 Hi, good afternoon everyone time Stuart here got my partner Liz Trotter. Hey, Liz Yeah, we got a special guest today Matt Ricketts from Better Life Maid in St. Louis, Missouri. Hey Matt. Hey guys, thanks for having me Hey, we We're having a little bit of discussion here before we got on and just kind of talking about some of the alternative revenue streams that we've been looking for before Or I guess since the the COVID-19 pandemic and Matt was sharing with us I guess some stuff we've been talking about for a while all turned to revenue streams and he's actually been doing some networking and Making making some of that happen Matt you want to jump in and maybe share a little bit about what you've been doing Yeah, so we have kind of made a commitment to go after some more daytime commercial meetings So I'm not really committed to going after nights and weekends or any of that yet I don't want to restructure my business in that in that way. I think it's a totally different market Different labor different, you know, I mean we have a lot of the resources We could do that. I'm not saying you shouldn't pivot towards that if it makes sense but I kind of started out with we bought some lists and Put together a Targeted a targeted list of about 600 apartment complexes in st. Louis that we wanted to try and service so of the hundred first hundred and fifty calls we got Two quotes and I closed one and so it's it's a 150 different apartment complexes we got two of them allowed two of them allowed us to quote us Quote them I closed one, but it's a $4,000 a month Cleaning so I don't think it's too bad. I mean it's $50,000 a year. We added just By playing numbers game And so we did about another hundred and I've gotten a couple other ones I have a fairly solid one that's being that's that's in proposal right now that we're going back and forth working numbers I have another quote on Friday for a smaller property where that I think they only want us there like two days a week But still could be you know, $1,500 a month $1,600 a month so these they you know, they're certainly They're certainly larger volume than you know residential that might have us come You know once twice or four, you know four times a month, you know, you know for the average Clean and then just through some networking too. So my my bank I have a local bank relationship now that I made through this this process of Diversifying some banks like at the beginning of this process and moving somebody around and Midwest Bank Center here in St. Louis if there's any Midwest people here in St. Louis has been really good They've actually thrown me some referrals from some of their other customers that have been looking for cleaning So I'm doing a bid on a large Harley dealer Tomorrow and they own a couple other dealerships in St. Louis too. So I'm you know, if I get if I get in with one I could do another and we've talked about it. We could do do mornings there before customers come So we're again, we're not having to change our operation and they're thinking They're thinking five days a week to start and then potentially seven which I'm not a fan of I really haven't ever had Sunday hours with any of my technicians But I have enough time people that I think I could make that work It's not ideal, but Again, you know, I've typically tried to do six days a week But if that's what it takes right now to make some adjustments and get some and get some new lines of business I will I will do that. So that's that's been coming along. I think we'll I think we're on target to add Probably about a hundred eighty thousand dollars in new commercial accounts in annual revenue If if we close on all the stuff in the pipeline, so well, that's cool Is that the last couple of months? that sense Yeah, we closed starting in April. So yeah, so about a month. Yeah of just Starting to work that angle and again, you know, those calls are frustrating to to all those commercial accounts But you have to remember It's it's not gonna be a short sales cycle just to call someone out of the blue And honestly, it might make more sense if we'd actually sent them a mailer first and then kind of prime to the call I I don't know the commercial process for sales I you know probably could hire a coach that that could you know Could coach my company on commercial sales process and what that sales process looks like and that might be a good investment for us to to look at because We're just guessing a little bit and just you know throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. I mean You know sometimes it seems like a lot of activity without a lot of results, but You know in total I think it's I think it's working I mean, there's there's a lot of phone calls for you know Just a couple of a couple of quotes, but again the payoff is is significant We've got a couple of questions here Matt. People are wanting to know like some really simple basics Like did you buy a list? Are you cold calling? Who do you ask for? Yeah? Yeah, so the first hundred and fifty leads we got we did a trial of I'm gonna have to before I'm gonna have to give it to Tom and email via the resources because it's it's not coming to that I was actually trying to search it before we got on the call because I knew people would ask that I was trying to search the company that we're using for for data And I will put that I will I will get that to Tom the email so we can put it in the resources But pretty affordable about a hundred fifty dollars a month for up to a thousand contacts per month that you can Download and about one in ten of those already has an email and they have a pretty good email system in there If you wanted to send emails to contacts through their system I haven't chosen to go that route yet, but I don't know that it's a bad idea considering You're not using your email system. You're using theirs So you're not gonna get you know a spam alert on your on your main email system that you would use For your for your regular customer list, so I'm open to that idea I think some direct mail would be would be appropriate and again, you're looking at this as this is not a quick fix to solve your cash crunches now because you got to remember From the time you bid a job till the first check comes in it can be almost 90 days So it's not it's definitely not a quick fix for your revenue shortfalls, but if you're looking at it as a long-term kind of Adjustment in your business model, then I think it's worth it But if you're just looking to bring in some quick cash, I don't think that's you know the solution But I'll get to the list and so we were we we built some lists and we segmented it out by zip codes we wanted to serve and to be really targeted we started with areas that were like where we already had some commercial accounts Do you think that? This work you just you feel like if you're replacing another contractor or do you think that this is More frequent cleaning just a level of cleaning that wasn't even being performed before COVID. So one of them so One of them was a new construction this is actually an area where we've actually had a lot of luck is we look for kind of new construction Buildings that are that are going up for kind of mid-rise apartment complexes So mid-rise would be you know something you know 10 stories or less Has some