 Hey, good afternoon everybody. Tom Stewart here. I'm with Liz Trotter. Our guest today is Aja Holiday. And this is what? It's our business moves. Our business moves. Let's see. I need to do this once a week. I can't even remember what we call the show. How about that? I really liked the week, Tom, when you forgot your name. That was my favorite. I mean, I need to talk to Victoria. I need cue cards. I need to get a call from a star. Can we have that? For your name, Tom? Yeah, it's like it's less than been a rough week already, Tom. Oh, I've been working. A lot of motion. A lot of motion. A little bit of movement, but definitely a lot of motion. Okay, well. Aja, how the heck are you doing tonight? I'm doing really well. Doing well. I'm keeping cool. It's been pretty toasty here in Colorado. So, doing well. It's thirsty in Colorado, feel like. It's just dry and hot. I mean, it just feels like a desert, but... Is the temperature, what, 78 degrees? I mean, it's... It hit like 96 today. Are you kidding me? Yeah. How are we day? It was pretty toasty. We had a couple of 100 degree days in the last week, and that was uh my house, I was like, why is it so warm in here? The AC is lasting the whole day, and I was like just toasty all day. And then I looked at the temperature, and I was like, that makes sense. Now I don't know. But you know, it gets hotter later, and it gets colder sooner. You don't get many of those days. I mean, heck, you'll be shoveling snow in another month, right? Uh, maybe. Usually, July, we'll get like about 50% above 90, at least, if not more. And then August, it starts to cool down a little bit. Last year, we did have snow in... Did we have snow in September? Maybe it was the year before. The year that everything was on fire, we got snow at one point randomly, but it didn't help. I see why you guys do get snow a lot. Like, I don't think it could not be snowy. I can't remember if it was last year or the year before. It didn't snow until New Year's Eve. We didn't have any snow until New Year's Eve. It was the first snow of the season, and it took forever. Normally, it happens in October, and it did not happen until New Year's Eve. So that was a weird one. Wow. Well, we're just waiting to get our temperatures up, like, into the 80s. Come on now. We're almost there. It's cool. It's like in the 70s. No, I'm actually looking at my thing today. It's going to be 82. So, but yeah, it's been pretty much in the 70s. That sounds glorious. I know. It has been. I am not complaining. Not at all. What you been up to, Liz? You know, I'm prepping for this event that is coming up next week, so I'm doing all that stuff, and I have so many appointments I have to move. That is so hard. You know, when you're going out of town, then you have to move all your stuff around. Do you maybe, like, plan far enough ahead so you don't schedule stuff? No, these are like ongoing things. You know, like, with my circles, I'm in circles from 8 to 1 every day. So I'm trying to move 8 to 1 every day for almost a week. That's a lot of moving. That's a lot of moving. Why do today what you're going to do tomorrow? So we'll wait until, you know, the last minute. I just canceled all of my regular schedule programming for next week today, so I'm with you, Liz. All right. You know, in half the time, I even forget to do that, and I just don't show off. I'm thinking, well, heck, you know what I'm doing this week. They don't really expect me. My people still are like, so, Liz, we thought you'd be here if you didn't tell us that you were going to be gone. I'm sorry. No, no, we're coming to smart business moves next week because we're not going to be here. Yeah, no, no, none of us going to be here. Yeah. I especially just because I'm not here every week anyway. Well, what are we talking about today, y'all? Production, but we could talk about whatever, but we know that's for my heart and soul eyes. Well, the last week, just to make the obligatory close the loop, we were talking about the consumer price index, and it was like up to like 9.1, which is as high as it's been for 40-some-odd years. Prices for most things that people buy are going up in a meaningful way. The day after the Department of Labor releases a number, they call the producer price index and kind of left you guys, like with the cliffhanger, you had to come back, you know, see the next episode to see what the PPI number was. That came out really hot too. It went up 1.1 percent. It's currently 11.3, and that means manufacturers, the raw inputs that go in all of the stuff that make the consumer things that we buy, those rates are going up faster than what the consumer prices are. So, you know, it's a complicated formula, but this is kind of a leading indicator that says that the rate of inflation might still be an upper trend. Yay. All right. Just what we want to hear, right? You know, that kind of makes this whole thing of scheduling and production planning and running your business in an efficient way. Not much more important because being profitable is going to be more challenging now than what it has been in the past when prices, including the price of labor, was more stable. For sure. Definitely. That's what we're going to talk about today, and it's going to be awesome. It's going to be useful, and it's very timely. Well, you know, and after our smart business moves last week, I know a lot of people are feeling a little bit more hopeful. I think Chris Schwab gave us a lot of upside also, so it's not all just doom and gloom and, you know, what's scary and how bad is it going to be? So, I'm looking forward to what we can do instead of worrying about what we can't do, what's going to happen, you know, how bad things are going to be. I'm going to let my cat in before she harasses us. Very meaty cat, you know. She is. Oh my god. Don't start screaming at the door. You know, I think the whole point here is you just have to plan, and you have to be adaptable, and you have to be willing to change. And if you do that, this has the opportunity to even get better outcomes than what you would if the prices were more stable. So, Aja, teeing it up for you here, what, we'll talk about scheduling or production planning. Everything production planning is kind of where