 Hey, good afternoon everybody time Stuart here. I'm with Liz Trotter our guests today are Troy night Alvin Gehrig and Holiday and our special guest today is Lily Lima, and this is smart business moves Wow, we have full house today Yeah You know all here. I Can just kick back and don't have to work I forgot to make my popcorn I'm still trying to clean mine out of my teeth. So sorry So Lily and Ajah and I were on a live stream a couple of hours ago We were talking about the ISSA residential regional event the association formerly known as ARC si That was going to be in Rockville, Maryland and Lily is going to be hosting that and that is going to be April 9 which is not that long away far away But the other part that we didn't talk much about but we want to really spend a little more time on is this really fun Thing that we're going to be doing after the made central live event, which is going to be April 10 11 and 12 That's a Wednesday Thursday Friday And Liliana is going to be so gracious that she's going to be hosting us in that event as well So we're going to spend a week with Lilian in Washington DC. I keep saying Washington. Is that okay? I mean right Do you guys kind of try to play the the Washington DC part down at something that you don't want people to know about Yeah, what why what's wrong with Washington DC? I don't know The webinar the webinar that we did earlier Said hey, it's cherry blossom time and the custom conversation You know wit and the direction of all the pollen in the air and all of the drugs they have to take to keep It's like you guys realize that this really isn't making this sound very much fine. Come on now I'm excited to go to DC. I'm really excited The most I've been in DC was flying through from one of our other live events in Charleston and that was that was it I had a two-hour layover there Another event she had a what a month or so back Lily and it's gonna be awesome. So, you know, the space is great Her staff is great Her office is great. You'll be able to take you on a tour of that and so, you know Even if you don't make it into DC, there's still a lot to see right there at Lily's Lily's I'm sad. I really wanted to go to this one It's never too late, Liz We might be able to squeeze you in I can't Sorry y'all Sorry y'all. I wish I could I wish I could so what are you gonna do? Tell us about Before we jump into that I want to like let Lily tell us a little bit about herself How she got into the house cleaning business a little bit about her company and Um, kind of like kind of the story. I mean, we all know you because you've been part of Arccy now known as isa residential for a long time, but uh, how did you get into the house cleaning business? Um Well, I used to clean houses before I still do right so in other ways Organizing and managing schedule. So yes, I'm involved on that but back then I used to clean house homes and I literally went on my computer and said, how can I grow a cleaning business and We show up on google um ARCSI convention on the following week on florida. Guess what I was flying to florida The very next week got someone to clean my homes And that's where everything started. That was back in 2007 And then that's what I met Lesora and everybody else The industry started learning from everyone and then I I love The community and I had grown a lot. I was part of foundations for a couple of times That's what I discovered about culture and then a lot of things that I do at my company with culture That's what I learned if it was So, um, even the main money list remember I love that I did so much stuff at my company with that So it's like it was like, uh, it's small steps and really I built the business That's my needs So I I don't spend much time in my business at all. Sometimes I am one two months in brazil So it really It fit me up learning so many things, but I love to be part of the events I'm always traveling and this is like my mini vacations So I have a great staff that helps me here in the office We have a very lean, um office Just two people Help us here and then we have another one VA and then I have an assistant and that's about it I come here like twice a week. I like to come here because I stay I I work a lot from home But sometimes I'm boring and then just five minutes from here like I come to I like I like to say hi And we can order pizza and you know and talk about it But it's it's really I owe a lot to to artsy and foundations and and tbf and I have been learning a lot through the years Yeah, so Yeah, so it's great. Yeah, and and really how many people wouldn't love to be able to say yeah I go to work just because I'm bored Because we have so much We need to get out on uh, we need to get on a meeting. That's everybody jumps on zoom Right and then we I can see from home where we are how much money we are making You know, I'm brazil. I can answer the phone from there if I need to talk to someone Right, I can see who was working who's not and then back in december. We joined made central so I was really worried about that but Troy was like Troy I'm so afraid because I have been so long with another software And then he was like just think about it like if you are jumping like I'm not cold swimming pool like on wintertime and then You're gonna freeze right and then it's going to start feeling. Okay, so We are in the process that everybody's like, oh, we are not that right So I got going and my team it's like um, they really are seeing the benefits already So I think that's a another Another part now of us that's gonna grow And you know, I was happy until now where we were all these all these years And then I think now with the system we have we are ready to grow more. So Yeah, but we have a cool office. We have um Um, Troy you saw here, right? Oh, yeah her her office is unbelievable It's cool. It's nice. We love to get people over And it's like a it's a welcoming place Not that large office These days we believe that we don't need that anymore to be paying for those square footage that we don't need it But it's very functional every we use every inch that we have So But it's nice at least you have to come over I'm gonna see so much of you here, you know I know I'm like, can you can you walk like through with the phone? I want to see your office Well, well if she walks through at the phone when she shows you her Supply room where all of her supplies. It is the most organized