on-site amenities like pools and gyms and things like that So we looked for those kind of buildings going up or being under construction and we try and you know Try and figure out the contact for that and and give them a call With this particular one That one wasn't off the list it was just off of us seeing a building under construction and and giving them a call and Just hitting them at the right time basically while they were looking for somebody So that was so that was called well anyway The building is still not completely done So we usually start cleaning for these places in stages like They start moving people in this is really crazy. This place has only got like one corridor of five floors done It's got like one hallway open and they're like doing construction everywhere else But they've got they've got an elevator open to the fifth floor and there's people moved in on this one hallway And that's it and then the pool is not open anything else, you know, so we're we're only doing that We're doing the common areas as it opens, but then we have like a four-phase plan for the different phases of opening Tom have you ever done those like when they're kind of like like kind of a Apartment as it's being built basically Basically do a construction clean with the idea of getting the maintenance cleaning after they they've started out a lot of dust in the hallways There's a lot of there's a lot of and so we just bill per hour We give them a quote, but we say like, you know, this is your your bill rate We're estimating, you know four hours per day or whatever it is on site And try and hit their target and we've and I've already told and you just have to be really clear with those kind of properties Is that it's not gonna be perfect unless we were there all day the second we leave Someone's gonna track through, you know dust down this down the hallway or there's gonna be drywall crumbles All over the place. But yeah, that's that's a strategy. We've done we picked up two buildings like that And one of them one of them we bill out at like 11,000 a month I mean and we're actually gonna add a third person onto that property here It's gonna be close to 14 or 15,000 a month for one property. So Again, it's you might get one of the year doing something like that but it's you know, and now You know, if you mentioned earlier that you basically have to be the bank on some of those because you might be out 3045 maybe 60 days from you start that account so you get your first check Yeah, if you got your Now would be the perfect time to start doing some of that work If that was something you had an interest in doing because you've got the funds to fund the receivables That's true. That's true. And the other the other thing we have to remember is With the PPP funds to is is that you actually should have some leftover And if you did need to carry some projects like that, you could and then when you get it paid back You could pay back the balance after forgiveness You could carry some portion of your loan forward as sort of a I don't know what would you call the temporary lines of credit just a line of credit right just a Short-term line of credit with the intention if you had something I would only do that if you had something that was cash flow positive that was gonna pay you back like this I wouldn't do it for advertising or marketing or things like that that are just kind of gambles But for you picked up a big project and you know that you've got to carry some payroll forward It might be it might be a good strategy to use some of that for for that too like and hold on to Not paying it back all the day that the program is over I plan on carrying I plan on carrying mine till the end as a as a line of credit Whatever the balance is left over of what we spend on payroll for the first For the first, you know period. That's forgivable. I'm gonna go through the forgiveness process as quickly as I can Get what I can for giving it given and then hopefully Hopefully have a small boundary to carry forward for you know small I just considered a small on a credit basically Then hopefully it'll be really small meaning you got the most forgiven that you could yeah Yeah, yeah It's funny you mentioned the forgiveness program I got an email today from one of the banks that we got PPP friends from and it was saying You know, I know there are a lot of questions out there about what the process is going to be like at the end of your You know a quick period in terms of how we figure out what all is forgivable It's like we're interested in knowing that too. There is no guidance at the moment It was almost humorous. It was like they the bank was just saying don't ask us because we don't even know at the moment But we'll figure it out when we get there Yeah, I know though that they only have eight weeks after the RPP closes to Give us that that guidance They have two years because the loans don't technically come due for two years that there's not There's not gonna be a day at the eight-week point where we sit down with our bank and get this figured out I can promise you that it's gonna be a few months after that before like we're gonna all be in limbo for a little bit I Just a guess it is written though that they have to have they have 16 weeks from the start of our PPP till they have to give us their The some Yeah, I've seen my yeah And I know there's I'm very happy for those of you that got $500,000 new EIDL loans those of those of us that are kind of coming in later Are only gonna see probably 150 and I don't really need the money I just figure it would be the way that I figured I would use that money would be is that I'd put in the bank And I would actually spend it all For my paying my payroll and everything else and then I would just grow my operating balance So that those funds would be unrestricted funds and I could use them for whatever I want So I would actually use the loan money and then grow my operating balance that I would have unrestricted funds And I could use the money for anything really anything outside the program. So You know That that's gonna be a that's gonna be a strategy people have to be really careful with though because you have to know What's your risk tolerance for debt is and I know some people don't like debt whatsoever and if that's the case then you know, maybe not taking that money when it comes is Is probably a good strategy? You know, I don't want to dig into that too much. I wasn't really what we wanted to talk about too much today But yeah, those of you that got $500,000. I hope just Be you know, be smart with that money because the interest alone on that Is significant I would think what would what are we thinking interest on $500,000 a year? Is it is it $2,000? per month calculator right here and we can tell you look at his foot It's not two thousand a month don't interest is that it's Liz has got it I'm hoping mine. I have the Facebook live on so it's glitching me. Okay 3.75 percent Times 500 Dollars so bye-bye 1500 a month in interest so, you know Downs that's the downside of taking that money and you know, it's definitely a nice It's definitely a nice cushion against what else is coming but yeah, there's some caution to be to be You know having that much having that much debt without like a purpose for it and paying on that interest