it all starts, right? Yeah, definitely. Starting with some production planning, I mean, there's a lot of different elements of cleaning services that really affect your production planning and being aware of what is your maximum, what's your minimum, and staying on top of what your capacity is helps a ton. And knowing when you can pull things forward or if you need to push things back, but also understanding that when a day passes, you don't get that back, right? If you pass a day that has space on it, you can't go back and get that space back. So, paying attention to something canceling, paying attention to, you know, who your top performers are and are they full to keep them really happy. There's a lot of different elements of staying on top of your production planning. And it's not all just, you know, how many technicians do I have and how many hours can I do? But are my drives super accurate? That gets to the scheduling side of things. And also, how's our permanent schedule looking? There's lots of different parts of your production and your schedule that go together to make the most effective turn on the amount of time that you have available. So, there's a couple of different pieces there. Let's start. Yeah, where do we start, Aja? I would start on... Sorry, Tom. No, the analogy of the day-to-day thing. I mean, that's important, though. I mean, this is, you know, when you said that, I kind of, it's like, okay, I like, it's like I'm running a restaurant or like I have a grocery store or something and a fruit stand. And, you know, you don't want to have stuff rotting and having to throw it away, right? So, you know, if you've got unused capacity or stuff, I mean, that's kind of like throwing fruit. Right. So, you might discount it. You might do run some specials. A lot of things, you know, you can do just to make sure that you're not, you know, you can take that chicken that you're going to have to throw away and maybe rotisserie grill it and then, you know, sell it. I mean, in your tiny businesses, I mean, maybe these analogies are a little bit silly, but, you know, from a production planning standpoint, there's a lot of things that we can do to make sure that we are throwing labor away. Yeah, and I actually would start by looking both in the most recent history and in your upcoming future. So, looking into your last week, maybe even last two weeks and seeing if there was any time left on the table and where did that time come from. That helps to understand what are some habits that might be happening currently with your schedule? Are you having a lot of last-minute cancellations? Are you not scheduling enough to begin with? That kind of helps to know where you need to focus your attention for for the future. So, if you're looking into the future and you're seeing that you have what looks like full days, but you had, you know, $600 left on the table last week or $1,000 left on the table last week because there was empty holes, how did those holes happen and how do you make sure that you are able to fill those holes coming up as well. So, I actually, I would probably, yeah, I would start looking at both of those, both the past and the upcoming future to see if you have the current trends that you're working with and to help get rid of your rotten fruit. Tom mentioned some really great options in last-minute bills, especially flash sales, just emailing your whole list for, you know, really discounted hours available. Hey to me, how are you? So, there's lots of ways to fill those things. You can email your entire mailing list, a discount code for your upcoming availability or you can keep a couple of people on hand. I think that's one of my favorite ways to do that is to have well-known customers that you know are really flexible and are happy to fill in space for you at a discount or move there clean earlier or things like that keeping a list of your flexible clients, whether it's using tags if your system has them or something like that to know if you can pull people forward because it's another option as well is that you don't have to necessarily find new people. You can have people that maybe wanted to clean earlier fill in that space as well. So, I know a strategy that a couple people that are in our circles use that I think is so smart is they have a list of things that the customers want to have added onto their service and then they tell them that when we get availability we'll add it on. We can either schedule you now at full price or we can put you on our list and as soon as we get availability we'll give it to you at a discount and we'll just slide you in there and I think that's a really smart way of doing it. So, you already have this list of things to pull from and a group of people that you can go ahead and do this thing for. So, it might not be available every single day but getting a good solid list is like having a strong bench, right, for extra stuff. Yeah, I love that. I think that's a good idea for sure and those aren't huge jobs either if they're just add-ons at least you're able to fill in the time but you're not trying to find a space for a 10-hour job if you only have three hours available or something like that. I think that's a really good way of limiting that. So, you know, I guess really when you kind of get to day of or day before there's always adjustments or usually you know there's adjustments you know you've got you know cleaning technicians that have unplanned you know emergencies you've got you know customers that last minute you know make changes. I guess that's kind of a blur. You can argue that maybe that's even more scheduling than this production planning but in the bigger sense production planning you know aren't you really looking at you know what is my labor you know which labor do I have what capacity do I have to you know in terms of labor hours or revenue you know do I need to be marketing more do I need to be recruiting more. We say it a lot yeah you always have too much of something and not enough of something else too many costs but that also comes into play where you're trying to normalize the schedule so you don't have these days where you're bringing in a ton of money and then the next day you've got nothing and then again the