule, what I what's really annoying to me, and it still happens to this day, is people run behind. They run behind for one reason or another. Sometimes it's forgivable, sometimes it's not. But when you're running too shot too tight of a margin of time in between things, like what we're doing with this podcast today, things come into the mix and just stir the pot, and you're like, Well, I wasn't anticipating that. So you're to overcompensate and auto-correct and auto-correct and auto-correct, and then by the end of the day, you're just pooped out, right?

SPEAKER_01: 20:31

And yeah, I'm gonna tell I'm gonna say something. Uh, that's why I absolutely love Jobber. All my cleaning checks have a I'm on my way, and we have a one-hour window because sometimes things do come up. One hour window is like, oh my goodness, we have a minimum of one hour, and then at that one hour, if that situation has not been resolved, of course, I'll step in and call, make sure everything's okay. They they have that ability to say, hey, I am on my way, and then they kind of just time it in their head. They have five minutes, 15, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, all the way to 60 minutes to time, time that like, oh Jamie, Jamie didn't do this bid right.

SPEAKER_00: 21:19

Right. Well, sometimes things happen, especially my town has grown exponentially in the last two years. I mean, we have doubled in size, it's incredible. It used to be eight minutes from my town to the next. It takes 45 minutes if there's no car accident. And it's usually a head-on or a medical because we have a huge senior base here. So you it's the giving yourself an hour window, and if your cleaning tech is running behind, that should be standard protocol. Hey, Mrs. Smith, I just want to let you know Melanie's running behind. There's a car accident on Highway 69. I just wanted to give you a heads up. Most of the time, everybody's totally happy. Sometimes they're not, but it's unrealistic to expect someone to show up at the approximate time. Or sometimes they show up early, and that that I've had that be an episode a couple of times too, where they showed up 30 minutes early, and I'm like, don't knock on that door until I check. Yes, yes, it's nothing like getting caught in your jammies, you know, have coffee in your hand.

SPEAKER_01: 22:16

I guess they're hey, can we go early? What? Wait, no, that is the scheduled time. Right. That is the scheduled time.

SPEAKER_00: 22:26

And there have been exceptions to that. For example, I had a cleaning tech who had to put her, her dog had a medical emergency and had to be put down, and her husband waited with the dog while she quickly I was surprised that she still wanted to work. She went over, did the house, and I I got a hold of the homeowner and I said, Hey, would you mind if Melanie shows up a half hour early today? She has to put her dog down and I want to make sure your house gets clean. So you have to make it about them. And she was like, Yeah, oh my gosh, I'm really sorry, blah, blah, blah. And then it all worked out. But I would not show up early if you could prevent it from happening. If it's an empty house, which is what I love in a lot of metropolitan places, a lot of you guys run from empty house to empty house. So the the window of time doesn't really, it does matter, it does correlate, but it's not as like in my area where everybody's home watching you, right? Yes. Remember during this is actually a flashback. Remember during COVID where we would shuttle people to one side of the house so that we could clean. And then they would have to shuttle them over to the other side of the house. I mean, it's funny, it's been five years.

SPEAKER_01: 23:31

Well, we kind of still there we're this is post post-COVID, and a lot of people continue to work from home. And there are some people that just do not want nobody in their house without them there. Uh just beyond me, but they and they do okay. We're coming in here, so it's always it's just in a perfect world. I don't want anybody home, neither does my clean. They they do better. It's just they go faster, they can rock out so fast so much faster because you are literally like making sure you didn't miss anything. You're trying to move something real you gently off the counter so it don't make any noise.

SPEAKER_00: 24:19

Oh, it's it's you can toss your rags everywhere and no one will know into the dirty bag rag. The bag's over that way. We'll just throw it down the hall or off the stairs. Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to do that. Feather does her thing, right?

SPEAKER_01: 24:33

Yeah, it makes it very difficult. And I love the ones that are like, can we make sure that we schedule this for one more not home? And it's like, yes, absolutely we can.

SPEAKER_00: 24:44

Actually changing over time, but we'll see. I don't care either way. I just want to know so I know which direction to push the the flow of my business. Um, but those are some of the triggers for that. And then of course, having your script. So chat GPT, you know, saying no. Uh, we could probably put something on the website of Clean Freaks University. I'll have um Stephanie get that all loaded up for the podcast. And I think we have covered, yeah, I think we've covered all of the boundaries for the holiday season. Again, we love each and every one of you. We would appreciate a five-star review that tells the algorithm that, hey, we are worthy. And then it shows the podcast to other people, and then other people go, Oh my god, Shannon and Jamie! Why didn't we see it? Jamie and Shannon or whatever.

SPEAKER_01: 25:31

You guys listen to this, and then I see a lot of people in the groups talking about the cleaning business life, and I I absolutely love it. We love it, we love helping you guys, and then we also love that if you would go to the structure scale profit cleaning academy and get on that wait list, definitely or at least the newsletter, huh?

SPEAKER_00: 25:55

That's a nice you can apply for the the newsletter or the email get on the email service, and it it just makes it that way you're in touch with Clean Freaks University and you know what's going on, or what you know, if what's if there's a special or not a special or all that other stuff. Yeah, I I think that's it for this. How you know holiday boundaries say no without losing clients. Thanks for dropping us. Holidays, take care. If this episode made you rethink how you handle client requests, this is a good thing. Boundaries aren't rude, they're what keep your schedule intact, your team supported, and your business profitable. And if you don't want to figure out what to say in the moment, then head over to cleanfreaksuniversity.com. That's where we share the scripts, policies, and systems that help you say no without losing great clients. And if this episode helped you, leave us a five star review so that more cleaning business owners can find the show. We'll see you in the next episode.