so, you know That that's you know, especially it has some restrictions and what you can do with it And it's not just a free for all with that. There are still some some limitations. I have to look at them It's been a bit spent a minute. So I haven't seen mine Any any questions Liz? Um, I'm not seeing any questions come through right. Yeah, I think Matt answered all of them wait Matt did you say that when you're calling who you asked for? I don't think you did mention that one Yeah, you just typically asked for the property manager there You know that you typically would ask for a property manager on site and and you you might not get through the gatekeeper But a lot of the a lot of the apartment complexes you want Um You know There's a sweet spot. I haven't figured it out yet. There's there's You know, I don't know If they can have like four or more people working as Contractors on site like cleaners maintenance things like that Then they probably don't need us. It's kind of them. It's kind of a medium-sized complex And so at that point you probably do get the property manager on the phone Um, and he's you know, he's kind of a you know doing a few more things At some bigger properties that we have Um, I'm surprised that we even have them to be honest There's There's you know a few layers. You can't always get directly to that person But in some of the medium to small size apartment complexes, that's going to be the person that's going to pick up the phone We're getting some some questions here about how to you know quote commercial properties. I'm just going to bounce out This is uh cleaning business today Website we've got all of our links that we've we've done here over the past for smart business moves And there's a couple of links here with some downloads. We got a commercial bid rate calculator and Basically a a big package template that are both here. You can download both of those And if you go back and look at our some of our old facebook Lives we have all of those on the uh clean business today youtube channel Can't say exactly what day we talked about this, but we we showed how how to use those and While i'm here. Hmm. Don't know how that got centered, but uh, we've got chad hindley's uh ppp That we went over yesterday along with his instructions too, so Um, we'll review this again, but just to help people who are questioning about how to bid commercially Have some tools here to help There's also some other websites that um, and I know you want to use your tool But there's some websites that are relatively affordable that are uh, um That are fairly useful. Um, you just you do have to be cautious to make sure you don't under bid commercial because if If you have any specific recommendations, that'd be awesome. We just want to I like a product called clean guru dot com or clean bid. It's the same it takes you to the same place either way um The guy that did it had a medium-sized commercial cleaning business about two million dollars and so he built a software package You could run your business on it if you wanted to it's got scheduling. It's got um, it's Basic ticket stuff for the prop for the commercials. It's got quality control stuff But what it does have is a decent bidding engine Especially for apartments. I've I have found that it's kind of all over the place for different kinds of properties But for apartments The workloading is actually pretty accurate So the numbers that it spits out especially over areas that you're doing more than more than 20,000 square feet And just imagine this like you You know You need to be able to workload pretty, you know It'll give you some workload. I can't remember what it what it averages out Maybe five or six thousand square feet an hour and in commercial spaces. It's kind of like that quite a bit. This is uh, let's see Uh, yeah clean bid. Yep. That's it. It's a it's a good product. Um The dan dan the guy that founded it. I think I met him. Um Probably 10 years ago You know over here in the pop off. Yeah, that's dan. Yep Dan so shout out dan if you're listening. No, okay. Um, he's a busy guy. I'm sure he's not watching us today, but he's uh, Yeah, come on man. He's a smart business moves. He's a he's a smart guy and so he doesn't own a cleaning company more Um, at least as far as I'm aware, but I mean he really helps Uh, he he really does help he has some products in here. So if you really want to get into commercial There's a lot of videos and things like that you can buy their their video trainings And and it's really common sense stuff. It's like don't try and say yes to everything like really know your target Like so when I'm talking about my target with commercial, I mean, I am pretty specific as to what I want Ideally I want places where people live, right? Like where they're not going to be at during the day Like you know apartment complexes Uh assisted living communities would be great except for like there's a lot of scary stuff going on in those places right now So I don't want to be bidding on those right now, but someday again. I think those are great um You know potentially just like you know places where retirement communities where they have a lot of common spaces But again, I have some concerns about working in places with older adults right now and and I certainly don't want to be um The bringer of coven to those places. So, you know, I'm not bidding those places right now um, but I think those are good opportunities and I think um There's a lot of money to be made in those up in those places and I think Um, you know, if you're doing a good job, they hardly ever Switch so it might take a while to get something like that. But you know, there's um, there's opportunities in those places Um retail is actually pretty decent because most retail doesn't open till 10 a.m So if you're willing to give them a morning slot, you can actually get retail Um to fit pretty well within what we do just so again, I'm just looking for some very specific things And again, I'm not going to agree to like mow their lawn. I'm not going to agree to take a blower out I'm not going to you know, blow their blow the leaves off their thing I'm not going to agree But you'd be surprised at what some commercial cleaning companies will do and what they'll agree to to get a contract So again, you know, so his advice is is fairly straightforward and I'm all for it It's just again create a target go after that target Do not deviate too much from that because when you do And this is something Liz taught me a long time ago is when you say yes, there's too many things from a customer It almost always goes wrong, right? There's what's your rule is You have a rule of three rule of three, right? So if they She'll make some she'll make some accommodations for people up to up to three things But once it's like four, it's all going to start all the part, right? But I mean it's and I agree man every time every time we get a customer that's like, can you do this? Sure, can you do this? Sure, and it just keeps piling on and then you're like We don't do that for anybody else. How did this happen? And then and then whenever cleaner that they have doesn't show up because they're sick or they leave That property is a disaster anyway because nobody else knows what's going on there no matter how good the notes are I