next day or sometimes by week right the your third week of the month is always really really low or really really high either one of those can cause trouble so so when you say third week of the month I would presume you're talking about the third week in your four week rotation yeah absolutely. Do you think everybody understands what we're talking about when we say that? No I don't I think that most people do because anybody that's been doing scheduling for even a short amount of time understands that a month in our speak is four weeks we can't have you know it's hard to do anything else you don't typically do in the service world you don't do like the third Thursday of the month or anything like that because then you'd be constantly changing your rotation and you'd be out with different jobs etc so. So you've got 13 planning periods and it goes week one two three four one two three four one two three four if I get my home cleaned every other week I'm either getting it cleaned on even weeks or odd weeks if I go a month a monthly that means I go like on week four or week three or whatever I'm always on that same week unless I make a schedule change in my right. As your monthly year every four weeks you're not so you're gonna get your your home cleaned 13 times in a year you're not getting your home cleaned 12 times in a year unless you skip something. At least one month is gonna have one month is gonna have two cleans yeah in some years there are two depending on the day right not years some some days you're going to have two of those two months so very common to have 14 cleans in a year so. So there's a lot of balancing there um you know I I actually used to look at our week rotation just just to see those weeks like oh our week two is significantly higher than all of our other weeks how can we balance that out a little bit um that was something I used to look at a lot and sometimes it made sense um if you have part timers you might have well maybe not they're not necessarily off for like a week or something like that but days um trying to keep the day even two that you're not having one day that only has 75% of what the other four days of the week have um because then yeah you're just trying to schedule everybody on Wednesdays and I don't know about your guys's area but Wednesdays around here are the days that everybody campos because of like the Wednesday they're the ones that are just really flaky they don't care all right so here's another thing that I've been seeing a lot noticing a lot and what we see is people at the beginning of the year they had just as an example they had 10 employees and they were doing X amount of dollars and then here we are maybe five months three four five six months later and you have 10 employees but you're doing a much larger amount of money and sometimes that's because of a price increase but sometimes that's because you have you were in a current situation and your people have had to produce more work and now you know they can so that's an interesting little piece that I've been seeing a lot of lately oh yeah I feel how hard every shell cute picture one of the things said so what are we uh what what are we hypothesizing here monthly clients are more demanding our expectations I mean I think that's a little bit and you have to give them more time because they can't really have you rotating their baseboards they're not going to get their baseboards done them like once every four months or five six months so I think it's realistic that they are wanting more done on that monthly if they're on that monthly rotation but that's why we charge more I mean I don't really know any companies that charge the same amount for monthly as they do for a bi-weekly right and we're suggesting that you don't want a monthly with 20 cats oh no yeah I'm with you there I also think it just makes it that much more obvious when you don't do something if they're monthly clients so like you know if you don't do an area once you hit that two months mark oh my gosh like that is it's like it hasn't even been clean really before like the amount of build-up that happens in a two-month period is significant um and so I think it makes it like if you're not doing everything every month then it's it is a lot more obvious and it probably feels a lot dirtier because they are monthly but man I don't think I know anybody who's like oh yeah monthly clients are my favorite we take up because nobody expected but man I just try to price them out so I mean I guess for another day we there's a whole methodology I mean it's it's been a while but you know Carrie Knight has this has been on our show before and she's got strategies to take monthlys and to turn them into you know bi-weekly's and weeklies and uh and mostly that's her big push yeah I think Tina servas has some strategies around that too that she shared with us she does so from production planning standpoint we want to balance the work on monthly or something else for monthly's I'm being able to use them for production planning it's not my favorite way to do it but it is a way to kind of use your monthly's as your fillers because they are less expected on when they're getting cleaned because they're like well I'm only getting cleaned every four weeks anyways so they're usually a bit more flexible with being able to change their days and helping with your production planning too and also balancing your week because your monthly's are the reason that you would have the only reason that you'd have one week that's out of balance and because of your monthly's so they have their they have their values um so it can help with your production planning too so so and I guess that's really part of the sales process you know we can certainly put you on a full week rotation but the consistency is is not going to be the same as what you would expect if you were every two weeks you might not be getting the same cleaner every visit we might have to move you a day here or there to balance it out but we certainly you know appreciate from a monthly you know investment standpoint you know it can be more economical and it will work with you know so that's part of what that discount is all about how do we make how do how do we balance our schedule make sure