 Hey, good afternoon everybody, Tom Stewart here. I'm with Aja Holiday. Our guest today is Brian Morton and this is Made Central Partner Profiles. Welcome, welcome, welcome. First one. Yeah, inaugural, right? Inaugural. Why is it worth so hard to say? You think about it too hard. There's a weird you in there and an R, you know, just difficult. Hey, Tammy. Inaugural. Inaugural. No, it doesn't even sound like a word. Awesome, yeah. So these are our partner profiles, just a little bit of what we're doing here. Our goal is to kind of get with a Made Central Partner and do a little bit of a conversation about your business, how you got into the business, what brought you to Made Central, what kind of challenges you faced. I'll remind you about all of this as we kind of go through a little conversation here, but really just want to talk about you and your business, kind of get to know what really brings people to Made Central and also just like what kind of value you're able to get out of it in the time that you've been with us. So yeah, tell us what brought you to the cleaning industry? How did you get started in this wild, crazy thing? How did you get a lying job? And you can back up before that. What did you do when you had a real job? Yeah, what was your real job? My last real job, I was a realtor. And at night I actually, for years I was a bartender, but at night I used to go and audit bars. So as I was building up my real estate clientele, at night I used to go in and actually physically weigh every bottle in the bar and see how much they used and compare it to their sales and all, so much fun, so much fun. Wow, okay, I never knew they did that. So is that just to make sure that, hey Deney, that you would make sure that they weren't like, just stay with liquor? Essentially we'd tell you what your variance was. There's always gonna be a variance in everything you do and at the end of the day we could look and say you used this much Grey Goose and you sold this much and your bartenders lost you X, Y or Z or under poured and kind of did the opposite. I did the oopsie. It happens a lot, yeah. Yeah, well, then I guess the bar owner wouldn't be too upset about that. Well it's kind of like the maid service owner whose employee might be cutting off a cleaning a little early, you know? It's a get where you pay for a type of situation. Yeah. So you were doing real estate and you were weighing. Real estate up in Boston and then we. Weighing alcohol. To move to Virginia and so in the background of the real estate, my wife and I owned three great clips franchises. Cool. It wasn't cool. Tell me about that. Because I highly not recommend doing anything like that. So imagine running a maid service that all of your employees need a specialty license that takes 18 months or two years to go get. They have to keep up with. Keep up with it. All of that. So it's the hiring process. It's even more difficult than what we deal with it. It's pretty brutal. And very entry level and lots of judgment and yeah. The people that you get in or the kids right out of school and they're 19, 20 years old and yeah, you know, start. Still not sure if that's really the career that they're going for, but they paid a lot of money for it. So they better get a job and do it. We were all too happy to get rid of that. And then we moved down to Virginia and I actually stayed home for about the first six months with my youngest. And my wife knew why I was gonna start another business but we didn't know what. She was lobbying for a bakery. And I was like, there's no way I wanna get up at like 2 a.m. to make the cupcakes every single day. Mind you, like I'm that person that gets up at like two or three in the morning every day now. He really is. After the foundations, I know that about you. Oh yeah, I'm in bed by 8 p.m. and up by three working, you know? But I didn't think a bakery was all that great of an idea. And my wife was like, you wanna do a cleaning service? I was like, listen, I like the idea better than a bakery. And she was like, all right, well, prove it. And then I was like- The challenge accepted. So well, I had no idea what I was doing. So I basically went to Groupon and put the Groupon up and grabbed the, sold and move out cleaning for like 90 bucks that I got paid 44s, whatever. But it was about learning what I was doing and seeing what I was getting into. Grabbed my vacuum from the closet, supplies from underneath the cabinet, paper towels, all the things, when probably spent like 11 hours on this absolute dump of an apartment, made my 40 bucks and yeah, this is what I wanna do. This is where we're going. Yeah, this is it. So, and then, I mean, it was often running at that point. The first year I was looking to get into employees and then finally found some industry help. And that really helped me get going, but then you hit a wall and you're not sure what to do. And that's when Made Central kind of tied everything together for me. It's, I'm able to look at my company and just know right off the bat where we're struggling. And that's, that was the turning point for us. And it's been, I don't know, we really haven't looked back. A couple of years ago, I had a pretty bad knee injury and I had that kind of really led to unhappy employees, people unengaged, people not checked on, all the things. So things went downhill for us. And then basically when I found Made Central, it really allowed me to focus on things like employee engagement and making a better opportunity for the people that come to work for us. And it allowed the scheduling and all of those things to be handled. I hire office people, I train them on the training system Made Central has for them and they're often running. We... When did you start with Made Central? So we started our build-out in November of 22, right? Yeah, live in 2020. Yeah, math is hard. Yep, exactly, especially at 5 p.m. And then, yeah, really went live right at the start of 23 and then since then have been off. But we've done- And you came to the January Made Central live event, correct? Yes, last year. Okay, yeah, last year, yeah. I was a little bit of a rookie for it, but it's still helped me really understand Made Central a lot. I definitely, you wanna go to Made Central live with a couple of months of Made Central under your belt and I didn't do that, but I still learned a ton and I don't regret coming. And there's nice people there. There's wonderful people around me. So- Of course. Yeah, you get to meet us. So I do. So yeah. You've been doing this for less than two years then. Made Central, yes. Oh, okay. Yeah. When did you start your cleaning business though? 