mean, we had a customer that like there was a certain way to turn on the lights in their house And like there was an order to do it and that was like It was too much too much What order to turn the lights on and then you know it just it like that became There was a whole bunch more stuff than that like what kind of track like there was like There was like five different trash cans out in the garage and like just sorting the trash And you just was like insane at this house. So again, you know the same thing with this commercial stuff is Be really clear as to what you want and and again, it's not about necessarily chasing every dollar It's about chasing dollars that are again going to be again going to be profitable. We don't want to just be you know Picking up any work for the sake of it Well, speaking of your um chasing dollars. We've had quite a few people ask matt How how do you price these you have a target hourly rate? Do you know, you know, how do you I have a sliding scale. I don't remember exactly what it is off the top of my head, but but typically Typically our our base rate is somewhere between 50 to 55 dollars an hour for for residential work depending on You know frequency and things like that, but that's not going to get you commercial work So typically we have a so if they have 10 hours or more, I think it's around 39 dollars and like 39 dollars per hour for us if they have 15 hours or more, I think it's around 36 20 20 hour 20 to 25 hour, I think it's like I think we go down to like 32 And then 30 hours or more I think we go down to like 29 and I won't go any lower than that And the reason you can go lower and I think tom would agree with this is Is like once you're on a site that much like you're on a property that much There's no drive time your employees check in and check out from that property There's much less overhead of the of the you know things between jobs and all the other things And you're only dealing with one personality Of you know quality control and things like that. So Typically you have to know your own numbers, but for us we can still make a decent profit at 29 dollars an hour Now that might change now with additional, you know, pp and you know equipment that we need to we might need to reevaluate that Someone was someone was like, you know telling you the other day. They're like, can you believe we're spending an extra, you know, uh Like four dollars of technician today on on uh pp and I like did the math and I was like Oh, yeah, I guess we are spending about I figured I think I was close to three dollars a day with more gloves Um, you know, um, you know the masks that we purchased were we're amortizing out But again, you know figuring out that they're probably going to lose one of those every two weeks or something like that that we had So for them, you know, we're you know Figuring all those out. It's like, you know, they're not going to hold up forever. Um I think three dollars a day of additional costs. So maybe Maybe, uh, you know, it's it's 30 dollars an hour instead of 29 But whatever you you have to figure out your own number But it can certainly be less than your residential because you don't have all the overhead Tom, do you have a do you have any kind of thoughts on that? Well, just the general thought that you know when you're doing What you would I guess in commercial world called route work when you when you're doing residential, you're probably Spending at least 30% of your day looking out of the windshield Whereas you're doing A lot of this property management work You can get a higher what we call efficiency rate the amount of time cleaning versus on the plot So that alone gives you a lot of opportunity to get a lower Hourly bill rate and still effectively getting As much if not more revenue per day off of that person just because there you've got more hours to bill Yeah, we have we have some properties That are almost 98 efficient The only the only time that's inefficient is the one day a month where they come to the office And pick up supplies and then you know, they start their morning at our office and load up supplies for the month Um to there we can make it 100 efficient if I just had a manager drop that stuff off But we actually want them to check in and you know go over stuff at our office real quick So yeah, so and just a reminder to everybody that's listening to the guys talk here They are talking about when you're on a property for a long period of time. So just because you have A property that you're going out there five days a week That doesn't automatically mean that you're going to be able to charge less You're going out there five days a week and they're only going to have you out there for an hour That's actually a more of a problem because now you've got All this additional overhead that's going in Still cut them down probably if they're going to give me 10 hours a week I'd still cut them down to probably $39 an hour. So that's where we kind of The first price break for commercial for us is is 10 hours a week or more So yeah, so if they're only doing like five hours a week, they're not getting any they're not getting any special treatment But if they're if they're at about $10 if they're about if they're at about 10 hours a week we start to give them a significant break on the The the bill rate. So I wouldn't do anything Less than you're right 10 10 hours a week is kind of the is kind of the minimum To do that, but that that starts to put, you know one person 25 of their week is covered, you know, like that's It starts to be significant, you know And you know if you can find one or two other properties right there A really great strategy would be to market to all the other businesses in the in the in the strip mall that they're in And see if you can offer a discount. I mean, I'm not I don't know the answer to that again I'm just getting into commercial work myself and Or are really focusing on growing it as a Larger percentage of our business, but uh, man, that's that's I guess it's not really what we came to talk about today But we're 30 minutes in and that's what that's what we're on. So, um, yeah Well, I do want to also throw a name out there for those of you that are looking to get into More commercial Sharon Cowan does a lot of commercial work She does a lot of free training, which I am always a big fan of and um A lot of times you can find people out there in the commercial world that are going to give you a lot of advice without a lot of experience And that's not with Sharon. So I actually won a um, I actually won a training from Sharon and some consulting at one of the rcsi conventions I didn't use it because I think I was stubborn to think that I needed help with anything But Sharon if you're out there I'll take that help. You're actually really I know it's probably it's probably expired Sharon. I I get it. Um, but uh, yeah, I had won a uh, Consulting package from her from debbie's uh from one of the clean for reason Events and I never did anything with it and uh, yeah, I'm regretting that now. I think that I wish I knew a lot Yeah, no, Sharon Cowan is is quite knowledgeable and has a good approach to commercial I think she would be a good resource for people as well. So, yeah That that's a good call and especially right now. She's got some free training