we don't have too much work on one day or the next or too many you know labor hours on the even weeks as opposed to the odd weeks whatever I know that you've got some tricks on your sleeve in terms of ways of managing are you anything you want to share with us I mean that really comes down to whatever your relationship is between your sales process and your recurring or or your scheduler process um I think about the schedule is two different types of schedule an active schedule and our permanent schedule and everybody is able to schedule and either of those we have to understand that permanent schedule takes priority um and understanding how that permanent schedule is balanced um has to be like so both the scheduler main scheduler and your salesperson if they're doing permanent schedules need to know how to know how to use look at that um in May Central we use the master schedule that's what I was using previously as well as just being able to pay attention to the different rotations but you can also do this just by looking at projections on a week by week basis um and whoever's viewing your scheduling has to know that sometimes you might want to push your one time to the heavier week and try and push those recurring people to the lighter week just to pre prep prep prepare that's a little redundant prepare to try and balance well I don't know you know too often we find ourselves post-preparing way too often Tom way way way too often yeah that's a good point that's another way of saying reacting yeah so the master schedule based on what you're saying right now Aja the master schedule and the permanent schedule are the same thing yeah all right so for people that are so you just introduced a concept les master schedule and so so the reason I'm bringing it up is because anybody that's on here that is using May Central and we do have a lot of people that use May Central you know in our circles as well they might think that you're talking about something different with the permanent schedule but I just want to make sure that it's clear that the master schedule is your permanent schedule that's the way that you set everything kind of in stone and that's not what you're changing on the day-to-day basis right that's the basis of your every week every two week and every four week rotation what day they're regularly scheduled on and what team and time they're regularly scheduled on that changes on the active schedule based off of what's actually available what resources are available what times are available resources in terms of time and team I guess that those can adjust just because that's what's available on that day so your active schedule can be adjusted with one time job move out that's where you can kind of fill in some of that additional availability that your permanent schedule does it fill and to help balance something if you do have an out of balance on your schedule where your you know even weeks are significantly heavier than your odd weeks then you can work to only schedule one time to move out and anything that's part of your active schedule on your even week and working to schedule new permanent schedules new recurring schedules on your odd weeks and that will help you balance things out without having to move clients that you already have existing on your schedule so that's that's why I would try to do that at least in the preparation side of it of being proactively getting your schedule to be equal again or if you're doing it in response then you would be contacting your clients and having them move rotation that's that's Tom's post preparation but for anybody that isn't using the master schedule regardless of what system you're on master permanent schedule highly highly highly recommend it and I'm going to go back to a previous smart business moves that we had where Joe Walsh was on you remember that Tom we had Joe and he made such a an impact on a lot of our viewers around the idea that one of the most important things for the satisfaction and joy and ultimate delight of your clients is keeping the same team on the same schedule as a priority but that is really hard to do like I I'm not going to say impossible but so extremely difficult if you're not keeping a master schedule everything has to be in your memory then you're relying on memory too much yeah it was a metric I guess that's been coined consistency and we're we're actually building a report and a mechanism to to measure that it's going to be awesome I'm doing a presentation at convention about that and how it works and how to measure it and yeah I mean Joe's been talking about consistency for a long time yes very long time and also on your your your cleaning professional side you know they're much happier with you know their their their you know job and and they make more money most of the time not most of the time but it's it's it's more money and it's more enjoyable it's less stress easier yes the whole thing is just a better experience for everyone so I love it so our big three things and now that we have our productivity efficiency and consistency yeah I'm loving that I'm loving it I actually talked with Joe when I was working to switch to solos he took time out of his day to make a couple of phone calls with me and let me pick his brain on how he switched to solos at his size and you know how we could do that too and we talked so much about that consistency concept and he I mean it's been something I like got to watch it in action and it's true like our the biggest thing was probably our turnover dropped you know having being able to have the same technician going to the same house as they were so much happier they were able to perform so much better and be so much faster and then their clients were happier they got more stiff it was such a nice thing and it is easier with solos for sure to be able to do that for them but it was just like that is such a huge deal on also being able to predict a little bit more on what your what your team is capable of doing absolutely and so I really I really believe that oh absolutely no doubt about that that is never been a debate about whether or not the clients prefer consistency or not even when they're not in the home even went before COVID and everybody worked outside