 Hey, good afternoon everybody Tom Stewart here our guest today is Gary Murphy and this is smart business mode How you doing Tom? Hey, I'm doing awesome. Gary. How are you today? Good good good to see you again. No kidding. It's been Well, see was the last time we got together December or so maybe November something like that Do a couple months were you at convention this year? Uh For for right. Yes. She was there. I was that's right. So you guys you guys were down in Charleston Yeah, we had our we had somebody from our Hartford office and from our White Plains office there Robin Viviano went down there and that was great. You know just fun stuff I know the rules with Liz though. I don't want to Much I don't want to talk too much about my favorite product No, you can talk about whatever Liz isn't here. I'm gonna be able to make it today. She is at a Darren Hardy conference and she's You know even coaches need coaching right and you know, she's certainly Stepping her game up. So I'm excited for her to have an opportunity to do that. Hey, Denise in the house today How are you to me? Good to see you We're talking influencers today, right Kardashians and those types, right could be it could be it could be any any Former fashion What do we start Gary just tell us a little bit about yourself and in your business and what your interest is and Industry so where my wife Robin and I are the owners of May Brigade in White Plains, New York Which is just The suburbs north of New York City So we service four counties north of New York City Rockland Putnam Fairfield and Westchester County And then we also have an office in Hartford, Connecticut, and we service Hartford County in Connecticut and We've had the business for 26 years. So we've you know been through You know a lot here over the years We are our latest push we do think of ourselves as as trailblazers. We are part of a franchise May Brigade but you know in the last 10 years 15 years there's been so much more collaboration between companies, you know through the internet through Liz's site and and and the need the the connection you can make to other cleaning companies outside of the franchise is just great because you know, we can have a total world view of the industry and One of the you know a few of the things about us is I'd say from the beginning green cleaning was really important to us Something that Robin was you know She started this company because she couldn't find reliable consistent house cleaners that were friendly and pleasant to be around so Yeah, well, so so the the impetus to to get involved in the industry was Robin wasn't happy with the house cleaning that she had so She she she constantly said that she didn't like people Rating the cleaning supplies and you know, she's going there. They're going to clean other people's houses with these and it's just sloppy It's unprofessional and and from the beginning Robin always thought this industry You know needed a kick in the butt it needed, you know, it's a it's an industry. That's slow to change a lot of times When you talk to a lot of owners Afraid to invest in the business a lot of other owners don't want to Look at KPIs and look at profitability You're looking at revenue and how many cars they have or how many teams they have and you're looking at the wrong numbers so you know Fun be having something a cleaning company doesn't have to be a cleaning company in the old sense It can be a very profitable business. It can be something you can scale You can move into other geographies. You don't have to be in the office to run it and it can be a great place to for Advancement for our own employees and and something we're you know, our latest kind of Thing we're on is is really the professionalism of the industry and joining other leaders Out there that are looking to raise the bar to set the standard higher to change the narrative of what people think about their home cleaner and And the folks that that run the companies So when you talk about, you know, KPIs and it's not about, you know, how many cars you have it's about I mean, it's funny, you know, they change and being able to to watch them It's it's you know, if you track it, you know, that that's that's the key there, right? You can you anything you what's the whole expression there? You know, if you're not tracking it, you're not going to change it If you can't measure it you can't manage it perfectly So, you know, you know from anything it's the beauty about this is we will have strategic meetings You know or cleaning company and that's what we're doing and you know, it used to be during the pandemic It was an employment issue. How are we getting people in? We were measuring success by the number one of the KPIs was, you know, recruiting and how many employees can we have to? To to go out and clean each day it can be per Made revenue hour is something we're tracking right now and you know in You know, we're unabashed supporters have made central and we have both of our offices on that and really proud to report that You know, we look at our KPIs. It's something we really took a hard look at a few years ago We were down in the 50s per made hour and now we're we're right about seventy two seventy three dollars per made per hour So for me Tom, that means We can bring in employees when they're when they're cleaning at that rate and we're we're getting that amount per hour on Their commissions, I know they're on their share. They're making decent money. We have a competitive advantage over our You know a competition to get the best cleaners because You know for some employees what we're learning now is they don't want to work eight nine hours a day They may want to work less hours, but really have a profitable few hours and we can actually show that to them and say, you know You know another thing Tom that that we'll look at with with having that high revenue per made revenue hour is Being on front of things like a four-day work week. It's it's coming, you know, we can put our heads in the sand But for a lot of people that level of flexibility or you know working, you know Three days a week and and while it's not a gig you're part of something bigger It's something that's a very reliable income if you're in on those three or four days So we're always looking