going on right now for you know, the covet pivot that everybody is doing and talking about And she's she's got some fresh ideas. A lot of times people think Oh, no, the people that have been around forever. It's just old school everything You know all the old ways of doing things but Sharon has a lot of fresh information You're looking for a commercial. You might might look into that her last name Cowan owa and I remember when I got Business and I was in sub I was sub 30 when I you know came to my first air csi convention And now I'm probably one of the old guys now come into uh come into session There's all these new smart people coming up with all these, you know, brilliant ideas and You know, there's there's all we should always be learning from one another There's no yeah, you know, whether someone's been in the business for 30 days or 30 years There's people there's people with good ideas and definitely learning from each other is a smart move So this is uh Sharon's website if you want more information. She has a really good resource on the commercial side Agreed here meet meet meet Sharon. There she is Looks just like her too. Yeah, she's she's great. I you know, if you if we get to have a convention again anytime soon um You know, she's always, you know at the issa shows or the the air csi. I'm not sure what we really call it now um, but Very good resource for for people pivoting now and for if they You know, want to you know, increase that revenue stream and I think again, I think I'm at this point I think it's worth it for my company to invest in um some coaching on the sales process and the you know lead nurturing and you know best practices. We've had some good luck And um, you know that I you know, I think that that's you know, some of it's just we've thought through this but There's a lot more to this than we know. So um, yeah Yeah, I think that would be a good investment for us too So everybody's looking for what they're going to do, right? What's the pivot and how are we going to be making more money and Taking advantage of more that's out there, but man, I really like that You said that you are finding some of this commercial work because I know in the beginning When uh, everything started coming down and residential was closing down Oh, it was scary and I was you know I had people on the phone just You know eight hours a day calling calling calling and not getting anything. So you can expect it to happen overnight It's just it's one of these things. It's kind of long sales cycle and so um Yeah, I we were we were calling grocery stores and asking them if they needed their belts wiped down between customers We were trying to think everything like and I I actually think they should be doing that like every time a customer leaves I want to see somebody go through there like spray everything down wipe the wipe the keypad down That's some stuff that I'm like There's there could be an opportunity there, but I don't know that anybody's willing to invest in In doing all that like these these places And and the risks seem to be fairly low if you do wash your hands after you know like the contact I don't know. I It made me so nervous You can do what I do matt I bring gloves with me and when I get ready to check out because I do the self-check I put my gloves on I touch all the key pads load up my stuff and as I'm leaving toss my gloves Might be decent. I at least not touching all that stuff Just touching all the food that everybody else already touched. Oh and To not not to get into the spraying and all that stuff too much, but at one of our apartment complexes, they did ask about it. Um and What we're doing for them is we bought some paint sprayers some Wagner low pressure Paint sprayers low pressure high volume And they put out a a very fine mist at 20 microns, which is the size that you would want for These foggers or missers and things like that and we're doing, you know A mist on all the on you know a fog or mist on all the surfaces and then coming back through and wiping it down and really we The contact the contact person there are the property manager and we both agree that it seems kind of silly But it makes the residents feel good right now So we're we're doing it. Um as a as a bonus thing a couple days a week. We're throwing that in and um We're just we're just taking time from one thing to another Just right now to again make the residents feel better that There's a massive amount of disinfectant being used in the building. I guess so Yeah, it's a real thing Yeah You know, I don't know that I believe that it's that that's really gonna You know versus just doing the high touch point things by spraying and wiping and and whatnot I don't think that there's much difference, but Again, it's a psychological difference probably the psychological counts though. I mean It can't hurt. I agree. I don't think it's Shifting the the efficacy, you know to to the positive side and any significant way, but Everybody feels more comfortable being in the building and if we did everything else right in terms of you know cleaning the high touch areas we were supposed to then You know, it is safe and people feeling good about it. So and if you're looking, you know, I know everybody's probably like Oh, I can't get any sprayers or foggers if you're looking to get some of these things um a friend of mine that's in restoration told me about this about using these uh, uh Low pressure high volume paint sprayer. So specifically the Wagner ones are around a hundred bucks Um, you know If you can get a fog master junior great, they're kind of awkward to hold This is just like a spray, you know, very, you know, very ergonomic Very easy to hold and maneuver. It is a plugged in device. So you're you know, like your vacuum You're gonna you're gonna be tethered but It's and again, I'm not doing this in any residential settings personally I I think there's too much moisture personally for this to be doing in in residential settings You know people are like, oh, it's only a little bit of moisture even with the electrostatic ones I've tested them. They put down a pretty good amount of moisture. I don't want to be spraying computers or electronics or any of that Stuff with this with this stuff We're again doing high touch points like doorways like, you know, all the way up hallways, you know, where there's where there's handrails bathrooms all the stalls all the toilets like Really, I mean areas that would would not be damaged by again your disinfectant process I'm I'm not comfortable doing this at home yet. I know a lot of you guys are and are doing that and Probably could teach me how to do it, you know, properly So I will I will defer to you guys if you're fogging you're misting in homes and things like that um I see a lot of opportunity with with that for some damage and it could be More costly than any profits that I make um Doing doing that in homes, but in the commercial settings. I think it makes some sense And linda has a lot of experience cleaning big offices banks dental offices Etc. And so you're you have an in already linda. So it's easier for you to Jump in and be doing a little bit more. It is definitely harder if you don't have The commercial jobs already set up that you're cleaning. Yeah, you know a lot of Already getting clean And and