of the home your clients still wanted that consistency and for for so many like obvious reasons but my point that I really wanted to make was that master schedule how much easier that makes it right and regardless of how you do it I don't care what program you're using setting that master schedule that permanent schedule that shows who's on these jobs all the time and then only moving them off when absolutely necessary without the master schedule you're moving people floating people around all the time especially in a larger company a smaller company you have a lot of that in your head right scheduling persons keeping tracks like oh no no and they they'll be able to keep things like oh no I know that I already moved her one time I skipped her right you know I changed her day but at some point in time you can't you can't keep that in your mind anymore and you have might as well start when you're small start when you're smaller and put that master schedule in place so that as you grow you're going to be able to scale much much easier there's a a couple of different options I was thinking about how I would do a master schedule if I didn't have made central capability and originally I did it in an Excel spreadsheet where I was just having you know each block for each team but I've been thinking about ideas of how to do that as well for using like just the Google a Google and having each team be their own calendar and you can even have a calendar for available openings and having those labels so that if you're looking for just availability you can just look at that one team that one schedule so that would be that I mean just ideas for people that aren't using what is in made central as the master schedule there's a couple of different options out there if you need to get it out of your head and have other people be in charge of that and even if you don't need to get out of your head I'm pushing yes regardless of how you do it I love the I love the Google Calendar option right everybody's already using Google Calendar how easy is that great idea so you would have one workbook and a tab for each day of the work week in Excel yes for an Excel or a Google sheet or something like that I would do I would have it as one tab for each day of the week and then a box for each team's availability or what they have scheduled which would really be like four rows where you would have four columns and probably four to five rows per team depending on how big of houses if you're using teams or solos um two to three if you're using solos and four to five if you're using we could hack we could build one right now we wanted to we already have them built we don't need to we we have shown this before but I think that I show your idea about the Google Calendar that's a new idea that's something we haven't floated before right we haven't shown that so I think that could easily work as well a calendar for each team and so also having that that calendar that is just openings how nice is that because that's one of the big struggles is trying to find that recurring opening right but as few clicks as possible is always my goal is that as few clicks as possible be able to see what your openings are for a permanent recurring person or client because that's what everybody's priority is I'm using my eyeliner as a baton right now but um that's the biggest priority is that you want to be able to do this in one call you want to be able to get people on your schedule in as few conversations as possible mine's not eyeliner though yeah it's actually my eyebrow pencil I might be you never know that yours looks like a remarkable stylist the same as mine all right well I can't be fancy with you guys yeah so yeah that would you know a few steps as possible so that even if you have you know 10 teams or 10 solos instead of having to look through all 10 of those to find openings you would just have your one opening schedule and if you give that away you would be able to reassign that block to the team and just have that labeled there so that would be that would be my current workaround if I didn't want to build a excel spreadsheet again yeah because the excel spreadsheet was beautiful and nice but a lot of work a lot of work a lot of work yeah so uh yeah check it out Denise I'll bet you can do something this idea is pretty what is ECF the customer factor oh oh okay yeah yeah Robin says that uh you're a wizard there Aja you're a wizard Harry yeah I grew up on Harry Potter I'm glad to be a wizard in some way I love Harry Potter too right so we're thinking about we've got to normalize our schedules we've got to keep that consistency right um really we want to be we want to be normalizing by day and we want to be normalizing by week all right so that's first place start there figure out and then next thing it sounds like really need to have a clear understanding where your openings are so that right on that on the recurring basis so that you can look into them and when you say normalizing I'm assuming you're like leveling you're you're balancing the workload yeah that's that's a much better word for what I'm you're you're you're reaching out to certain customers and saying hey Mrs Jones would you mind if we moved your you know every four week cleaning from Wednesday to Tuesday but every once in a while we might wind up doing you on Thursday but you know and having those discussions um yeah absolutely I was yeah definitely starting there and then probably getting an understanding of what what to be expected from your schedule what is your absentee rate what is your skip rate um a couple of measurements that you should be aware of as being your averages within your within your company to know how what your actual production levels are you know if you're planning for a four percent absentee rate and you don't have four percent extra staff then your revenue production your planning availability is also four percent reduced so to be able to prepare for that kind of stuff and understand how those work together that's another big thing to know what's consistent for your company um so that you're not overbooking or underbooking yourself consistently based off of skips or absentee rates sounds like another spreadsheet another really important