place. I have ever seen I mean the container everything's got a label everything's tagged Everything is just total organization. No chaos at all. That's impressive. Do you use orca scan lily? uh, no, I use um Uh shortly shortly Yeah, I don't know that one So every time I see really good office, you know supply areas, they're always with Um work. Uh, yeah, so let me so i'm gonna look up this other one I I like that one. Um Is send us messages when we need to refill something You know to water stuff Yeah, and you can just go there and scan And add things and or subtract items from the from the supply area, but yeah, I'm I like Very neat and organize it my brain won't function if I have I just organize it often so Weird that you own a cleaning service that that makes no sense at all I don't know why you would have those personality traits. I had to stop to clean right because I was too perfect All the organizing and now you do One fun fact about it is like a one day I was clean and I was a full-time housekeeper for this family in dc and they came and said hey Lily, uh, you are very smart very intelligent Just to be our housekeeper you have to do something else of your life You have to go to school and you know, but I had no really I didn't have any money to go to school I actually tried but I was like, uh I like to clean houses better than money's like, you know, yeah Come in faster. So that's how I started my it's like, oh really? So can I ask the neighbors if I can clean their homes? Yes, go for it The sky is the limit you got to America with no English You know and then look where you are and then you can do anything Believe in yourself. So that's what I did. So It's their fault So what came to the United States? You didn't speak English at all. Well, very basic Wow, very basic because back there we Um, we go to school to learn English, right? But when we get here We find out that we don't know anything Right. It's not the same Is a shock. Yeah, after six months. That's when I started like, oh It's sinking in you know what I mean? Yeah, so yeah So I came as an au pair and after the program I started cleaning homes So and then started working for this family and then we still have her as a client After 22 years. So she was the first client of the skilled mates So my office better knows her name because when she calls here Oh, who is this like excuse me You better know me Like leaving the americans Well, we we look forward to spending the week with you here in a few weeks And while we're there Liz, we'll do a live stream and we'll take you a tour. We'll show you the supply room That'd be awesome. Oh, well spell the name of your Your supply management lily. What is it shortly shortly? Uh-huh sh o r t l y Yes, uh-huh. It's just too easy. All right Like you're gonna get it shortly you can get it you're gonna get it shortly. I don't know What are the phrases you shortly? Yeah, nothing. Yeah, I really yeah, I'll be there shortly Yeah, that was good. All right. I mean, yeah Your stuff will be there shortly. Yeah, same thing Unless you live in olympia and then you got three at least three days Okay Ah, all right So for those who don't know Troy alvin and azia and I all are on the uh made central team, you know, if you've ever Done a a demo or made central you've probably no Troy. You've met Troy there Alvin leads our support team So if you're using made central and need help alvin and his team are the ones who who make that happen And azia has worn a bunch of hats. She's uh got a diverse set of skills, but she's recently Moved into a role that is focusing on Training and education which is really going to be important for made central moving forward Um We do a lot and We we just feel we know we know for a fact that you know, there's The more people understand about professional management practices and all the things that you can do in your cleaning business Not just to Book a job clean a house and throw some money in the bank and keep your fingers crossed that You know it all works out But also using all of the data that you can collect to professionally manage your business that You can do a lot more. You can go beyond cleaning homes to to actually, you know Making things happen in your business that that that you wanted to do to create value I was just going to Be leading that effort for us and I really say for the industry in terms of helping us all improve The outcomes that we're getting in our business Which kind of gets us to the thing that we're going to be doing at lily's office The 10th 11th and 12th in april we're going to be doing an event that's called made central live We'll go back and check. You know, this is the 10th time. We've done this event Wow Dang No, we got it down. We can do it with it. We can do it in our sleep now, right? Our eyes closed one hand behind us. I think it changes every time so I at least need one eye Yeah And it's it's different now. It's longer. It's three days now for people who came in the beginning Why don't you talk a little bit about how things have changed and why it might be a value to people that came like to the first or the second one Yeah, I can definitely speak a little bit to that. Um, I Usually say like we've never actually done this event two times in a row Or twice ever before because it changes every single time we do this we do Something different. Um, we take the feedback into it. So originally it was a two-day event It was held at the castle keeper's office. Um, which was kind of cool But it also it was very interesting because it was shortly after You know, COVID had really changed a lot of how cleaning businesses were run And so it was kind of this hybrid of How things used to be run and how things are run now And so it was really interesting to kind of bring people forward into How you can run business how you can use made central to run your business now um really going into The details about made central um with made central partners and then over time we realized that you know, we're really talking a lot about Just business operations in general. Yes made central is here to make a lot of those operations Easier or even do some of them for you, but this is also useful for anybody in the cleaning industry And so we started to invite other people that weren't just partners and then the more we invited some of those the more Feedback we got we need more time. We need more days. We