2018. Well, it's end of 2017 and really into 2018. I got it, yeah. Okay. End of year six, that's awesome. Yeah, it's on. But like I was saying, Made Central, it was the first thing, I hurt my knee and it was the first thing that gave me control back. I had to learn how to be the owner that wasn't in the field every day. That wasn't the person that ran behind everybody and just took care of everything or put the cherry on top or made sure this was good. I couldn't be that person anymore. And in order for me to really transition into being an owner and growing a company, I needed the tools that Made Central was giving to me. A lot of these things, they were available, I knew about them, but with the workload, you don't have time to sit down and figure all these KPIs where with Made Central, you guys know how easy it is. I hit two buttons and I look at how our week was and I compare it to the week before or the month before and I look at it and I have real-time updates on how my manager is doing with sales and who's missing work, who's not happy. We're able to really look for trends and go problems before their problems. And I think that's- Were you using a software before where you kind of used a lot of things altogether? We were using a software before, but it was also, it wasn't as robust, so we had to use that software with this software and then another software and then it's great to do automations and stuff like that, but when you're forced to automate things that really come in under one umbrella with Made Central and you're not worried about your zap expiring or getting old or wondering what's wrong with this and then it will open up. Some little thing changed and now everything broke. And you're not even, you look at it and you're like, oh my God, there's like 47,000 zaps in here and I don't even know where to start looking. It's just craziness and when it's all tied together it's beautiful, it's easy. Absolutely. So you mentioned some of your challenges before you started with Made Central, especially with your knee injury, just having a hard time keeping up on things. When you started in late 2021 with Made Central, come to Made Central Academy Live right away, jumped into the deep end, like we just start throwing numbers in your face telling you, pay attention to all of these things, you just learned a whole new language essentially, now we're gonna make you start talking the science of it as well. What were some of the first things that you started kind of working on? So it really, for me, it was engage my employees and start there. And that really, we pulled last year a week and our absentee rate was almost 18% and my tech turn rate was 406%. Yeah, so yeah, that's where we were. I love her. Over a year. Right now, my absentee rate is 0.94%. Less than 1%. So basically, out of every 100 shifts, I have less than an absence, which is pretty awesome. And my tech turn is 57%, which to me is like, especially from 406% down to 57, it's pretty crazy. I now have two employees who have been with me less than a year since I started Made Central and really started developing a team based on personality and fit and- All those things in a bunch of time, just not mailing out W2s. Yeah, exactly. Not hiring. No, yeah. That too, that too. Yeah, not constantly having to train and hire and deal with that turn. And being able to put more quality systems in place that allow you to get a better employee that allow you to get to that better employee faster rather than sometimes it takes weeks to find a really good A-level employee. And if you're able to have these systems in place, you can cut the time down in between finding those good people. And we all know that that's the biggest barrier to growth is finding the good people to take the works there. Yeah, no, that's actually incredible. I do wanna like pause for a half a second to explain for anybody watching who doesn't know core KPIs or what some of those little numbers that we throughout were. So Brian mentioned that his absentee rate about a year ago was close to 18%. And what the absentee rate is is we're looking at how many days did technicians take off in a four week period compared to how many days were planned to be worked. So out of 20 work days, depending on how many people were scheduled to work or whatever, 20% of those scheduled shifts weren't worked in that four week period that we looked at at the beginning of about a year ago. And now in the most recent four week period when we looked at it, it's gone down to less than 1%. So out of those 20 shifts or 20 days of work, probably five employees, a little over five employees, is that where we're at, maybe? So I have nine, but I'm not sure what week should we look at. Okay, yeah, so it was like two weeks ago, I think when I looked at this one, but still it's like probably one call out in four weeks. It's probably what it was actually is what it was probably looking at or one even scheduled day off. It doesn't even have to be a call out. This is looking at everything. So just like people are willing to come to work and wanting to come to work. And I think that's absolutely amazing. So that's the first one in absentee rates, we're just looking at how many days are people out divided by how many days were they scheduled? Technician turnover is probably one that's a little more familiar for anybody who's watching who doesn't know core KPIs. But we're looking at how many people don't make it through a year or don't make it, you know, that turnover throughout a year that you're hiring. So in a year ago, we would need to hire four people for one person to make it through a whole year. Thinking about that, right, Tom, right? At a 400%, does that mean you have to hire four people for one person to make it a year? What it would be, if it was 100%, then like you've got 10 people and you've got 100% turnover you would have hired, you've got 20 W2s. So if you've got like 400% turnover, you would have 50 W2s, yeah. Yeah, so even more than that. So yeah, like one of the, very solidly at the bottom of the total a year ago, Brian, you were struggling. That must have been tough. Well, and to be honest with you, it was just a continuous grind, you know? Pour money into marketing and effort into this, that and the other thing to stay the same company. And really if you stay the same company, you're losing ground. Yeah, and I mean, it took