piece about this is that depending on who is doing your scheduling if you don't have that number dialed in your scheduling person will underbook your day they're scared because they're afraid and they don't want to have to be dealing with the morning of chaos yeah it's less stress it's it's easier my and i'm not gonna have as much stuff to deal with if i'm scheduling life yeah and i like is that your goal do you want your scheduling person scheduling light no we want him scheduling as heavy as possible and making it work right finding a way but you're you're setting up a bad a bad situation if you don't know what what you can actually really really do so that kind of gets back into the kpis though because you're if you're measuring properly you can point out that we had this much rotten produce today you know for ways and bananas and and you know lettuce you know i like that analogy tom i'm just hoping that nobody's wondering if you're trying to call some of our employees rotten or you know think join you know just join probably wondering what in the world we're talking oh we all own produce stands now just so you know no more cleaning services we all just roam produce stands and uh we gotta find a way to get rid of our rotten yeah no i think that that's those all those all really for sure the if you if you don't have an accurate understanding of absentee and skip you know how many are you having each day of both of those your scheduler isn't able to prepare either way either prepare for overbooking because of absentee rate or underbooking because of skip rate how do those balance together and what you know if you have more skips than you do absentee then you still want to overbook just a little bit based off of your absentee rate so knowing what the what the baseline is um in addition to just what technicians are available yeah and it is also really nice to have some some floaters in your and on your schedule somewhere some people that you can use as floaters in case you get into a little bit of a bind so that your scheduling person doesn't get um zapped because if your scheduling person gets zapped enough times they're like uh don't know what to do doesn't really matter they're going to persistently and consistently underbook undersell you know especially i was that person for a time i i got some serious ptsd from a couple of overbook periods that i had to learn how to really understand what our schedule was capable of so i didn't fall back into that but it was it was probably one of my biggest fears as a scheduler and something that i worked really hard not to pass on to the next scheduler was like overbook it you overbook it you can always you can always move them off of it and i'm in the background being like i'm like but like i understood the idea of that but i i had i gotten zapped so many times that even though i knew that that was the right thing to do it was so hard for me to do personally and i was able to teach it to somebody else because i i knew that it was the right thing to do but it is it is easy to get like yeah terrified of that feeling of just like first thing in the morning overwhelm so those are some tools to really help you prepare for that and make sure that that's not happening you know every single day it's it's interesting though because large organizations publicly traded companies very successful and profitable and so for airlines for exist for you know they certainly overbook right and they have a certain number of cancellations blah blah blah blah blah but you know they're playing the averages and they know there's going to be a certain percentage of the time that they're going to have to you know offer the deal yeah yeah i think their models are a little off though i guess some things have changed and they're doing that a lot more because too many canceled flights system's broken at the moment but you know they're going to figure it out but you know what they have been doing that since long before covid since long before any of this stuff happened and it worked really really well for a really really long time yes things are different now and we all have to figure out how to work within the new the new realm and they do too so i don't think it's shocking or surprising at all that they're they're struggling a little bit they're still trying to do the same old thing that they've always done and times are different uh uh you would call it unprecedented times i think in the context of house cleaning we call it getting zapped and the context of business bigger businesses they're just doing business that's yeah part of it yeah yeah you know yeah it's not fail it's not you know a lot of drama it's so yeah there are certain personas at the time this is going to be the drill yeah and really that seems to be such a smarter way to do it even for small businesses listen so p is we always overbook and on the morning of this is how it looks this is how we manage that not oh my gosh it's gonna be chaos it's gonna be terrible no this is this is how we do that this is how we deal with it and having better systems in place for managing that so it seems more part of the norm it just makes more sense it helps keep you from leaving you know empty produce on the stand leaving those those like you can never get that revenue back once that day has passed you can never get those hours back and if you do have to move one to two jobs off of that day you are getting that maximum revenue out of that day you literally squeezed out the absolute maximum out of that day and it does it it works it still works and no matter what size you are it still works to do it that way and be able to walk that line and if you I mean we've we've done you know discussions on you know break even point before and most of the homes you're cleaning in a day the revenue off of those homes is going to cover your variable cost cover your fixed operating cost it's really those last few homes that you're cleaning that really represents the profit you can hope to make so okay you know maybe I'm cleaning 50 homes today and two of them cancel also okay I'm still cleaning 48 but you know if you're working with a with a 10% profit margin then you know that's 40% of your profit you just lost by not cleaning those