need more workshops. We need more hands-on learning time. And so We did our first road show event in october and that was a two-day event That was our last two-day event and that was the biggest one that we realized Okay, if we're really going to take this one on the road, we're going to get a lot of different types of people And companies not just made central partners attending these events We're absolutely going to need that extra day. So we did our first three-day event in January this year in phoenix and that was lovely. That was our first time doing three days and We all left that one being like yep. We needed that third day. That was the right decision to make that feels really great Let's do it again in three months So we've been adding to it every time now we have a lot more workshops where every session every major session that we do we have um A portion of it broken out to get into the system whether you're a made central partner or not We give people who aren't partners access to a test environment to try things out themselves and kind of get an idea of What data or information we're using and maybe how to apply it to how they're running their businesses or Helping them make this the decision if it's time for a new software for them to really get the information that they need to make these valuable changes that We're talking about at the live events So it sounds like you guys are really pushy Oh, yeah, so pushy I have to bring that up because whenever you go to somebody's event Everybody's afraid that they're just going to be pushed and sold and it's just going to be a whole big selling event Um, but I mean speak speak. Yeah, I can I can touch you Actually, lily might be able to speak on that a little bit too because she was the prospect that came to a live event I just went as a curiosity to learn about it and then they're not pushy so everybody that Comes and it's not a member yet they are not but they're gonna Involve you so much on everything that the software is about and even if I did not sign in for for the program I brought so much information home. It was like a It's like so many things that I could come and improve so it's really priceless just the information it's like a diving Totally so I love that and then they didn't push it Yeah, um, right, but now yeah, watch out. I'm gonna be making sure that everyone's like now She's like they won't push you but I will be prepared Did you know I think that's a good point you bring up the lives because A lot of a lot of folks think about made central and think about a software, you know and a Program to schedule jobs and put teams on jobs in voice, you know A lot of companies a lot of software can do that But I think azia and her being in this new role really speaks a lot to what we're trying to do as far as A company and that is be a resource to people if they're using made central or not because um I talked to a lot of different cleaning companies, you know and I share made central with them and really The approach is more of a conversation and if it's right, it's going to work and if it's not right Well, maybe one day it will you know and um, there's a lot of things you can take away I believe from from these events a lot of resources we have And if you're a partner or not, we just want people to use us as a resource and let's help them grow their business And when the time is right if if made central is their solution We're going to be there, but if not we're still there to help them grow their business and become more profitable But the idea is that The What you what you're teaching and what you're helping people with these ideas are always right It's not that these ideas aren't right made central. You might not be ready for made central today But you need to be ready for these ideas today, right? Because I think it's those ideas and I think it's what even um You know aji was talking about When she Went to the first mca event we had in charleston and how how you used to do run a cleaning company How you're running a cleaning company now things you need to change um You know technology is changing the industry is changing. We want you to stay up with those changes You know earlier tom even mentioned how Uh, you used to schedule jobs and clean homes and at the end of the day kind of cross your fingers And hope there is enough money left over for the owner Um, you know, you don't have to live in the world of just hoping that there's money left over You know, there's things you can do. There's there's tools we have um Here here's an example of what we do at one of the events if I can share real quick. Um I can share something here We have you know a lot of a lot of a lot of information. We have a lot of Calculators, um We have you know a core kpi calculator. Are you you're not sure are you trying to share your screen? Yeah, I thought I had it shared there. Let me see if I've got uh Um Let's see here. This is the stuff that you're talking about right troi where um, whether you're using may central or not This is the the how to do the things With the these other tools the calculator So you get the tools that you can still do everything. Yeah. Yeah, you're you're you're going to So can you see this now tom? Yeah So, you know for an example like anyone if you're a made central partner or not You can go to core kpi dot made central dot com We have several calculators One of the things we're going to do is is as part of mca live you're going to look at a lot of core kpis We're going to show you And talk to you about the ones you want to increase those one numbers you want to get bigger the ones you want to drive down And really what we're trying to do is focus on profit, you know, what's your current plan? What could your new plan be? What could that profit look like? um One of the things that we really really I feel are passionate about Is shifting that mindset to a profit based Mindset when it comes to running a business, you know Many of us can remember um Used to go and you would have meetings and meet with business owners and it would be around how many clients do you have? Oh, I've got x number of clients And then as you mature and your business and the business is mature the conversation shifts to You know, how much revenue do you have? Oh, i'm a million dollar cleaning company, you know Well, the next step in that evolution we believe is around profit And uh, you know, that's