a little bit more throughout that struggle because I think like a lot of us experienced that, especially the balancing act between sales and technicians and just like this constant, like which one do I have too much of? Which one do I have too little of? How has that changed for you? So the key to it is, Made Central's made me a better owner by making me more consistent and organized. That has made this a more enjoyable place to work. And throughout my staff, that's I, if you're into disc, I only hire S's because I'm a S myself, but we all live in harmony, we love each other. But it's the truth, that's what we're doing here. And we're building a team that really enjoys the consistency and the stability that Made Central gives us. It gives us pretty colors on the schedule that we're able to match people up. No, it's serious. Aja's lighting up with Aja. Another one, another one turned to my side. You should see what we did. Explain what not being organized looks like to a cleaning professional. So it looks like you're constantly being, you know, called on your way to your first job and being sent somewhere else or being sent, you know, to go split a commission instead of have your own commission or, you know, being told not to come in. It's, don't get me wrong, we're always going to deal with cancellations. Or being asked to come in on a day that you're not supposed to be working. Exactly, we're always going to deal with cancellations and skips and all of those things, but it's pretty evident that we can limit those things. And again, these are all stats that need central tracks for you. So when you're able to see it and it's tracked and it's measured for you, you're able to just do something about it rather than having to spend the time of tracking and measuring and then figuring out how this formula works and then having to go plug it in 17 different times because you got it wrong. It's just, when the answer's there, it's like, okay, how do I, I know what's wrong here. And now let me just go find somebody in the industry and say, this is what I'm struggling with. How do I get better at it? And the answers are there. They're, I mean, they're there, they're on YouTube. That's actually huge. That idea of knowing what you're struggling with and then being able to find somebody to help you with it, like, that's gigantic actually. I don't think anybody's actually said that in those words to me before. That just made my brain light up in very happy ways. I'm digging on how. Yeah, it's that idea of like, you know, you can't fix a problem unless you know what the problem is. And that's exactly it. We've all sat in that just like turning our wheels and not going anywhere because we don't know what the problem is and we don't even know how to find the problem. And so we don't even know who to ask to find the problem because we don't know what the problem is and it's just this constant struggle. So like that was actually kind of a crazy little light bulb moment for me that you just said it that way. I haven't heard anybody say it like that before. That was really cool. Cool. The thing, the other thing that we haven't touched on what Made Central is doing is essentially creating standards. Before this, I could look at some KPIs and not know what it meant. Okay, I'm averaging this many cleanings per home per month. What does that mean? What's it, you know, I'm averaging this. What do I want to do with that? What does it mean? But now with Made Central, I'm able to see where we're at and I'm also able to see where we're at as a company and know that, oh, compared to all the other cleaning companies, we're falling, you know, in this category, we're in this percentage. We're in, you know, in this category, we're doing great. So it's how you target your weakest spots and fix them or no way we need to improve the system over here because this is where we're failing. It just breaks it down for you. Yeah. Tommy, you're about to say something. No, I was just like going back to reducing, you know, technician turnover because you're more organized. I mean, that makes all the sense in the world. Never really thought of it exactly that way before. You're being the employer that your technicians want you to be. You're creating a place where they want to work. They don't want to be in chaos. And if you're living in chaos, you're going to have that turnover rate that, and I mean, that turnover rate is directly tied. If you want to talk about my client turnover rate, those numbers are directly tied together a year ago, 8%. At 100 clients, I was losing eight clients a month. So at 100 clients to get eight clients, that's a lot of work. Yeah, it is. And now that rate is about 3%. So to overcome that is much easier. It's a bonus of five clients a month, if you want to think about it. Every month. Exactly, it's five clients a month. And we haven't even gotten into my favorite feature, which we did talk about at Foundations. We haven't even talked about foundations yet. We haven't even talked about foundations yet. I think, oh. What did we do a couple of weeks ago, Brian? So Foundations a week on the beach in South Carolina, basically ripping our companies apart and going back to square one with everything and just making sure the important things in your company are there and in place to be able to grow in scale. Because that's the goal is this stagnant growth or that slow growth curve is not something I want to settle on. I want to bust through the roof and if all these KPIs are firing, that's what's going to happen. I don't know, it's just crazy. This year, I've been able to concentrate on sales. The first 10 weeks of the year, I had over 20% of my revenue last year in sales, in commercial sales this year, let alone what we did in residential. And it just goes to show like, I have the time to go and put into that and focus on 20% revenue growth in 10 weeks. That's pretty solid. Yeah, we'll do it again. It's really interesting kind of how, oh, Brian, is it your birthday too? When's your birthday? Yeah, well, Shannon is now on my list. My birthday is on the 15th. Oh, okay. My birthday's in two days, so I thought your birthday might be this week too, because Tom's is yesterday. Happy birthday. And I didn't mean to say happy birthday to you, Tom. I was on because you just saw Candice there. Hey, you made my poem to list, so. Yeah, I appreciate having the opportunity to help out that way. That was great. I forgot what I was going to say. Sorry, Candice, you're totally debrailed