for a nice competitive advantage and being able to track something like per made revenue hour That we can show people and say look, this is real. This is something we watch we want to make sure it's high and If a customer is underpriced our office staff is going to get on that if the staff Need some help with efficiency. We're going to get on that in the office. So you know with with You know looking at the profit ability of the company is More important than how many cars you have or how many employees you have that means that that was 20 years ago People were going around judging by those numbers and you really have to look at the data to know what a healthy organization looks like Well, you know a lot of things have changed over the last 20 years 20 years ago We didn't have smartphones 20 years ago the internet was not really nearly as relevant in business as it is now I mean or even as reliable, right? When you first started your cleaning business, you know, you were buying big yellow page ads, I bet that's right We were the ad and that's how we did it, you know big by the biggest page And you know seeing huge growth and now You know, we're learning We're becoming SEO people we're we're learning what we have to do for I was just talking to you The other day about doing our video FAQs, you know with that That's something we have to get up and online and there's a SEO factor to that. So We want to make sure every part of our business is is tied into You know our profitability and success of the business. So, you know, and you know, I know that you and in Robin are really innovative in terms of pursuing For the residential things that are kind of cutting edge for the residential cleaning industry maybe not as much for business overall, but you're bringing professional management practices into into our industry and You know, we there's a lot we could talk about there, you know, I know that you're doing some some really cool things in training Without Gary, I mean for us probably the biggest the largest component of that is really looking at how how How how can we train our staff? that are For right now when we onboard somebody for the most part we're onboarding somebody who's 24 to maybe 32 years old Is who we're hiring? and What does what does training look like now? I know in the 90s the training was Centered more around a VCR tape. Maybe you got a little time with the head trainer, right? We made all the mistakes early on thinking our best cleaner that we had would be our best trainer Right because if you're really good at something that means you can teach it really well You know, we learn the hard way that that is not the case Sometimes people are just really good at their jobs and they may not be a great Educator or explainer or mentor so learning How how are we gonna change and adapt to? This this new world where it's not gonna be VCR tapes We don't see training to be Something where you spend four hours in the office chatting sort of a classroom setting and then go out in a field and Another four hours and then the next day, you know Walking through for a few days with somebody. It just it seems like that's not the way the world is in 2023 I my daughter a few years ago I never taught her how to make slime Yet she managed to go out on YouTube Figure out how to make slime Went on to our Amazon account ordered the glue and the glitter and everything else It showed up in the next thing, you know, we have a slime factory in our house you know, we're in a more self-directed approach to learning and Sort of the classroom approach the VCR tapes aren't working. So something we've developed Over the last year and this has been Robbins Kind of secret pet projects if you know skunk works the the development agency for the CIA I think and one of the big Northwestern Aircraft Yeah, I think maybe that was was it your secret lab. They made the SR 71 black Hawk and stuff like that Well, you know Robin every couple of years gets into something right and a few years ago She got us into electrostatic sprain for disinfecting a few years after that We were years before that. She got us into electrolyzed water, you know, so Robin is our you know visionary step We use an aisle layer, you know in our cleaning process Robin introduced us to And her her latest sort of, you know miracle that she's pulling out and again the goal of this is How do you onboard staff? How do you professionalize the industry and teach skills in 2023 when I went to work in 1994 I just you know, it's funny I remember I remember going in there and Bob Spicer was like the old guy Then he must have been already like 65 years old and he came in to work with like a lunch pail and a newspaper and I I came up through tech and At a tech company and I'm like, oh my god Who brings lunch to work, you know, I like this is like gonna be you know fast-paced and and The funny thing now is I'm looking at myself and I think I you know without Changing I'm turning into Bob Spicer You know showing up with the lunch pail and the newspaper and you know talking about, you know Old media and then did you watch the news last night and none of my employees know what I'm talking about So, you know just and it goes back to being in tech in 1994 Lou Gerstner was the CEO of IBM and He wrote a book called reinventing education Kind of one of the first books on school choice and needing to change things And I always remember there was a quote from this book from a math teacher in Maine and it's just funny It's like the problem is not that schools Aren't what they used to be The problem is schools still are what they used to be right schools are still doing the same thing And that's correct. They never changed. They didn't take advantage of technology and the CEO of IBM is saying You know what you should be bringing computers into schools. There's gonna be cloud-based learning school soon There's so many innovative and dynamic things that can be done instead of just making the next factory worker So I just always remember that and now and then I remember we had a library of VCR tapes And when we had onboard somebody it's like, okay background check clear and references checked out Put them in front of the videotapes see how they do for a few hours send them out and how are they doing? Inhumane