they have already been getting cleaning. That's why I like your idea matt Of these places that are just being built. I had never even I didn't even know that places would put somebody in a wing While they still got four and a half more floors They're building them so it'll be It's only like, you know 10 occupied right now But they'll be like they'll be adding more on each day. I mean it's they're building it so fast and um It's pretty impressive to be to be part of that process too And you really do feel like a partner in it when you when you get in on that at that phase of the You know, you know getting it in it's kind of it's kind of exciting. We did uh One of our first big projects ever was and we didn't get paid for this But we got picked to be the cleaning partner for uh, remember the moment they build those houses on tv real quick the home the home makeover show Yeah Home makeover. Yeah, it was like Well, anyways, so in my name so it was like it was in shrewsbury, which is a little suburb of uh, of uh, st. Louis where my wife is from and um You know, I guess we had a car like on our street like the same street that they're doing this So we had one of our company cars on the street and uh, and so like one of the producers came and knocked on our door They're like, hey, would you guys like to do the cleaning for this? We'll feature you on the show and you can use it as a you can use it for up to five years that you are a Partner on you know total home makeover or whatever it was and it was fun. I mean it was fun It was a blast to do Uh, it was exhausting Um, I'm not saying do that stuff now Maybe you didn't do that if there is anything like that now to to go out I don't know what there is promotional wise to go out and do free cleaning, but um, but anyway, we we I've never worked harder or faster in my life and it was it was a blast to do Um, so these construction kind of jobs I was hoping we would turn that into you know some post construction work afterwards And we did a few of those jobs afterwards. We got some ends with some contractors I decided that work is not necessarily for us Like that is hard physical work and I didn't have to quite the right staff for that I mean, I could do that work Um, but like hauling out like big bags of trash and like when you're doing like real post construction cleaning It's incredibly physical. So again knowing what your target is and what you're in what you're doing Um, you know, we thought we'd go after that kind of work and it's super profitable And if you can get it I say do it but you just have to know that you probably need a different kind of staff Then you have doing maintenance cleaning and residential it's Fairly good more like extreme makeover home addition. That's it I said, I saw a good job hard hat that I walked off of on that day and uh Uh, we have the shirts framed from that. It was it was a fun experience. That was that was probably 10 or 12 years ago. Um, very fun experience So again, it's fun to be part of those commercial those buildings You're not doing that kind of work necessarily like hauling out trash and you know all that kind of stuff But it is messier cleaning than what you used to it's just not as physical as like full on construction cleaning So it's uh, it's fun. It's fun to get in on those projects early Well, looks like we do have a couple of questions here matt Uh, let's see we have an opportunity to clean some pool baths and residential air two times a week Our county is also requiring that their pool chairs are all disinfected daily Some chairs are cloths some are vinyl We can knock out the baths very quickly any idea how to help them and how to price that I just think you're gonna have to do it based on Like give it a give it a rough idea Tell them what your hourly rate is and be like we're gonna work as fast as we can um I think if you had a sprayer of some kind you could probably do those things really quickly and really efficiently and Much lower than if you were hand wiping them Um, but you just want to make sure that whatever you know chemicals you use are Are non caustic and are safe on the safe on the vinyl material and you have to remember, you know, even if it's a non chlorine bleach um You know, which a lot of these products are like a lot of these products that are readily available right now Um, are these tablets and things like that? Um, they're non chlorine bleaches, but they still could fade fabric in the sun so I don't know tom. I mean that's sort of always a concern with any kind of disinfected and sunlight and being outside. That's certainly a Concern that I would have and and I would be having this discussion Along with whoever the property manager is whoever the client is And explain what the risks are. I mean if you explain up front it's education If you wait until after something happens, it's nothing but an excuse So you want to have the discussion on the front and say, hey, these are the products. These are the options These are some some of the possible risks. What do you guys want to want to do with this? Yeah You know, especially disinfecting like there's no perfect solution there because any of those products are going to probably You leave lice all on them like you spray everything down with lice all right Well, then you've left like a toxic film on those things. They're not really clean at least with these tablets They break down into just water and oxygen. They don't usually leave like much leave behind residue and things like that But potentially with with you know sun oxidation and things like that you could and again I'm not a chemical expert by any by any measure, but I know enough about I know enough about the stuff to say whatever you do you need to be cautious and probably Yeah, have those conversations up front like there are some risks to doing this um, these are these are the products that we would recommend but um, you know There are people with especially with the vinyl um That material is subject to fading, you know The the the question was how do I price that? Yeah, yeah One thing that I that I think is important to emphasize Regardless of what type of job you're talking about the real question you're asking is What is my cost going to be? How long is it going to take really because you're really talking about your labor So you start with how long is it going to take and then figure out what you need to bill per hour? And that's how you price it. Yeah Yeah Okay, but I got to say one more thing on top of that because You don't have to charge just that amount. That's what that's the least amount You can charge You can't charge you can't charge less than that more is better So if your market will bear a higher price charge that Don't don't always charge the least that you can possibly get away with, you know, there's Sorry Matt, you can't talk right now So, uh, you there's opportunities right now, especially in the market right now to make a little bit more money I'm not saying gouge to anybody But don't be trying to do everything at the cheapest possible price all the time Go ahead Matt. No, I was gonna say I have to agree right now Is not the time to be the lowest bit right now is the time to demonstrate expertise to demonstrate value And again, I'm not bidding these properties low by any stretch. I'm going in