two homes that's a really good point for sure which kind of defeats the purpose of getting out of bed and cleaning any homes at all I mean and I think that's where where the KPIs really come in handy because there's a disconnect between the information that the owner has the owner knows about break even that the owner understands it but without that tracking without the person that's doing the scheduling seeing it understanding it on a regular basis viscerally understanding it they're still going to under schedule they're still the scheduled light because they even though yeah yeah yeah I hear what you're saying but I don't want the chaos in my life so even the education about why and the amount of money that that's your problem as the owner of the company that's your problem I'm just worried about my problem I don't want to worry right so as I think especially now we are seeing even more of that where people are not really happy to put themselves on the line for the owner to be making more money without without really good understanding with good deep understanding adding in a little matter-meaning measure in an autonomy I know I haven't hit on that in a while but so that that employee feels like this is also my company right this is this is my company too so I'm trying to fix these problems as well without that they're going to continue to underbook undersell one one way that I know some companies deal with that is the scheduler doesn't sell right they don't they don't handle sales but when you're a smaller company that's usually not an option right you're you're handling all of that you're wearing all the hats so many hats on one place one head and and the truth is many cbos are having the same issue they also are like yeah I know that I need to book it tight because otherwise I'm I'm losing my profit but it's not worth it to me like I don't want to hassle mornings are so chaotic so back to the master schedule y'all schedule helps a lot of that replanting is a lot better than post planning so much better I mean it also goes into like what are the expectations of your technicians what are their hours expectations and what else what are they what is their efficiency how productive are they there's lots of different ways to measure this that is sure if you don't want to have that level of you know work on each technician or each team then then you have a you have a staffing constraint on your production and that needs to be addressed as well and it might be a matter of having you know extra staff so that you don't have to worry about that but still make your break even that's okay you can make that decision if you still really want to make that that profit mark without having to do all of the morning stuff that's a possibility too you can do that there's there are decisions to make that happen but um it will also help you feel safer to be able to make that happen in the future get yourself into a place of being like oh this isn't so bad kind of into yourself that it's a good thing um without throwing yourself into the fire well I'm also going to say that that takes us back to data right you have to have the data you have to be able to know what those numbers are so that you can make those decisions otherwise you're flying blind here sometimes you're getting lucky and sometimes you're not and the data keeps it so that you're always on the lucky side right you can make those smarter decisions like and then even if you make the decision no Mondays or maybe not Mondays Fridays are always chaotic and no I don't want to have a chaotic Friday I'm always booking them like all right then you know you know what's going to happen you know that you're losing money because you have the data to see huh maybe that's a trade-off for you and I know well it is a trade-off fine she's got to have the data uh especially important given with what's happening with wages and inflation and all of the you know changes that you can be sending out the same number of teams and cleaning the same number of homes and find out that your break-even you know number is changing gas changing with the price of our supplies changing equipment and a lot of times those numbers are changing such a small amount you think it's not going to impact I was actually talking to somebody just a couple weeks ago barkeeper's friend has gone up in their area but only by 12 cents what the heck how much barkeeper's friend do you guys use right most companies are using a lot of barkeeper's friends 12 cents well let's get that number out that's losing some money right there you've got to you've got to manage that 12 cents is a lot but it can easily seem like 12 cents I'll just dig in my purse for that 12 cents ah no you're already doing that by the way you're already digging in your purse thank you you know we're kind of snuggling up to the top of the hour here we got a few minutes um I want to shift gears for a minute uh you're going to be uh going to uh Chicago for the uh artsy convention this year aren't you I am I am very excited Chicago I did you ask what am I going to be doing in Chicago in October just fool around no I'm going to convention for the first time but I'll also be speaking at convention and I am so excited well what's your topic what's your title tell us uh my topic is um about data as we've been talking about it but essentially how to use your kpi's and leverage those to maximize your profits and understanding how to how to really delve into your data in a meaningful way that it's they're not just numbers that they are also ways to influence your actions as well nice nice very excited you know when you're speaking Monday oh everybody come in on time yeah I'll be on I'll be on the first day I'm on the first day um don't remember the exact time off the top of my head I have it somewhere but yeah I'll be on Monday and I'm very excited it'll be my first time going yay well and actually I said come in on time I'm gonna modify that until everybody come in early because Sunday we're having a uh like a roadshow event at uh uh Gosha's new office oh yeah so that's happening on Sunday if you come in if you come in too late you're gonna miss that I think it's at two o'clock is that right Tom it's gonna be uh the afternoon it's gonna