base You know so so, you know Robin sitting here saying, you know, I begin what I say Robin I'm saying, you know electrostatic spray guns You know going really quick meeting you saying we got to get on, you know Something like made central having employees clock in clock out. They can see their PTO right then and there We want electrolyze water safe products. We're gonna do cleaning products for life for our customers. We're gonna do a subscription base Way that customers can pay for us It's easy to sign up and you're gonna be delighted with all the value add we offer her next thing is professionalizing the industry and that starts again with the TikTok style video where we are going where we've already developed about 95 to a hundred 45 to 90 second training videos on All kinds of topics so of these hundred videos more or less that we have One third of them are dedicated to hard skills how to change your vacuum bag how to make a bed And they're fun like a tick-tock video. They have little, you know emojis popping up But the hard skills are the basics of the company. What you need to do to do your job The professionalization comes in when we're talking about delivering soft skills, right? interoffice communication or Making eye contact with a customer when you walk in, you know 45 second little tick-tock video Saying hey when you walk in it's really important to say hello Ola and make eye contact because that eye contact means so much to the customer Things like your do's and don'ts of your uniform, you know, and we have fun with it You know, we may have somebody dressed up in a sloppy uniform versus a clean uniform professionalism when you show up, you know, how it looks and While these are while these are short videos really what they do is they open a door for deeper conversations and It's it's something that you know in our office. We're going we've done this now for about six months we have about 12 other companies that have demoed this and everybody is saying the feedback is just tremendous because We're meeting our employees at their level of how they want training done They don't want to sit in front of a computer for you know Four hours. They don't want to watch somebody. They don't want to You know shadow somebody they like these videos where you know, we now onboard somebody by After they're hired we send them a video of how they use the gas card to get gas if they're a driver Just so they have that you know in their little library of things to know about the job So having these, you know, how do you distribute these videos? Yeah Right over right over a text through folks cell phone. So every morning you send them a text And I think I just got one right now at about 745 every day I take it back we start early in our office in in white planes at 715 We have a scheduled text that goes out to all employees with a link They click on the link and it has the lesson for the day, you know 45 second to 90 second and it might be Something like making a bed. It might be 10 things that drive customers crazy It might be making eye contact. It might be conflict or Deescalation if you have a problem with you what to do if you have breakage just as a reminder Call the office text the office, right? You know, let us know Things like that. It's just constant Reinforcement and then we have a comment section. So, you know, we really one thing also that we've noticed that goes along with with Loading up these videos is Participation is something that's now important in the company to work at Maid Brigade In one of our offices. It's not something we like. It's not something that's desired It's expected now. So when we hire When you watch a video like this, we want the good and bad. We want your feedback Okay, we want to see what you think of of the video and we actually gamify it by doing things like having raffles if for those that participate the most and Participation could be anything Tom if I send you a video right now, you know I could send a video to it to all your staff at Castle Cleaners saying hey Here's how to make a bed, you know I'm gonna show you in 45 seconds and Well, we're expecting to see from our staff is some comments the good and the bad that they might want to share just like you would on a Facebook post and Then we also reward folks if throughout the day they shoot a video of themselves Practicing what we were just talking about. So, you know internally for our morale and having fun with this Staff starts sending in videos of them making a bed changing a pillow case Cleaning a toilet and this way we're having fun with really flattening out how we deliver our service Because at the end of the day what we want to make sure is whether you have Maria Rosa Carmen and Gilda The customer's experience is going to be the exact same the bed is going to look the same the toilets clean the same You know One team doesn't leave a flower with the toilet paper and the other does you know We want standardization so we can scale and that's what the training you want me to You want to share a couple of these? I sent them to you. Do you have them in your emails that easier around? I've got one here like hospital corners. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Okay. Let me queue this up And it may ask for a code and i'll give you that because this is all linked in through a cell phone Yeah, and once I uh a phone number. Yeah, and i'm we're all in the community here. I can give you one nine one four seven zero eight nine six one nine And then your code is four zero nine seven three five And again, this is just tom this lets you into our quasi lms So this is how we track and make sure you know We can see where people are with videos who watched them who didn't who commented Okay, so I am Going to share my screen Hey robin, we're gonna show your video She might be home soon so she might come through that door back there Okay, that'd be cool So i'm gonna see if I can blow this up a little bit. Yeah, and again remember this is designed for a cell phone That's why it's shot in that vertical format because we want to deliver the content The way staff are gonna see it Okay Let's go ahead and give this a go Oh, you just have to hit that play button Right, it's not it's not streaming here. Is it let me um Figure out what's