there Uh, I'm going in there and giving them fair pricing, you know, based on what we need to make a profit over over the long term And uh, we're getting work. I mean, it's you know, we're we're not going to win every bid with that strategy But if you win every bid You are probably pricing too low like that's what I used to have conversations with people You know, I and I've learned to be nicer about it than I used to be but like people would tell me like I win 90 of my bids and I would always be thinking myself and like Okay, like you're gonna be out of business and I would think to myself and I wouldn't say it to him Or if I did sometimes say it to him But I would say you're gonna be out of business in probably a year if you're winning 90 your bids You're probably you're probably underselling and you're you're gonna be in a situation where that's not going to be profitable at some point There's gonna be um, we don't we don't actually have a fixed cost model of business Like our prices actually increase as we grow so um, you know You know, you add people you add you add, you know complexity to your business as you grow Um, you can't you can't bid it on a price that you have today You have to be bidding it for what your future costs might entail right as you grow and need more additional resources Because if you bid it based on okay, I'm just a one one person operation Well, then you're not going to be paying for that person that you need to do that work down the road You're always going to be the one doing it. I don't think we need to have that conversation too much I think most of our people here are business owners that have technicians working for them, but um You want to take into consideration all of your costs and some of your costs are hard You know your labor is your biggest part of it We've talked about you know the PPE and those are you know a bigger piece of our costs And maybe what it was a few months ago, but there's a lot of implied liabilities that go along with this We were talking about damaging You know surfaces because of using the the various products that we might be using There's a liability There is some hidden cost in that that if something is damaged that could be a big cost to you You're cleaning in the kovat 19 world. You've always got issues of you know Who knows what can happen? So you need to be Factoring all of that in and and charging accordingly and when you're presenting your price to your prospective client Those are the things that go into the discussion. It's like, well, this is what we're charging Let me tell you all the things that we're having to consider in order to come up with this rate And if you're going to hire a professional company, these are the things that any professional company Is going to have to consider when they're giving you a rate kind of setting the expectations like you can get somebody lower But if they're not charging this amount Then they're probably leaving something off. That's really important to you In this kovat 19 world You have to be thinking of something that happened last month while we're in the middle of like making no money One of my technicians at a commercial property Uh in the parking garage kind of backed and you know, there's those wires Usually to prevent you from like falling over the next level right? She got your car into one of those things and it snapped the wire It looks like, you know, maybe it'd be like I could probably go out there with like a wrench and fix it And do it myself. Why don't I come for that right now? Like I need to get the bolts and I don't know what I'm doing So I'm like like it doesn't look that complicated to me, but I got the bill. It was $925. I was like, oh Thank god, it's a property that pays us $6,000 a month But I mean, you know, again you go out every day you go out there can be you know There's like time saying sometimes it's not such a hidden cost like damages things like that So $925 guy wire that I've got to pay for and you know, that's coming due Any day now basically I'm still I'm still waiting for the final invoice. That was the estimate so it could be higher It could be higher than that but I forgot about that like, you know in the middle of like making no money hardly or A fraction of what we normally make I'm I'm you know, we have like a $925 damage. That was that Without out of your ppp funds. I don't think so I wish we could I wish we could but you can pay for it out of your idle loan. So hey All right. Hey, Tom. I'm there. They've got a pretty good conversation going on over here I'm gonna leave them to that but One of the questions was when is the next phc Class being launched. So maybe you could talk a little bit about that now because we've only got 10 more minutes on this call And so I want to make sure that any answers or questions are answered Oh, I'm so sorry, sarah. Just ruined a wood floor today with oven cleaner sweet Been there on that. Yeah Oh, yeah Yeah, I think I saw pictures of that sarah. Sorry Yeah, oh Okay Clean business today. That's where you can get to our training. We've got uh, two classes going on here and I will attempt to show you The first one and we launched just a few weeks ago and we still have people signing up for this every day is uh, our covet 19 class. This is a three hour class and it's specific to to one thing one thing only it's like things that you need to know if you're uh, cleaning homes every day in a covet 19 world and Now we talk about ppe We talk about, you know, you need to do to keep yourself safe how you Properties properly sanitizing disinfect all the safety issues with using the chemicals and so forth that we're disinfecting with How to remove bed linens properly? It's an awesome class and it's three hours And at the end you take a a test and get a certificate of completion But the class that uh, we launched last week last wednesday Is the phc class professional house cleaning. This is a much more broader class This too is designed for cleaning professionals for for folks who are cleaning homes every day um There's a lot of things that we don't include here that it's more appropriate for business owners And you know that you know is as a class for another day But this is for the people that are actually cleaning and it's put together in a way using Uh, I guess a lexicon, uh, you know that's gonna Be relatable to to a broad broad scope of people and in the house cleaning world and it's uh affordably priced It's uh 99 dollars and it's all online. It's seven classes Plus a a test at the end and there's a certificate of completion that goes with this the first class launch last wednesday The second class is coming out tomorrow and it'll be out before we go live tomorrow at five o'clock so Be looking for the second class safety um I think it's all So hopefully debbie you are on right then The second class is launching tomorrow before we go live at five p.m I think it's awesome. What do you guys think? I got Seeing it. It's so you know, it's uh, it's gonna be really good. Uh, joe walsh A friend of ours and some of you know joe. I know and he's uh been a guest on on smart business moves and uh, he's he's actually presenting that class so, um If you haven't signed up for that class you uh Go here at the end and hit purchase and you know, there's uh All kinds of