that's one of the things we're we're focused on is Using that data using that information to be more profitable So in this quick example, you know, you can look at how many homes you have how many cleanings you have per month your bill rates um And one of the things business owners are a little hesitant to do is raise prices or increase rates Well, you know in this example just real quick if we were to increase rates I don't know five percent You know, we can generate an extra 500 dollars in gross profit now If if we're already profitable and all of our fixed expenses are covered and You know, we're paying a loud hours or hourly rate, you know, that's going to drop right to the bottom line So we could go for a thousand dollar That profit a month to 500 if we if we raise those rates a little Um, but then people are scared right list, you know, oh, what's going to happen? I'm going to lose clients. Well, we have calculator here that, you know, what if you lost Five percent of your homes when you raise those prices, you know, you're still going to see an increase in in in gross profit and again It's being able to see this and being able to to have examples and being able to forecast and predict So that we one make the best decisions and it's two that that we can drive that profit because We can clean a lot of homes and not make any money and and that's really not what we want And what you're showing is here is a free tool available to anybody who wants to sign up for it Yeah, you know, you you just go to uh, you know, here's a here's a here's our website If you go to the magcentral.com website, there's a link you can sign up But you create an account and you have access that you can run your own analysis your own what ifs increasing customer rates or You know, if you have a 50% payroll to revenue and if you can Just increase that five percent get that down to 45. You can see how much extra Gross profit you're able to have and then if you have a lot of, you know KPIs and you're tracking a lot of data, you know, there's other Other tools here that other calculators that you can use and you know, we're we're doing this because we really want people to We want we want other business owners to really start focusing on profits, you know, how can you make more money? And uh Get paid what you should as a business owner. We take a lot of risk. We put in a lot of hours and You know, we also need to do that so we can sustain our businesses things get more competitive and um So really we're we have a software We generate a lot of data And we wanted to help business owners use that data whether they're on base central or not to make more money All right, so to be clear Anybody can go to core kpi dot magcentral.com. Do they have to put a credit card in there? To be able to get out know what they what they do is they just create an account They they enter their their email they create a password and then they have access to to a dashboard um That they're going to be able to use our growth forecasting tool They're going to be able to look at the the rate increases the payroll lower payroll to revenue lower customer turnover And uh, you know, it's no cost, you know, it's it's free tool and uh What we would really like is is business owners just to Use it see how they can use it um And and try to drive improvement in their company And there are other tools that we're adding to that in the next week or two We're going to have a tool that will show you how to do the math to a transition from Hourly pay to some type of performance pay system People always want to know well what percentage do I pay or how much do I pay per per allowed hour? Well, we've got a tool that that'll be going in there that will show you how to do the math It'll do it for you basically That's awesome. Oh my gosh, that's gonna be so valuable So one of my favorite things about those tools too is just like the profit planning tool has What is it five or six kpis on there troy? Yeah, there's there's like five kpis on on and then so you can start with that You know, if you really haven't been tracking your kpis before that's a really good place to start You know, you can look at those five or six Um start seeing what improvements on those numbers would look like and when you get into the groove of it You can kind of move forward to some of the other tools like the growth comparison or the growth forecaster Which uses all 12 of our core kpis um And it takes a little bit more work, but you know, once you get into the habit of it adding a couple of kpis You know over time can be helpful, but I think it's really cool. You can use it at any level You can use the profit planning tool You know when you're able to just start dipping your toes into some professional management processes Um, and then when you really, you know figure out how to get some some strategic planning going for yourselves And you're like, all right, we feel good about these ones. What else can we do? Oh, look, there's two more tools you can use and by then there might even be more than that because we We're still adding to it. So um, there's a lot of really cool things and I really love that that core kpis site One of the things I really love about what you guys are doing right now is You're doing this thing really really differently You're trying to teach people help people support people as they build real businesses Everybody else is helping them build cleaning businesses And and that's it. That's a different thing, right? We're not talking about just cleaning some stuff. We're talking about skills To teach you how to run a true business those skills transfer y'all Those skills go everywhere Saguering into transferable skills I think a great opportunity is also meeting people who aren't necessarily Cleaning business owners aren't necessarily business owners as a whole Where you have people like me who I've never ran a business. I don't really have a major interest in running a business I come from a strictly kind of technical background I used to be a welder and I didn't want to do that So I went back to school and I've grown up around computers and a big part of what I get to do at Made Central Academy is teach people about technology I am just absolutely I get to spend all of my day Doing what I love and that's sitting behind a computer screen And I get to research all of the cool new things coming out and I get to