going on there. I don't know why I'm saying it, but it's not uh, uh not playing for the world. Yeah Let me fix this because there we go. Let's see Still it's it's like locking up. This isn't uh Talk on it Let me try something different Okay, looks like we're playing Now remember you're you're this is what appears on your phone And we're a little choppier than normal here But it's just a real easy Nothing overly branded here. It's just showing you the very basics of a task like Making a hospital corner and That's it. And you know listo is our our thing You know and we're starting with some basic questions at the end, you know the kinds of of course they do, you know, I don't know and then We're looking at this but normally you'd go and you'd see everybody else's comments there So the idea is a quick 45 second hard You know skill like this and you can do that and it's delivered to your cell phone So once you're logged in You can go back and click another link now Like smiling and making eye contact if you're able to share the video We have a great guy who does these spanish and english videos and What he'll do is talk about something like smile the importance of smiling Okay Want to watch another one? Yeah, this one. I mean this is this is great where We're just talking about something like the importance of walking into a home and smiling or seeing your co-worker This is only 20 seconds. Yep And that's the idea these are quick bursts and somebody like arnaud go here He does all of our soft skills training. So he does them in english and spanish And everything from how you walk into a home Walking with purpose right when you walk around the home having a plan And staff just love him because he's just so motivational and upbeat And a really, you know nice guy and that that comes through And something like this on on you know, it's something we don't talk about a lot right in in the business Is when we talk about being professionals, you know when when we I don't know if you guys ever do this time But you ever like compare us to ups and to fedex like their drivers They're professional. They have a great uniform, right? They're always neat and tidy They're they're they're identifiable Um You wouldn't give your old baby clothes to a ups driver. I don't know why you wouldn't right or another service person But why you know with cleaning people it's like oh, I feel but you know the the need is the you know Oh, you you you must not be able to buy clothes or you don't have paid time off or something like that I'm just that's one of the mindsets. We're trying to change is professionalizing is Let's start getting the cleaning companies out there More like, you know a fedex a ups that's a a professional service that shows up And you know act accordingly and let's get paid accordingly And that starts with you know having great training having staff that walk in not slumped over Making eye contact when they you know come into a home if there's breakage You're quickly trained to know you're not in trouble But just let the office know because Everybody's going to tell you the customers love it when we tell them there's breakage, right? I mean they don't love it. It's a hard call to make sometimes But it's 10 times better than the you know surprise breakage overnight call that you get And you know gary earlier on you were you were touching up on several things that all all tie into this, you know It's about professionalizing the industry and it's also about using professional management practices within your business with the idea of Of being profitable and you know that revenue per labor hour that you were talking about and All of that rolled up together gives you an opportunity to create really really awesome jobs I mean you can pay well and you've got the the resources and the and the the You know the cash really to to pay for training and to do those types of things and You know it's hard work and and and the idea of taking it from a task and turning it into a profession Right is giving people training Part of the benefit of any job is getting a paycheck But you know there's more to it than that and you're giving people skills that they own And they take them with them for the rest of their lives, you know these I mean We we you know we like to say you know even in our office and we rob and I were talking about this We're talking about training for our staff and Me I I started out in tech and when we start talking to other cleaning Company owners operators managers even Not a lot of people came out of high school and or college and go okay great. I'm going to start a cleaning company A lot of people their spouse. Maybe we're was doing it and they joined or as a family venture And and we didn't we didn't come out of customer service A lot of us came out of corporate and we bring a lot of skills a lot of depth in what we know But we weren't trained in customer service so we started doing that also in our office and When we're talking about upskilling our staff we're talking about upskilling us also So we found a course, you know, if you ever familiar with Joe cassara HVAC and and you know, we signed up for his course and kind of along the style of the way we're delivering content for our Employees in the field He does it the same way for us in the office where we it's you know, it's right on our phone It's modules that are easy. They're in digestible bits two to three minutes And what we're saying to our staff is basically we want to upskill you so you can go work wherever you want to But we're going to make the culture here so good. You're never going to want to leave You know, you're going to want to stay because you enjoy working here You know, you you you have the environment that that you like you have a say So when we when we do that we really want to start valuing Folks who have achievements and whether it's a gbac class take the bruce vance class The professional house cleaning course things like that. So we really celebrate any any Certificate you get achievement you get in learning and we want to teach staff like build up your linkedin profile It only helps us when we have kind of a kick-ass person You know working for us in customer service that wants that that's not That that's open to to learning things and and I got to