me. Oh, I was going to say, it's very interesting. Especially at Foundations, we talk about kind of the stages of business and what you're really fighting for, what your challenges are at different stages of business. And I saw a kind of simplified version of that today, just in passing. That was like step one, really getting that kind of financial stability, really understanding your finances, cash flow, getting that in place. The next one is that operational efficiency, understanding how to manage your people, get everybody aligned to the same goals, and then the growth thing. And I feel like that's the path that you followed, that you're really following that kind of, you got that operational stability in this last year, and now you're able to really understand that growth focus. You can really go into just being like, we've got the systems now. We've got the people in place, we've got the systems in place. Let's just go for it. We're ready to just grow now. That's really cool. It's absolutely what it is. And it's actually like the message we're putting through our whole company right now. We have a contest going and it's all about personal growth. So rewards are like subscriptions to Audible masterclass. We're gonna have people open up Robinhood accounts and actually help them make their first investment. So really these are the things that made central has given me the time to do. These are the little things that give me my turnover rate under 60%. Under 60%, like I need to put that into perspective for some people who maybe haven't seen turnover numbers. That 406% at fourth quartile a year ago is probably closer to industry average in the cleaning industry. I think that we've been looking at our made central benchmarking numbers now for a couple of years. I think we've been pulling them now for two years now and we've watched the averages of those numbers going down just with made central partners. We're only looking at made central partners. So we've just watched our averages go down. I don't know if that's happening across the industry but at the time we could see industry averages closer to 300% was fairly average in the industry and our average was closer to 200%. And now it's an even smaller rate. Yeah, our average now is closer to 100%. And it's like, I don't think that's the average in the cleaning industry. I really don't know. I think that that is very much of, I think that we're able to see that because of what you're experiencing here. Like this is so amazing being able to hear you talk about how this has impacted your mental space more than anything. Absolutely, it's not a core KPI but we do measure consistency in a few different ways. And we know that's a contributing factor to both the technician turnover as well as customer turnover. Yeah, it's huge, especially if you're like me I'm targeting specific types of people roles on my team and when you're able to put two systems in made central overseeing that targeted hiring approach I'm able to engage with them. I'm able to never miss a birthday or an anniversary or all of those simple little things that you might take for granted but it's how you get your turnover rates down like this and that's how you're gonna bust through and get on a path to making some money. It's the number one thing is get those cleaning texts and keep them and do what you have to do to get your system going, you know. I wish consistency was a number that we were able to track across companies better. It's so hard because people run so differently and the idea of consistency is so different from company to company. What is your kind of priority of consistency or what does consistency mean at? You know what I just realized? We haven't said the name of your business yet. What is your business called? It's K-A-S Cleaning Services. We are in Salt... And what is the story behind your business name? Cause I think that's important. So K-A-S, those are my daughters initial. So Kendall, Abby and Sam, Kendall's 13, Abby is eight and Sam is 11 going on 30. That middle child syndrome. Well, yeah. Anyways, so at K-A-S Cleaning, what does consistency mean to you guys there? What are some of the things that you're really prioritizing that probably has some impact on that customer attrition and your turnover? So people ask, you know, what do we do? And I tell them that we provide quality cleanings on a reliable schedule. So, and that's really important are, again, I go, people that can show us that they're consistent and steady people. That's what we're really trying to hire for. And really within the first 30 days or so, if you're not, we're gonna know. But again, we have a pretty good indicator in our hiring system. It's, for a long time through COVID, everybody was a mess with their hiring system and it was like, get a warm body through the door. Yeah, are they breathing? You're hired. People have a hiring system, have a good hiring system. Are you breathing and do you not have a fever? Exactly. Yeah, that time was wrong. Never going back. No, it's, are you vaccinated? Are you willing to say you're vaccinated? Are you willing to say you're vaccinated? Oh my gosh. But no, I'm kidding. But yeah, no, that's what it was in COVID. And now it's, you know, you can be a little bit more selective. I'm not saying hiring's easy. We probably take in 200 applications to find a good cleaning tech. But if that's what you're gonna do. 200, that's awesome. Yeah. Sorry, I mean, well, no. I mean, it means that you're doing, I mean, it's awesome and not awesome, but it just means that you're being very selective and that's showing up in your turnover rate. No. That's the people that, you know, the two people that you've had to hire in the last year that are the only ones that are with you for less than a year. You know, that you put in the right amount of effort to find the perfect person for your company that you know that they're gonna stick, that you can put the right amount of effort into them, the time, the money into training, making sure they understood your values and whatnot. No, I think that it is a high number, but I actually don't think that's a bad thing. I mean. No, I'll tell you this. So that 10 week period of all those commercial sales, that all started this week. April 1st, all that kicked in. Today was, you know, a huge day, but it was like, I didn't hear anything about it. I still haven't heard anything about it. Hmm. You know, I must have gone good. You know what I mean? That's perfect. No, it's, but that's, those