fill people in on those So I know you guys are busy running businesses and you guys are have employees. I don't have those things I get to sit and read all the articles on the new ai updates And I get to understand coding and how software works a little bit better And I get to bring in kind of my knowledge from the outside of technology And teach you guys how to utilize it inside your business And I can give some examples of that that even you guys can take away today and you can use to Update your emails even um save time on document writing maybe training processes We talk about we're doing a lot of updating on training I'm not just hand writing, you know, 10 000 word documents on training I'm using artificial intelligence to help me put outlines out there and then I'm filling in the blanks with my knowledge so big things to utilize here when you're utilizing ai is um Everyone will probably tell you the hardest thing to do is start a project and Starting is always the hardest thing. Where do I start? What is this going to look like? Now, I think chat gpt Google Gemini formerly known as bard There's a ton of different ai out there that you can use and you should be using these things as starting points And I talk heavily about this and love to talk about these things to a point where you can have You know, I don't know html I don't I'm not a software programmer or a programmer, but I can have chat gpt build me html forms for my email And just the simple typing of things Um with some examples here Let me are you going to are you going to share your screen? Yeah So, um, let me make sure I have everything set up here You know by alvin's pulling that up one one of the things we also Are doing and oftentimes I think It may be a little fearful, but we're talking about technology and we're talking about data and we're talking about You know html and and and ai and things like that and You know The reason we're doing that it's not to scare folks But it's really just to help people learn that There's a lot out there and there's a lot of resources out there and and if we can help provide those That's what we what we want to do and uh You know alvin's got some pretty cool stuff here. He's he's going to show us so um This obviously gets really deep and i'm not going to I could of course have my own little podcast about this stuff I'm sure but that's a topic for a different day. Um, I just want to talk about html and typical forms that you see Whether it be in emails the forms that you're being sent the forms that are you're sending whether it be emails texts um Anything so campaigns that you're running most of those campaigns are running off of a standard form that you see at the bottom here, which is an html form that just runs off of a specific type of code and You can have absolutely no knowledge of this and you don't need to have any of knowledge of this to utilize these forms In more of a aspect than what you see here adding images inserting emojis stuff like this is all very simple stuff that most of us know from just using our phones We can utilize um chat gpt to build layers We can utilize chat gpt to improve the visual aspects by just letting it know what we want So I can ask chat gpt and and simple things like I just want an html form that has check boxes I can ask chat gpt to build me I need a 16 checklist Format and html and it's just going to easily spit that out. I can copy that I can copy it once it's done I can insert it into my template or any template and this is not just going to work in made central These are going to work in gmail. These are going to work in google docs These are going to work in microsoft word this extends so far Where I've now just built a checklist I've had a I start me off and then now I can edit these things. I want this to be you know clean x or clean y This is just the basics I'm going to input kind of a more difficult prompt and what I'm going to say is Maybe I need a scorecard. I really want to start monitoring how my customers feel about our cleans And I have no idea, but I want it to be pretty Um, I can give it some of my branding for example I'm going to let it know that I run a cleaning business and my branding is a plus cleaning Um, I want to build a scorecard that gives us ratings from a plus to f because we're a plus cleaning No different than the american school system grades papers Um, and I want each of these things to be in their own cells And and I want it to be a rainbow scheme from top to bottom And then at the end I'm going to let it know I want this to be an html I have not done anything complex. I'm essentially asking questions something that most people here probably could ask me Hey, just let this is what I want it to look like. This is what I want it to be. This is my branding I've even added a nice little At the top throw on a quirky fun school bus pun for me So jim so hopefully chat gbt Something fun for me and it's going to say yeah, no problem and it's going to spit out this giant piece of html I don't even need to know what this means what this doing all I need to know Is that I can come to the top once it's done generating Which need to give it a second here. I can copy this code And again on any html form. This is not just in made central There will be source codes in which I can take that source code and paste it I just accidentally copied though Save it and it's going to give me this beautifully beginning area where it's now created cells It's now give me my color formatting building this or or Having someone to teach you to build this is hours and hours of work knowing how to create breaks Knowing how to divide class headers. You don't have to do any of this anymore. You can just tell chat gbt This is what I want and say we don't like something. Oh, I don't like the color scale Can we remove the rainbow colors scale? And chat you would see of course and then I can just copy this in paste We can build email headers email footers. You can build Um, you can have chat gbt pre-build you templates pre-build you word documents. Maybe I have you know, um a six topic Discussion over cleaning businesses Can you outline A document for me and then I'm going to start off on this document I'm going to paste it to my word document and I'm going to remove and change what I don't like so I think The main topic here is there's so much that can be done out technology And you guys maybe are