tell you tom like in this class The the funniest thing like for both robin and I I'd sit here and be like oh robin's our best sales person You know in the company and she hasn't been doing it for a while because she's focused on more strategic things and we're growing and She doesn't do that anymore But it's it's funny. We're realizing we were doing it wrong before You know, it's kind of eye-opening not that we were doing it wrong We were doing the best we could if we were applying a corporate approach to it Um and and the same with customer support where a quick example is You know when a when a customer calls in and would say to us Hey tom, I really want to thank you for the team went above and beyond and scrubbed out my garbage cans Um our office our typical response was always It's no problem. It's no big deal. It's what we do for a weekly customer. We're happy to help And what we're learning now is that's that's really not the right answer The correct answer is really Saying, you know, you're welcome and we appreciate you and thank you for sharing that Um, but it's not nothing right and and this is what we have been trained to say is I'm jumping over someone's desk going. That's a weekly customer. Tell them no big deal. We're happy to do it We'll do it again for free. Um That's not the answer that the answer is let the customer talk Let this be for a moment Take the compliment tell them, you know, thank you. We don't have to be uh an organization that that feels, you know Eternally humbled and and that you know, we're servants. It's it's not that relationship Somebody took the time out of their day to basically call in and say you're doing a really nice job And I appreciate it. Don't minimize their compliment by saying it's no big deal. We do it for everybody Yeah, don't try don't try to if they think it's awesome Don't try to convince them that it isn't right. So so like just just um Just just in the beginning part of this rob and I are going wow We we missed the fundamentals of customer service robin came out of you know Mastercard finance corporate. I came out of tech We never had somebody take us through a 101 fundamentals of customer service To that point also sales, you know as well. So, you know, not having You know that that extensive background. It's just interesting It's an eye-opener when you sit through the course because you're going to go I own the place. I know customer service every, you know And and the point of this the the whole point of this is to make sure There's never a call that comes in again. We want to be scalable We don't want calls coming in saying I need to talk to robin. I need to talk to gary I need to talk to viviana. I need to talk to rob You don't there's not a person. There's a flat customer service methodology that we apply to everybody So it doesn't matter who you talk to and this way we can grow our borders out larger or wherever we want to go um, and that's that's the exciting part about this is It's not just robin's so good at sales. You got to talk to robin It's you can talk to rachel sandra jessica, you know Anybody you're gonna have the same experience. So Upskilling for us has been something, you know, it's robin's new You know, the the training is robin's new electrostatic spraying, uh, you know and and and You know having all the the cool new products and things like that So we're just excited and to kind of cap it off We've brought in, you know a new title Everybody in the organization goes through either a sales role Or customer service you get the fundamentals in both you whatever if you're picking up a phone You're going to learn the fundamentals and you're going to go through the online training on your phone Is everybody in the company like everybody who works in the office or everybody in the office If you're touching a customer in any way if you're doing, you know bookkeepers aside who we want to keep away From from customer interaction, but hey, but uh, but you know, I'm a made central fan We send them the portal now, you know, we've reduced we the amount of overhead we've reduced from from made central and Cell phones and and printers and paper. It's just ridiculous the the savings That's there to apply towards things like, you know, developing our own videos onboarding training, you know All the stuff that uh, even Liz is talking about I see she has an ROI on your staff, right and and the the training that you're doing It's like if you're if you're not paying attention to your staff and letting bad employees stick around shame on you You know your company's, you know, gonna just die on the vine So to speak if that's the way you're gonna approach things and not be, you know ahead of it um, but the the it's it's very cool when we we start seeing Uh, the the next step on this is uh, so yeah, everybody's either doing a sales course or customer service You're you're in one of those camps and most of them are customer service Most of us are in that because if you're picking up the phone and you're rescheduling someone and again These days, it's mostly text, but even so we want the same Communication Voice to be heard from the customer It's the same you you think you're talking the same person and during one of our our customer service Meetings the funniest thing that came out of is we have a newer employee that said I'm so happy that people know me You know that because she signs her emails carolina and she's finally like known It used to always be you know viviana or gen or robin and now You know customers are calling her by name and it's just it's it's uh, it's nice to see that progression of of people feeling good about about making an impact and our kind of part two to that for our Cleaner side is we one of the positions is a staff influencer And so a staff influencer is somebody you know like a kardashian but whose job is to really Live and breathe the values of the company and sort of rev up everybody so They're having fun at work The job is hard enough, right? uh when we go out and and clean and So do you have like a full-time person who's that? And they're they do so, you know this full-time person though is a customer support You know they were first hired to do boring customer support But we jazzed up her title She still will answer the phone and answer