are the two new people. They went through our high, our training system. They're, you know, up, they're now have a full schedule with the, these coming on board. And I would have, you know, I would have heard about a problem. So I, yeah. Isn't that a great feeling? Yeah. No, it's, you know, I don't even know who we cleaned today. I know a lot of numbers about my business. I couldn't tell you a year ago, but I can't tell you who's on the schedule today or tomorrow. Isn't that, isn't that the greatest feeling? Like, do you remember the first time that happened after you switched to Made Central? Like the first day that you were like, I don't know what happened today. It was like a panic attack at the same time. Like, cause you just, you live it for years. And then you're like, wait a minute, somebody else knows how to do this. And you think that it's okay. Like, And you know what? Now that Made Central made it so easy, she can probably do it better than I can. So I'm just going to, you know, like people text me and I'm like, I don't know, you have to talk to Shannon. Like I can't. That's something Shannon does. I'm not allowed to touch the schedule anymore. It's Shannon's, you know. That's one of my favorite things to watch with people as they grow and they bring somebody into their office. When I go to ask them a question and their response turns into, oh no, that's something that my office person does. You'll have to ask them. And I'm like, yes, that is the right answer. That means that you were able to like lift somebody up into that position and you're working on the right things. Like, I love that. And it's a system because guess what? If I go in there and mess with something, I am going to screw something up. Somebody's, you know, now, and my manager is going to be scrambling to ask somebody to come in on a day off or something. Cause Brian added, you know, like, no, here's Shannon. I'll have Shannon read right out to you. She'll get you on the schedule. And you know, it's really convenient too that we're like on this topic, cause we have a question, real Auntie B has a cleaning business and wants to know how to grow more. And I think that you're kind of giving us a hint on how to do that. You're talking about putting systems in place that will create order, eliminate mistakes, create a place where your employees want to work in consistency with your, I mean, I think you're answering Auntie B's question, right? Systems are really about having something produce a predictable, repeatable answer for you on a regular basis. So you just need to look at every, really every aspect of your business. You need a financial system, QuickBooks is what I use, but I mean, it's probably the most popular, but I'm not advocating, I'm just saying have a financial system, have a scheduling system, have a whatever you need. Central is not a bad system to start with, right? Central is beyond just a system. It really is, it's a scheduling system. It's a billing system. It's a marketing system. It really is a employee engagement system. It really, it helps you in every aspect of your business and it's a way to tie it all together. The fact that you can in Made Central build your own email campaigns and have all of this automated through one process, it really allows you to focus on what's important and that's how you grow. I'll tell you, it's the people. It really is about the people, but they don't stay unless you have the system to keep them. And like I said, it's about creating a job that they know they're gonna have work Monday to Friday and they know that paychecks are coming and that cleaning supplies are gonna be on the shelf when they need them. And all the things, the support that they rely on is there and ultimately at the end of the day, they have somebody patting them on the back, saying thank you, say thank you and appreciate them. And wouldn't you say that you couldn't be doing that without Made Central? I couldn't do it without Made Central. I seriously though, it's I'm in a position in my business that I was able to go to foundations for a week on 30 hours notice, come home from foundations and in about 12 hours turn around and go on a family vacation, come home from that and at about five minutes hop on this call with you guys. So that's, I wouldn't be doing this without Made Central. I probably wouldn't even been able to go to foundations last year, I went to foundations last year, six weeks of prep. That's how long it took me to get ready for foundations. I was able to go on 30 hours notice. It's, and I drove, you know, like it. 30 hours plus drive time. Well, exactly. That's what it was, it's all about is getting the systems in place and then having those foundational things in your company. You put those two together. I don't wanna say it's autopilot. You have problems, you have days, you have, you know you still have things to deal with, but it's a lot easier. It's a lot easier than that constant grind of, oh, we're at 40K, we're at 45, we're at 38, we're at 44, we're at 37, you know? It's just nice to move in one direction consistently. You mentioned getting ready for foundations. We just wrapped up foundations 13, that we've done this 13 times over the last 10 plus years, I guess, and we're gonna be doing foundations 14 and I just, and that's gonna be March in 2025, I guess the dates are somewhere in here. To be decided. No, actually, it's, oh, looky here. Oh. Oh, am I still going? Is that it? Yeah, you're on the website, I guess. I guess it's official. You're going next year? Nice, but if you wanna sign up for next year, I just drop the link in chat. In years past, back in the old days, it did, it took weeks to get ready to attend foundations because you needed to run a bunch of numbers and do a lot of fancy math to get your KPIs so you can do the work, part of the work that we do when we're there. How long did it take you to pull your KPIs for foundations 13, Brian? Minutes, minutes. It's, I mean, the ones I need are basically on two separate reports and they're two buttons apart. It's, you know, you can get a very in-depth view of your whole company. You couldn't have done it without Made Central. I could not have done it without Made Central. People have done it without Made Central. You can't do it this easily. You couldn't do it and make a decision 30 hours before leaving and get it. No, and you couldn't have made the amount of changes that you've made in a year. I think that's the craziest part about this is like the numbers that