missing this because you guys are busy running cleaning industries And I'm sitting in the background learning this so I think at made central live There's also office staff. I think tom has office staff lily I bet lily has office staff that has done things in made central That they can share with you as business owners or your office staff as well And it just is this great expansive knowledge base of not just business owners But there's tech savvy people and there's super friendly people and there's customer service people So there's just a ton you can do and a ton you can learn. I think from Going to these events with just a ton of different people. That's what I've taken away from it I was like, I know nothing about the cleaning industry. I still feel like I don't but I do still feel like There's so much value that can be provided from third party sources You know more than you're giving yourself credit for but the point is we're going to spend time In dc when we're doing this in april and you're going to show us more neat tricks like this and How to use it in made central or how to use it in google forms or whatever, you know platform you're using it It's transcends the tech stack. They're like exactly. Yeah That is cool It's it's a shame that you don't Aren't able to like generate any passion for what you do Really need to find something you enjoy doing Yes You look so excited. I'm like, oh man, this is I this is all my wheelhouse. I love getting to do this stuff I am You know, I've had a computer in both of my parents are software engineers I've had computers in my hand since the day I was born pretty much So I just thrive on this sort of stuff Yeah, opposite of me opposite. I I need one of you like right sitting right next to me Like a little the little clip the little paper clip from the word documents. That's a little mini alvin Clippy a little alvin clippy over there But truly the point is with with the ai tools that are out there. It's really Oh in your own hands at this point It doesn't take a whole lot to learn how to do what alvin just showed us And that's just the surface it goes all the way into ai sales or ai customer support on your websites. These things are no longer Unreachable or you don't need an expert anymore to dive into these topics You can you can have chat gpt build you a website now You don't have to find some specific developer to build an element that matches your branding It's just so powerful And it also gives you like I mean we're in the instant gratification era so being able to Have a have an idea pop up in your mind at you know eight o'clock at night and sure you could send off a A message to your developer or you could start throwing some things at chat gpt and getting it started on your own Like I think that's really cool. It gives us a lot of freedom to like learn new skills But also we're also just like refining our ability to communicate with people who do have those skills So sometimes it's hard to make that translation from you know, what you're doing in an operational side to what somebody's doing for you on a technical side and making that that communication Match up can be really difficult and I think beyond even just like You know the next step towards that of how do I communicate this to somebody who understands what this means? And I just know what I want it to look like Or you know kind of some base elements of it. How do I communicate this with somebody who is really technologically advanced and knows what they're doing but Means to see my vision in some way like this gives you that stepping stone to really help solidify a really cool visual or working working format in your in your messaging Ajo you want to uh take a moment maybe and share something else we'll be doing Yeah Yeah, so I I talk a lot at mca live So it's been very interesting to get you know almost all the way through this the smart business moves and not have to Talk about too much yet. So this is really funny. But mca lives are always um, I have a lot of different sessions that I like to do my favorite one is on Production planning and scheduling it's scheduling dispatch and production planning longest title of any of our sessions But it needs to be it's covering a lot of things, but that's something that i'm really passionate about um A little background for me I worked in a residential cleaning service for a while and the last thing that I gave up when I was leaving that company was Scheduling because I love it so much. Um, I'm very passionate about it and something that I like to talk about in our live events that I think kind of Changes the dynamic a little bit. I see it every time that we start to talk about it Um is consistency and I know that that word gets thrown around all the time um as Uh Something that people are trying to obtain But they don't really know why sometimes for a lot of people a lot of business owners when they hear consistency they think about the customer they think about um, you know We want consistency so our customer has the same quality has the same person so our customers are happy So they give us good feedback like it's for the customer side And I really like to bring up the point that honestly the biggest The biggest thing about consistency is for your technicians more than anything on um, your technicians really crave it. I Our working force right now, uh, just kind of a funny thing Our millennials or gen z and we are an anxious group of generations So the more that we get high alvin and I both over here like hello anxiety has entered the chat um, so A lot of our employees and technicians and cleaning technicians are also Really high anxiety. It's just a generational thing at this point And the more that they can kind of predict their days Um build relationship with their clients get to know their pets their families their routines and stuff like that The better they are at their job. Um and the more they like their job and When you really focus on your technicians and allow them space to focus on your cost customers You don't have to communicate with your customers nearly as much anymore. There's a lot less complaints There's a lot less, you know needing to go over their technician's head because they've built a relationship with them and this comes into the scheduling side because Sometimes the first thing that goes out the window when things get Tough or if you're you know using les