emails and send text messages and work with the schedule but She's in in the morning and and tom i got to tell you We use made central now So my mornings are easy customers have been emailed three days before they've been texted today before They know our cancellation policy. They know if they Cancel in the morning. They're going to get dinged for the price of the cleaning We we've we've shaken out all the the folks that don't That aren't on board with the service we deliver and meet us at our level so Our mornings used to be showing up at work and you know, this one's on the phone It's the first clean cancelled this and that that doesn't happen anymore So now we have that employee that that used to just open up the door And fix all the am problems. Who's not coming to work? Who's off the schedule? redo it all Now their job is to really rev people up and get them going and you know, we we have a family dinner every friday night We try and have a lot of themes, you know this week. It's mother's day the week before synchro de mayo The week before that it was sports teams. Everybody, you know wearing their favorite, you know Jersey from whatever so on for you know for this kind of serious company We still want to have fun whether it's pajama day Bring your pet to work day not not out in the field But does your staff influencer help with that? Absolutely does it all and and this is what it is tom it's revving them up and the staff influencer also Is going to be taking over our social media now And we've also realized we're really really bad at social media Meaning robin and i we've tried to post pictures Who wants to look at the cleaning company, right? What what what do you got to say, you know Maybe a funny pun here or there, but the idea is we've started to use that influencer To take all that good in-house content the photos the family dinners the little dancing that's happening We'll have a few beers at the end of the day on friday They'll have all those pictures But they they used to be sent out over text to people's phones and share like a photo album now it goes on facebook So now on facebook instagram and tiktok. We have our employees finally. We're getting some action On our social pages and it's coming from our own employees who are liking pictures of themselves They're inviting their family members Forwarding sharing and as we all know with our social media You kind of have to start somewhere and you need to get some movement and boy It would be really hard to get customers to say oh wow I saw this really cool article on hardwood floors. Let me send it to 20 people Not really, but if we have somebody doing a fun dance or doing karaoke in the office again back to the office culture People enjoying themselves the staff influencer comes along And sort of curates that that photo album and puts it up on social media And if you go to may brigade of northern westchester county You can you know see from a month ago All of our pictures getting one like to now 17 likes 18 likes 12 shares And that's just in a few weeks now So we've switched our mode of fun communication To share you know staff pictures and we have already signed a little disclosure when they're hired now They understand that their likeness will be used and again that goes back to participation as part of the company If you want great customers, right? You want that high 75 per hour Maid rate you want these good houses that that weekly house. That's $325 that never cancels Come work for us. You're going to have those houses But the expectation is when we post something on facebook You're going to give us a thumbs up a like maybe a comment a share If you see yourself on there you might send it out Because that's how we're going to generate new customers is by our instagram page tiktok videos And we're all responsible for getting customers and again upskilling the the employees Um showing them appreciation with friday dinners having this staff influencer who's Getting people relaxed about you know taking pictures in the office because that was our first thing when we started taking pictures You know nobody wanted their picture associated with the facebook page They don't want to be on the internet. Nobody wants to know you're going to track me. You know this or that we're going really Is is that is that what robin's mission is here? She's sitting here talking about you know Professionalism paid. We don't have we don't have to do paid time off in new york But we do it anyway right because we want to attract great employees um That's that's again if you have second doubts about that if you think we want to see what you're doing on weekends Really, we have the confidence to say go somewhere else. Come on. You know We want we want committed folks here So tell me about you know the the staff influencer a lot of the things you're doing here like the social media you mentioned that It makes you look more attractive to to perspective customers. But how does this help on your recruiting side? Yeah, I mean it's it's huge. So so we join A lot of the local groups in our area our workforce is most mostly It's 100 Hispanic workforce. So when you start joining the facebook pages where the community is really strong on Anything they might need housing Healthcare needs a lot of it is right there up on facebook. So a lot of people looking for work Um Biggest struggle is of course we hire legally like everybody else um But we can shoot a quick Not like everybody else Like a professional company should yes, right right and uh, the the I mean And it's just fun. It kind of goes back to us Yeah, we keep saying that we're not even operating like Oh, why this is good. We have a way. Yeah, right. Yeah, robin Way less for employees. That's crazy and and again back to the kpi's robin sat a strategic meeting a few few months ago and said Oh, yeah about about a year and a half ago right after coveted and said, how are we going to get employees? And you met viviana. She came down to your office for a made central event And and you know, we leaned on her and she started Being dynamic shooting videos posting on local facebook page is saying if you want a good job and you're committed and you're honest Reliable trustworthy blah blah blah blah and you you think these values are yours and you