we're talking about are a year difference, a 12 month difference. And also just like your preparation for foundations is it also a 12 month difference? And the biggest thing that has changed in that time? Made Central. Made Central, like that's amazing. I'm getting teary eyed and I work here and I'm getting teary eyed. Like how cool is this? It really is, it's, you get it going, you put the system in place and then you let it work itself and it's, you know, do what you have to do and it's gonna go. It's, can we talk about my favorite feature? Please talk about your favorite feature. Please do, Brian. I love your favorite feature. When you talk about your favorite feature. There are people watching this call right now who are like, oh my God, I need to do price increases. I've never done price increases. I was that person. I sat in your seat forever. And then finally, I don't know, months ago, I got ticked off and I'm like, we're sending out price increases. And now it's my favorite monthly activity to do. I pick, you know, our lowest 10% of performing counts every single month and I just send them out a price increase in, I mean, it's, the process is super easy. It's run a report, pick who you wanna send a, increase to and send an email. Made Central automatically updates everything for you. But what I love is the fact that I can look at those reports and see how much money is coming in. And what did we do? I sat there and I pressed buttons and we got free money. That's like, that's, it's free money for pressing some buttons on the computer guys. It's get your price increases out there, get them to your clients and know that the cancellation rate on price increases, and we know this because of Made Central, it's very, very low. The client you lose is well worth the price increase every single time. And it's just a spot for somebody willing to pay your rates. Exactly, it's all it is. My manager, when I was on vacation the other day, she's like, oh, schedule's getting really full. And I go, okay, I'll get on April's price increases because either, one of two things is gonna happen. Either you're gonna leave or we're gonna get paid more money for doing the same amount of work. It's, so one way or the other, I'm happy. And it really is, that's, I think that's the true. I mean, we worked on things to obviously fix issues within my company, but I think the true power in Made Central is the ability to go out there and know what accounts are underperforming and be able to get them up to par or off your schedule. And that's also kind of part of growth is realizing that just cause you have an account doesn't mean it's a good account. So push for- I think a cool point to make in this too, because you're very funny when you talk about this feature because you even did it here, you lean in and you're like, I'm gonna tell you a secret. This is a secret that nobody, I don't want anybody to know the secret, but it's not a secret. You should all be doing price increases. You may be doing price increases. But the piece of this that I think I also wanna touch on a little bit is that the value of your service has increased. So your prices also need to increase. The level of experience that your technicians have because of that reduced turnover rate is increasing the quality of your service as well. So those rate increases while you might be cleaning the same rooms, the value of your service has also gone up. So it feels like you're doing the same amount of work, but your technicians are way more valuable now than they were a year ago because of these changes that you're making. That it's my trust in my technicians now that give me the confidence to go out and do a rate increase every single time. Listen, we've- You don't worry that anybody's gonna come back and be mad at you because your technicians are awesome. Exactly. So every single time we've had one client who complains and then we just, you know, we give them the, you know, so-and-so has been cleaning your house for a year and a half and their do a raise and, you know, and we don't hear anything else. They're on the schedule. They don't, you know, they don't complain again. We've done them every single month this year. No one has left. So what's, what's that mean? The next ones go up even higher. That's all, like, I need schedule spots. That's where we're at. And it, that's what made Central's allowed us to do is kind of almost bid our spots on our schedule where before it was just a scramble to replace the clients I lost, to replace the cleaners I lost, to get more bodies in the door. And now it's a, I don't know, it's not a race every day. Do you enjoy going to work more now? Do you sleep better at night? I mean, sleep is, sleep is always, me and sleep have always had an issue, but that's for another time, you know. That's a different problem. What I do, I enjoy going to work. I, there was a time period that I wanted, I wanted to avoid seeing my cleaners. I didn't want to see people. I wasn't happy about work. And now I was driving home from vacation today and, you know, excited to get to the office to talk of, because I still haven't had a lot of time with my manager post foundation. So it's like, you know, we're, we're excited to sit down and be able to, yeah. You're gonna load it up. You've got a lot of business here. Yeah. She's, well, she's in Liz's group too. So it's, she's, you know, got a good idea of what's going on. And I was able to get two one to one, well, her when involved with me and I was just one to ones at foundation, which was, you know, so, so valuable. Like I can't. I love that you did that too. No, just to explain a little bit for everybody. So when we were at foundations, I was doing one-on-ones with people doing some of the presentations. Brian signed up for two one-on-ones with me and he did a, we did a zoom with his, his manager for both of those one-on-ones so that I was able to talk with her directly. She wasn't able to come to foundations with him, but, you know, we were able to still have that conversation and kind of teach her directly some of the advice and things that he and I had been talking about to her. And it was, it was so cool. You were the only person that did that. And I thought that was so smart. And I can't wait to tell other people that they can do that because that was so amazing to just be able to share that. Even that the help calls, I tell her all the time, like if you, if you want some guidance, go get on those made central live calls, like they'll answer