bulk discount options if you buy more classes You get percent discounts and you can sign your people up, you know after after the fact it's um Hey, hey tom Leslie wants to know if there's a way that she can check in on her employees progress and who who has done it or hasn't Okay, I am um Gonna You know, sometimes I get over my skis a little bit and kind of share stuff that we're working on That's not there yet, but but I feel good about this The actual learning management system that we currently are using we're going to be switching to another platform And this is going to be happening over the next couple of weeks. So it's not going to happen in the next 48 hours but The platform that we're on now No, but the platform that we're trying to be moving to yes and everybody who's signed up for this program under the With with the current platform, we're going to be moving there a little over to the new platform and The new platform has like a business log in so Leslie you can log in and self enroll your own people and when you can check on their progress And you have a lot more control over the training that the people in your your your company are having That's not today. That's the new platform but You know, we we certainly expect to be up and running by by the end of the month before You know the the the last class and in this program is launched There was one more thing tom today when we were so we have meetings in the morning going over the material And just talking about the the different things that are being offered And today tom said something that I thought was really great and we were talking about safety and While we're going through the program We are going over every single slide as a group of five five of us Yeah, five of us and we're nitpicking every tiniest thing And one of the things we say a lot is don't forget This is designed for the professional house cleaner. We got to make sure that it is easily digestible Engaging, etc. And the thing that tom said today that I really appreciated was Yes, we are designing it for them. They're our audience But the business owner is our customer And what that means is we're we are also being very vigilant to put information Into the program that is not going to hurt you in any way that is not going to come back on you Where you're not going to have employees And I can't remember the exact example right this minute, but where you're not going to have employees coming back and saying They said we're supposed to do blah blah blah And we're not We were talking specifically about osha guidelines on heat and things like that and we're like, you know what? let's leave that out because That we can have we can we can give resources links in another in another segment But it doesn't make sense because every area is different every part of the country is different And there's state by state regulations and things like that. We don't want to necessarily Go too deep on that just you know, we we left it broad because we didn't want to uh to create issues with Employees coming back and saying right like you were saying Well, this training said this or like one of the examples was um like different thresholds like heat thresholds where it's more dangerous than others And I don't want something like that. I don't want my employees looking at something that says when the temperature hits 85 it's considered You know more dangerous and you have to do all of these things because I don't want my people saying I was looking at the 10 day forecast and in seven days. It's going to be 85 degrees so We are certificate that you paid for Yeah So I just wanted to make sure that it's clear that while this program absolutely is designed for the professional house cleaner It's also being created for you to be able to present to them so that it helps you and your business Not just not just them It's not setting them up to be so much more knowledgeable that now they can go start their own businesses It's that's not what's being created here It's so that they can be really effective for you and your business and you can be Really confident in what you're providing I think this next section is going to be really important the safety section Because we were talking about work comp injuries and like just different things that we've seen over the years and just Trying to I mean you can't train for everything every scenario that's happened But like joe was really vigilant on things like like we looked at where there's been some injuries like stairs and you know entering and exit homes like what you're you know carrying things and You know stuff that we all take for granted as business and we're like, why would they do that? But if you don't train them or show them You know, well, then they will do that stuff because sometimes they don't know, right? So it's but but we're talking about driving and distracted driving and again This is not an end all be all But you know our hope is eventually you could break segments out of this and use these for your training meetings every month And that there's some really great content to reinforce Um, you know reinforce constantly with your people because safety just cannot really stop I mean that is again It can be a huge overhead of risk with with driving and Driving is I think my biggest overhanging risk for my company And I don't know, you know, you guys but that's where we've seen a lot of expensive Work comp claims and auto insurance claims. So You know keeping that cost down with some better safety training is is critical So the one last thing I'll share with you is cleaning business today if you haven't Signed up for our newsletter subscribe here And we click here and go to coronavirus downloads and We added some of the material we went over yesterday I noticed that the link to the video that chad produced Isn't working and I reached out to chad asking him about that haven't heard yet, but um You know when we get that resolved I get that fixed But you can download the spreadsheet here and that's one of the meat potatoes. I've been anyway If you download the spreadsheet and if you were with us yesterday, you basically know what you need to know Yeah, thanks for pointing that out so that we could get it checked linda. I appreciate that Uh, we have to get out of here. We're at a minute We have a minute and a half that we can fudge on matt. Do you have a quick answer to the question? Where'd you get that fogger? Uh, the the Wagner's. Yeah, those are just uh, so just google um low low pressure uh, i'm sorry Low volume high pressure low volume high pressure Airless paint sprayers specifically Wagner a Wagner 250 is a is a good model for that It's about between depends on where you buy it 60 and 80 bucks. You can find them on amazon for 100 you can find them at your local hardware store for maybe 75 um, just Yeah, so lows home depot or really any i mean it's a very comp Wagner is a very common Model, but it's again. It doesn't have to be a Wagner. I just use that as an example because they're cheap and um, the micron level is is is what it's supposed to be but the um You gotta go we've got 30 seconds That's it Okay, guys 25 Thank you. Bye guys We'll uh, see you guys here tomorrow at five o'clock at smart uh business moves you guys be saying Thanks questions ready questions ready Bye