know, you're tired of You know not working at a great place family oriented come on down and and now we have a waitlist on top at all Tom we do on friday mornings. We try and have fun, right? like I said this this friday will be mother's day. We'll you know give out some flowers and You know, it's kind of hard to rev people up at 7 30 in the morning 7 15 in the morning You're going out to clean sometimes, you know One to five seven six houses a day depending on what your status is with with your team It's kind of hard to get Pumped up, right your business model. You have everybody like come into the office every morning. Yeah. Yeah, we do and and With the staff influencer That's why it's kind of important because there's that centerpiece That person who used to kind of be that position used to be an ogre used to be me going Your first house canceled and where are you? You know, where's your paperwork from yesterday? And there's no check from yesterday. That doesn't happen anymore So now we have a person facing the staff going. Hey everybody, let's get a conga line going Let's get and and I I sent you a couple of videos there in pictures And it it's amazing and to me the biggest compliment I have in the last two fridays two separate employees Breakfast for the entire staff and including me and I'm like, you know, I'm really touched by that That's incredible that you're going to go out cleaning for the day and you just brought in 35 papuces or tamales for the entire office that you went home Thursday night and the culture now is one of Cool, who's gonna, you know, is somebody gonna show up and Viviana who you met people come to her and like could I bring in, you know, my home cook recipe from Name your country and she's like I dare you to, you know, and she's like and and and I feel like years ago We were a company that somebody might be made fun of for doing that or or whatever But when you start hitting On these culture things and start having this culture you start getting a wait list and when you get a wait list you start getting this kind of cool vibe of of On our quality cards that come back every day Made central and again, we tie we were working with Aja from made central with a learning person so we can see what we're deficient on with our quality cards And where we're hitting where we need to work. So if we start hearing floors are a problem We can dial up videos on floor maintenance and make sure, you know, you're you're mopping checking and stuff like that so Taking when you're back to the kpis and looking at the data And we're seeing in real time in heartford and in white planes where we need to work And robin's just asking about her dream manager program Viviana who you met she's also our dream manager tom. So all of our staff have access to Meet with Viviana our dream manager. We rolled this program out. It's a book from thomas kelly. I believe his name from a couple years ago and We rolled the program out and nobody signed up for it We started working on our company culture Getting the employees involved and in in what our aim mission and purposes as a company And we rolled out our dream manager program this year and we had 22 people sign up for it And in short dream manager is just somebody for you at work to talk to Um about your life goals your dreams and what you want matthew kelly ron. It's got it there So this is a resource and talk about employee retention So our staff will have these sessions with viviana who's just a great person and she's so on board with this where she'll listen to folks and One of the outcomes of our dream manager program was a lot of staff said i really want to start saving money And i want to be able to put something away for my kids college And i'm not able to save money and i don't know how to do it. So we you know worked with paychecks and we set up a retirement program So the whole thing is a 401k that that's that's in there now that that and and staff are fine We're and again We're doing all the stuff. I don't want to sound like oh just open up the wallet Right now we're not contributing and nobody asked us to what they asked was Is there a place I can put And again when you're making 75 when you're working in houses and we're charging 75 dollars per may per hour You're making enough where you can squirrel away 75 100 bucks a week, right? And if you're 24 years old like we all knew Start doing it early And and the dream manager is something where you know A deep bond happens between our dream manager and the employees where I don't know of another cleaning company that people are going to walk into and say oh wow We have these fun friday dinners In the morning somebody might show up with uh, you know something to eat Kind of Jen our staff influencers taking pictures getting people all like whipped up stirred up smiling laughing They're watching these videos about smiling And and then you have this like dream manager program where you know You you hear some stuff, you know, I don't but I know viv comes out and goes wow There's you know, she has a lot going on in life She has a lot and she just unloaded on me and you know, I think I you know Guided her the right way and I was like well is this like So so let me let me see if I can kind of piece this together. Obviously you're you're creating Good jobs. You're you're paying. Well, you've got you know benefits all the stuff that a professional employer would do But you're building a culture that makes people feel valued giving them, you know, Liz will call it matter meaning and measure Yeah, um, you're providing training not only training but training that is actually entertaining that people will be motivated To participate in and a lot of the training really doesn't even have anything to do about removing dirt from a surface It's about soft skills and people skills that will help you in all facets your life for for the rest of your life and then kind of rolling it all up and You know, none of us should be living to work. We should be working to live So what is it that we're really hoping to do with our lives and right? I was like, that's what you're doing with them Yeah, yeah We didn't need an hour. You could have just said that from the beginning Oh, but but this is uh kind of a roadmap if you will to You know, not only