any question you have. They're happy to, they're always happy to help. So all of that stuff, it's, it's not just for you. It's for, you know, have your manager go, go do it. They're struggling with, have them, have them sit through some calls. You'll learn a lot. I'll drop that link in the, into the comments as well. Awesome. When we were at foundations, one of the things that we did was take our core KPIs and plug them into a forecasting tool. Yes. This, this is amazing guys. So this free tool by made central, you're able to go in, pull your core KPIs, put them in, and then be able to play with them to see exactly what you need to do to grow your company. I know that there's so much more involved to it. But did you put the website in the, well, I'm on it right now. Let's just go to the chat, corekpi.madecentral.com. Actually, it's toolbox.madecentral.com. We rebranded it, but I'm gonna drop it in right now. Awesome. Anyway, we did this during foundations and it really, I'm super excited because I was able to pull my KPIs really quickly, put them in, and then really, I'm able to look at this and use this tool and say, hey, if we just go get three more quotes a week, this is what we're gonna grow to. If nothing else changes, okay, if we can get three quotes a week and hire one cleaning tech a month, this is what we're gonna grow to. And it really is just incredible to be able to have a tool like that and really be able to play with your KPIs a little bit and know, hey, if I focused in on this, this is what we're gonna do. And this is what I love about it. It's already let me set kind of goals and challenges for me and my manager on specific KPIs. We're also able to go back and kind of take past data and put them into, essentially create an older model and see where we are on. We were here six months ago and we're here now and then where do we wanna look in six months? When we went through the Sun Foundations and I saw how powerful it was, I on lunch break got on Zoom with my manager and I said, I want you to go and pull this monthly since we've had Made Central, put all the numbers in for every single month, that way we can know exactly where we've been and know where we wanna go. It's- I love it. Yeah, so now we've printed them out and they're hanging on the walls of my office. This might be a little bit of a preliminary question since you haven't gotten back to really talk with your manager yet, but which KPI are you working on next? So for me, it's quotes per week and for her, it's a closing rate. Awesome. And yeah, I mean, if we work on those two things, if I can get three quotes a week and she can get, I think she's going for 13 percentage points. She's at 17, she wants to get to 30. That's awesome. Yeah, but if we do those things, we already exceed, we'll far exceed the goals we set this year. And this too tells me that. Yeah, we just don't have the time to do a deep dive on this now, but you're able to plug in where you currently are with your core KPIs, plug in a percent improvement. It'll tell you what the outcome would be on the KPI and then you can chart how your business is gonna grow down here because of that. And so you're setting goals for yourself and people in your office where they own, everybody owns their core KPIs. This is free by the way. Yeah, toolbox.madecentral.com, you can sign up and you can play with this. You don't have to be a Made Central user. And if you are a Made Central user, you have to create your own account. Yeah. Brian was talking about doing rate increases. Here's a tool that helps you figure out you could do a rate increase and lose some customers. You can even, based on what your pay type is, we'll tell you how much money you're gonna be making off of that. This is a new tool, I digress. We have a new tool to help you figure out how to develop incentive pay programs, commission pay or job ticket hour pay. Here's a calculator that you can use. Everybody asks, what percentage should I pay or how much should I be paying for a job ticket hour? Here's a calculator that we'll help you figure that out. Yeah, we do also, since we don't have a ton of time to go over all of those right now, we do talk about those at our core KPI webinars each month. So we do a little dive into that one, but we talk about that one a lot. So keep tuning into us, but yeah. And that's tomorrow, right? Yes, it is, tomorrow at 2 p.m. Eastern. If you're looking to register, you can go to maidcentral.com slash events and you can register for that one and you can also grab the recording from last month's one as well. So we are very gracious webinar people who let people continue to register and grab recordings even if it's a month after the event. So take advantage of us. We just wanna help you. The toolbox is an unbelievable tool for your business, guys. If you're just unsure of where to go, it's go play with some numbers and see, you know. Yeah, it is. We're not quite chronological here, but we're with Brian today. We've got core KPI tomorrow and we have to register for that. This is a live stream. This is something that we do through a webinar. It's just more interactive and more people can ask questions and participate that way. Oh, we're gonna be in DC next week. That we are. But that's all sold out, so. But we'll be doing that again sometime. We're gonna be doing something in Chicago in June. I guess we're gonna have to get that out there. We do. We still need to figure out what we're doing there. Oh. So yeah, I guess, you know, last thoughts from you, Brian. Anything that you wanted to talk about that we didn't get to touch on? I don't think so. I really, I mean, made central. I couldn't do these things without it, seriously, guys. I'm also happy, give me a DM if you have any questions. I'm happy to such a straight or help you with the KPI or help you with the two blocks, get you set up. It's, I mean, I can't thank you guys enough for the tools that you give me. It's allowed me to, I don't wanna say it's easy because it's not, but it's much easier than it used to be. It's funner. And it's clear. It's not necessarily a word, I think it's funner. Funner? No, it's enjoyable rather than, I don't know, life-threatening, you know? Yeah, so it's, yeah. Less like pulling out teeth and more like painting a masterpiece, you know? Yeah, totally agree. It's a way to, I don't know, get yourself to love your company and what you do again rather than be stressed out. And, you know, we talk about three stakeholders and you've touched upon all