terms if you're in a whirlwind One of the first things that kind of goes out the window is that consistency It's just oh, we just got to get it on there. We got to get it here We got to we got to move things around and we got to make it work And when you kind of remove that priority from your brain, you're actually shooting yourself in the foot of it Um, if you leave that if consistency is your top priority Whether you advertise it or not Your customers crave it your technicians Absolutely need it and your service will be better just by having it There's a lot of really positive benefits that you can get from having Consistency as your top priority when you're in whirlwind mode When you are feeling like things are tough and crunchy and there's a lot more Room for error that we just do as humans The more that we really pay attention to the things that we can control and keeping the same technician seeing the same home As long as that technician is available and never Removing that spot it kind of makes those decision making that decision easier to make If you reduce the amount of options that you have to fix that solution The options that are left over are the are the options that actually get you the best results. So, um That's that's one of my one of the topics that I like to talk about but scheduling I really bring that together with mapping um, how to get from point a to point b And make sure that anybody can do scheduling without knowing your service area. That's a huge one Sales people are sometimes our highest turnover Office staff they tend to be flighty personalities. So That we see that a lot and having to train somebody new about our our service location but if you really utilize technology and Mapping out your home zones and understanding where your zip codes are located and using technology and colors together You can get a lot of really positive results towards consistency As well as towards efficiency as a secondary layer Um and yeah, I think it's just kind of a mindset shift sometimes in this conversation at the live events is that Efficiency comes up as the as the big thing that we want to talk about scheduling efficiency routing efficiency cleaning efficiency That turns into like that big priority topic and really I think it's consistency that You know brings out the best in our businesses in in also towards efficiency and um, yeah So I I'm always excited to talk about that one. It's my it's my bread and butter topic of conversation for sure So you're whipping out a lot of terms here like consistency and efficiency And I don't know if I heard productivity in there or not, but oh, I don't think I did Did you have could you explain? What what what what are the definitions of of of these things they sound important? yeah, so um Consistency would be In the terms that we use for made central our same team staying the same home You could have consistency in team in schedule In arriving during arrival times, you know times that you said that you were going to arrive where you consistent and actually arriving during that time um, and then also quality consistency Are you able to have consistency from clean to clean technician to technician and having that same level of quality? in the homes that you're servicing um For efficiency, we're looking at how much I mean there's lots of levels of efficiency as well. So we've got From the bottom level. We've got our technician efficiency. How well is their time used? um compared to the time that they're scheduled for so uh, and made central we've got efficiency as a as a calculation of You know, how much time are they in job? Compared to how much time were they on the clock? Um, this changes based off of your team sizes If you have a smaller team size you actually get more efficiency because there's more time in job than there is off job Um, while still being on the clock. We usually see closer to about a 90 efficiency Throwing out some numbers here, but this is what we talk about at the live events too is really going into what these numbers are Um, and then for teams, we usually see about a 70 to 80 efficiency So when you say 90 efficiency another way, I guess would be to look at it if you're a solo or a single team With a 90 efficiency 90 of your day, you're cleaning the other 10 percent's non cleaning not exactly Exactly non productive. Yep. Yeah, if you're in that team with 75 or 80 75 percent of your day you're cleaning versus the other 25 And kind of a simple illustration of this to kind of help people understand that jump Is if you're looking at a single technician cleaning for the day They're going from one house and probably a second house and they usually won't have another house after that So they really only scheduled time that they're not in job is that one drive Now if you have two people on a team those two houses usually turns into about four Is pretty average of what we'll see a team of two cleaning and with four houses That's actually three drives. So you're tripling you triple Right because you're taking that one drive and turning it into three You're tripling the time that they are getting paid But not doing productive work. Um So it's it's very interesting even if you had the same four houses cleaned by the same two technicians But one cleaned alone or they both cleaned alone You'll get the same amount of work completed, but your technicians will work less They will be able to get the same amount of work completed with less hours on the clock So there's just a lot of really cool connections that we can get Um between with with all of these things interacting together Not only will that those two houses if they get cleaned by each single technician alone Um see those same people over time. They'll get faster in it They work less. There's so many really cool things that you can get when you start talking about Um when you start using math weird You know, you you say that and you start scaring people We break it down we break it down to the like the simplest points Yeah, and you know my favorite thing I love math But I also love breaking it down to terms that people can really understand That's kind of my favorite thing to do is Bringing it down to level that you know, it makes sense and Tamika asked here. Are you saying solo cleaning is better? depends on what you're asking better At for product or for efficiency Typically we would probably see yes, um, you know, they're