how to how to build a professional business and scale a business and you know create awesome jobs Provide awesome service and you know build a great company You're doing a lot of good it for for a lot of stakeholders, you know, basically That's uh, that's why we should all be getting up in the morning, right? Yeah when and you know what I'll tell you this You know doing it over the years It makes it so much more fun to go in the office When you walk in and there's you know You see that there's a case of corona laid out for later in the day and You know music's going and people have and I'm sitting here going at 7 25 in the morning Why is somebody dancing? You know, why is there a conga line? I was like, I'm trying to you know Whatever and I go, you know, this is really awesome. And then when I see somebody Bring in, you know food. I'm going you you cooked for you know, 30 people You know, let us you know help with that and it would it's it's almost an insult, you know That you would uh do that. I'm going wow this is this is something, you know, this is uh something very special and When you said, you know, then you sit there you go, wow I wonder why the you know the quality cards are coming back so You know high and there hasn't been a complaint in so long. There's a pride. There's a spree decor You know in the organization where you know, I hate to say, you know They remember the old story, you know, the the nasa guy who's cleaning the the bathrooms and you know He's mopping the floor and they say to him. Hey, what are you doing? I'm putting a guy on the moon, right? Because my job's important I'm mopping the floor That's kind of what we're we're we're getting to and and when you're when and and that it like you said, tom That's professionalizing the industry when when you have folks walking tall and and feeling good about where they work and And when you have a line out the door, you're like waiting to you know, we're on our sales people now like hey Let's get going, you know, we're you know, robin has a mandate to Ramp up because we have big plans which we'll be on the next show for in the fall Okay, so you know, I know that you know, you have There's people watching this that are gonna be looking at these videos for instance and going that's really cool I would love to be able to share some of that information with within my business. Are you guys In a position where where you could do that we are I mean for right now the easiest thing to do is if you could drop robin's email in uh in uh Comments anybody can reach out to her And I mean the way it's it's it's the easiest thing in the world to do You send text out, you know, you provide your employees text numbers and You know, we send them these videos We even have a playbook on how to make it fun with the raffles in both english and spanish All the videos are in english and spanish and again ranging from hard skills teaching basic cleaning Nothing is branded. So you won't see a logo on them And it's a mix of people and the the best part about these videos I'll say is they're uplifting tom. It's it's not it's it's the carrot not the stick Sure, it's not here's not what to do. It's not, you know, don't be a Let's up skill. Let's let's let's bring up and and that was another need that we saw where there were other videos out there of you know Don't do this don't do that. Basically, you know talking down to people It's like how is training going to work that way when you say, you know, oh, you're a slab You you ate in the customer's home and left crumbs. That's disgusting But that's that's not training. That's that's going to put, you know, put people off We want to talk about, you know, we're not higher, you know, we're we're going to bring in folks with a different mindset and Uh, and it's a it's it's a lot of fun Well, an hour goes by fast gary the hour I dropped robin's email is robin at maverick maverick.cleaning robin and I was I thought she might get back home and come through I can't work it that door there and You know, well, well, but maybe not um the uh The yeah anybody interested in training and or even any of the things that we talk about I mean, this is a community when when you know, I think you guys like bruce vance Right as as as folks, uh, you know, we we I think we need to we we started We have to start being the next generation of of people like him that are so, you know, just just You just know when you talk to him. He's seen everything He's seen a lot for sure and you know Robin sent to you something like a bio or something and I said, you know, you know, she's like, you know, he's a Super fan of bruce vance But the community needs that and it needs more people sharing and and saying, you know I think we have that but it only gets better when and and lifting up the employees because that's that's who Uh, you know, it's the next part is is is elevating them Well, dairy you and robin and your entire team You're doing important work at a lot of levels and you know, I appreciate it From a you know professionalized the industry standpoint. I appreciate you You know sharing this with it with our audience today and You know, I encourage people to reach out to robin at neighborhood dot cleaning and Get a little more information and you think in the fall, maybe you'll have some of this rolled up in a way where Oh, this this will be rolled up a lot sooner than that. We have something bigger Uh Yeah, we have It's robin and I got something I come september. You're gonna be like, holy actually come come july. We have something that's like whatever electrolyzed water electrostatic spraying company culture And then the next step is are It's gonna be good. You're gonna, you know, and it's bigger than than subscription pricing It's it's it's you're gonna love it. We're we're gonna I gotta stay quiet on it Just let me yeah, we've said enough for the moment, but when you guys are ready to To to share that please. Yeah, you'd be the first we'll come on. It's gonna be good. It's gonna be big We'll we'll have you back In the interim though, we're gonna have to call it a wrap for today. It is the top of the hour a couple minutes past Gary, thank you so much for for being here Tom. Thanks And we'll be back next wednesday five o'clock easter till then everybody take care