of this here, Brian. I mean, you've got the people that get out of bed every morning and come to work really hard that you're clean professionals that are providing your service. You've got your customers who they serve and you've got, you know, the business that you've taken the risk and invested in and you're talking about creating better jobs so you can provide better service and build a better business and you're seeing it in your core KPIs with your customer turnover rate being down and your technician turnover rate being down. I mean, we really talk about benchmarking but your numbers are like in the first quartile. We benchmark and we, you know, provide feedback to the Made Central partners, letting them know how do your numbers compare to everybody who's using Made Central and you're killing it on those people. No, it's the ability to see that now. It really, it's, anybody's able to kill it once the struggle is getting those numbers knowing that they're accurate and having confidence in them and when Made Central just wraps it up in a package for you and it says, you know, hey, A, B, and C, go do A, B, and C. It gives you a clear pathway to just, you know, peace within your business and that is, it goes throughout your life. It really helps, so. One other thing I'll share here real quick because it's kind of timely is Liz is hosting a foundation scale program which is kind of the graduate level course of foundations. This is the second time that they're doing it and it starts in one week, four days, six hours, five minutes and five, four, three, whatever, second. I think that they still have a couple of slots left. It is in Corolla, North Carolina which is on the Outer Banks. It's beautiful there. It's a beachfront property. It's larger than the mansion down here in Charleston so it's gonna be a bunch of some of the more most successful cleaning business owners in the country are gonna be there. So if you wanna be part of that, I just dropped the link in chat and that was certainly worth taking a look at as well. Corolla is like an hour and a half from me. I make many trips every year. It's awesome. Yeah, you can, that's an easy drive. They have the, my kids love the wild horse beaches so we can go down there. I've got the four wheel drive, go out on, yeah, it's just. I didn't realize wild horses were actually a thing until I was 19 years old. It's like a big deal around here. Every year they swim across the channel or something. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty cool. That's so, it still fascinates me. It was crazy, like you're just hanging out at the beach and you look over and there's like legit wild horses just hanging out, yeah. And in so much of it's like a national park, it is, it's rural. I mean, it's not like a developed place where, you know, I mean, there's parts of it that are, but so much of it is just like wilderness and you can, you take your four wheel drive and you can drive right on the beach. It's not many places left that'll let you do that anymore. Yeah, that's really awesome. You know, we go out there, I bring my portable fire pit and drive right out to the beach and I don't know, anywhere I can go do that. So it's, yeah. That's useful. Yeah, 4th of July out there is awesome. But next week out there is awesome too. So, you just got back from vacation after just getting back from Foundations 13. Are you gonna go to work tomorrow? Yeah, fortunately. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we have a few projects I'm working on. I'm actually, I'm working on something super excited and it's, Liz is gonna be super excited when I see it. When she sees it, I did this morning, that Aja has 122 automations. And right now, and I have to do about 80 more to finish it, but once it's finished. Oh boy, all right, I'm curious. It's a disk assessment for ClickUp. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Liz will love it. So, I probably have like five more hours of automating and then, I don't know, days of testing, but that's really cool. I'm excited to see it. So, I guess one other thing that's going on, we should probably share. We're talking about core KPIs tomorrow. And I guess we've explained what core, have we explained what core KPIs are? Also not. We have a calendar. We have a calendar, there's 12 of them. And coincidentally, there's 12 months out of the year, so we made a core KPI calendar. We have a digital version of it that we've made available that you can now download. And I'm dropping the link to that in chat as well. So, if you want your own digital core KPI calendar, you can go to maidcentral.com forward slash 2024 core dash, or dash core dash KPI dash calendar dash download. Just get the link out of. Just get the link. Brian, I want to thank you so much for being our guest on our inaugural. Nogural. Nogural. Baitcentral profile. MCPP. Thanks for having me, Tom. I enjoy, anytime I get to spend a few minutes with you guys, it's fun, so. Well, you really appreciate it. This is great. You're awesome. And, you know, you make, you know, you're talking about, you know, you enjoy your business now. It's fun. Well, you make what we do fine. And we appreciate that. Absolutely. And I just want to give one last little congratulations on your improvements. Going from two fourth core tiles to two first core tiles and two of the hardest ones to improve that extremely on absentee rate and technician turnover. And then also on your customer attrition, like, those are some really, really, really great foundational KPIs that, I mean, those improvements are just incredible. So just congratulations and way to go. Like, you put in some really good work this last year and it's really amazing to be part of your journey as a maid central employee. So thank you for allowing us to be part of your journey in this way. Thank you, thank you. I couldn't have done what we did this year without maid central. That's, so I'm just happy to be here. I'm just looking forward to what we're going to do in the next year. I really, well, last year we blew past what I expected to do and now those expectations are through the roof. So people are like, I'm excited. I love it. Well, thanks again. So we're at the top of the hour. So we're going to call this wrap, but we're going to be back tomorrow at two o'clock Easter and talking core KPI of the month. Which one is that, Aja? Queens per month per home. All right. Brian, thanks so much. We'll see you guys soon. Take care. Goodnight, guys. Bye, everybody. Bye-bye.