By just base scheduling standards. They are more efficient in scheduling. Um, is it better for quality? Potentially we haven't talked about that one too much, but it could be. Um, is it better at Lots of things there's lots of things we can ask that about so if you've got if you've got customers who Say work in their home or or in the home while you're there and they want you to get in and out as quick as possible It's not better because you're going to get out closer with four people Exactly so there's lots of ways to ask that or to answer that question in terms of efficiency Yes, in terms of what your customers might need Or specific, um, expectations they have from your company in terms of how long they're you're in their home Probably not. Um, they might not be the best option if your customers are expecting them to be in and out really fast So there's there's a balancing act there for sure Well, we, um Will make that easy to digest So I don't let uh, I don't let the math scare you and You know, there's a lot of a lot of wonderful tools out there that that uh help with that too It's more about understanding the concept than it is doing the arithmetic Absolutely You know, we've been at this for almost an hour Time flies Time go Is Liz frozen looking at her phone or is that just me? Oh, she might She does that sometimes so what I want to do is to Let everybody know that if you're interested in joining us up at lily-an's place here on april 10 11 and 12 To really do a deep dive on these topics and and a lot more You can go to made central dot academy for more information and to Sign up. I'll drop the link to that in chat um On the ninth day before that is the regional event in lily-an is also graciously hosting that as well So if you want to spend the week with us, you can uh Sign up for that event and I'll drop the link to that in chat And I guess we did lose Liz dead early and um We're doing foundations starting next week. You're going to be coming into town with us, right aja Yeah, I'll be there on saturday. Yeah, so aja's going to be helping us with this first time This is uh foundations 13. I'm sharing this with you. It's sold out, but I'm pretty sure it's sold out if you really really want to go It's probably too late But check with liz you never know she might pull a rabbit out of her hat. I know that we're also she's also Has uh reserved the mansion for 2025 and she's taking early registrations for that I don't know where the link is but if you're interested Hit uh hit liz up and I just got a instant message from her saying she has no clue what happened So Well, she's okay. Don't worry about her This isn't like the time that she locked herself in the car And we thought we were going to have to call ems because the heat was Getting to her it was so hot. She was in her she was in her car on her phone doing smart business moves It was so hot that her phone overheated and stopped working We were worried about her we were thinking about trying to call ems to come out and break her windows out or something But she was okay. I digress Liz is also doing an event in Corolla, North Carolina beautiful place on the outer banks. This is a foundation scale It's kind of an extension of foundations. This is april 14 through 21 I dropped the link in there too because I do think she said she had Maybe two rooms left the last time I talked to her and they will go So if you're interested, I would not uh, that would not uh procrastinate on that I want to uh, lily and thank you for for joining us. You've done a double duty on your live streams today. Yeah, right? It was fun This is and I can't wait to see everyone here Come two days earlier. Enjoy dc Enjoy the cherry blossom Don't let the pollen scare you it's no big deal I'm so excited. I really hope the cherry blossoms are still there when we when we're there because I'm I really really really want to see that. I'm so excited The calendar is going to be the week Um of the uh made central live That's the week that um, it's a schedule for to be all blooming and busy. So I would come a day earlier just to enjoy I'm getting a little teary. I'm so excited And then we can go for lunch, you know, I can join you guys. So Let me know I'll be available for the whole week Fantastic. Thank you Liz we were worried about you. It was like the time with you. Uh got stuck in the car and got so hot your phone And then I just connected. I have no idea why I disconnected no idea Yeah All that's a good question. We do don has a good question. If you guys have that answer Okay, I am She wants to know the best place to stay. Do you guys have connections yet? We don't have anything. We had a couple of suggestions for the Hilton garden in in rockville and the shared in rockville are both close to the office We don't have any deal group deals with this one At least not right now, but hey, maybe something might change before then but probably not So our suggestions right now are the hilton garden in rockville and the shared in rockville Are the two that we've been suggesting Well, it's going to be in charleston anytime soon I guess it's all relative as to when the soon is i'm sure it will um We're still figuring out our schedule for that for the rest of the year and the honest answer is we we don't know But we know we'll be doing it again and we're going to be doing some smaller Events as well on the road not the full three-day event, but We're going to be uh, we're in chicago In june as part of an arxie regional event We've got a one-day program that we're that we're doing there And uh, we'll probably be doing that one a couple more times this year as well But we'll keep you posted don we'll keep you posted we Might pull off one of those uh in charleston before the end of the year. We just don't know yet We got to make it through april first Very excited to see you next week don yeah, you're going to be at foundations. Are you that's going to be awesome Hey, we are at the top of the hour Liz we're going to be doing foundations next week right And she's frozen That was a softball. I know the answer without her the answer is yes So we will not be doing smart business moves next week But uh, you know Check it check us out. We might uh do a replay from uh from an older one But we'll be back live the following wednesday which will be when 27 At five o'clock a start so then y'all take care talk to you soon. Bye. Bye. See you