be just for several hours that that Sunday afternoon um I think it's two to six on Sunday well this is going to be speaking you know I'm going to be speaking um Audrey come on out early you could be speaking I mean it's going to be cool RJ is going to be there Gosha's obviously going to be there yeah so I would just be really excited to see her office I know that she's got some cool things there he's so excited it's not even up yet it's not yeah yeah so excited so I'm really looking forward to seeing it she's got so many great ideas uh I saw the blueprint I think last last month and it looks amazing I can't wait yeah all right so Tom what are you speaking about at convention I'm gonna be uh at least I'm gonna be talking about consistency and then we're gonna be uh demonstrating you know how we you know can measure consistency in our clean businesses and you know the benefit and value that can be created by doing that we talked about earlier in terms of you know happier technicians lower technician turnover happier customers more lifetime value from your customers so this whole idea of you know squeezing every dollar out of the schedule if you're taking people off their normal homes or you do that I mean it's kind of the the calculus that you have to do and sometimes in the long run you're going to be better off you know throwing out a you know couple tomatoes if you have to in order to you know maintain the consistency so I do think that the convention is going to be focusing a lot this this year on uh so not necessarily recession proofing our businesses but creating um creating different things within our businesses that can help us to manage the recession so that we can you know come through it hopefully better off than we started you know there are many companies that went through the 2008 problem and grew and had better times also the opportunity the opportunity to come up better is definitely there the matter of having a plan and it's a matter of execution because it's going to be fun this year because of that you just want to be you want to be on the successful side of the equation and if you are you will be more successful than you would have been otherwise and so there's going to be some new new ways of looking at things this year because of that people are looking from a new direction of uh how important it is to really optimize so much of what we do we're in the past it was just sort of like just go out there and clean some stuff that's good enough yeah right and then Tom I can remember you and I even telling people just go clean some stuff you're killing me right now just cleaning right and now we're going to be talking everybody's going to be talking about a lot more than just cleaning stuff it's going to be more about how to be much more professional and to actually be growing these businesses in much larger better stronger ways so that's where it's going you know you're going to be seeing that in the in the in the months and years I had be shifting it's you know it's a long time ago we talked about you know we're you know who makes the best vacuum cleaner and then it was like sales and conversion rates and stuff like that and all of that's important but more and more the discussion is going to be on optimization you know how do I really price for for profit and you know how do I manage my schedule and get the best return off of my workforce and you know that's a more more complicated you know exercise but but but the benefits in terms of actually being profitable that's where the money is made also really you know taking taking Carter looks at pricing and how people are pricing their jobs and that what you already have on the table is your most valuable resource and how do you how do you optimize that and maximize what you already have on your schedule and on your table um that it's not necessarily always looking outwards it might be looking into what you already already have capable and I think that's going to be a big part of of starting with a really strong really strong base um before you reach out into all these new things but that I think that's going to have a really big part of that conversation of what we're what we're going into right now yeah agreed I totally agree so I guess more more immediately we talked at the beginning of the show that uh we're not going to be here next week we're going to be doing some live events in Charleston uh beginning of next week I guess uh there's a two-day event Tuesday and Wednesday and say what we call a main central academy alive let's say a workshop for uh main central partners where we show them basically what we call core kpis out of main central and kind of how they stack up against the entire main central community and show them how to use main central to drive those numbers in a direction to get more predictable outcomes and those you're going to be doing a uh a program on Thursday and Friday next week Thursday Friday and Saturday directly following your event um yeah the employee lifecycle event so uh we'll be talking about uh the different things that you need to do at each stage of the employee lifecycle so that you can keep your employees throughout this entire time period with um an average retention the the goal is an average retention of three years so if that sounds like something that you're really would love to have then you might want to consider that event now I know it's really late but we are doing a live streaming event and the live streaming is amazing y'all if you have never done live streaming or if you haven't had a good experience our live streaming is amazing you're you feel like you're in the room you're on a big huge monitor and you're brought into the discussion and conversation in exactly the same way as everyone else is and our event is actually a workshop it's not uh education and training it's not just education training it's you putting stuff in place so that you go home with your new plan so I'm excited about it so if you're interested I guess the live stream you can sign up whenever yeah so uh have any spots left if if anybody wants to uh do they actually come to Charleston oh yeah absolutely of course people can can um come live we always have room you know it's your office time it's a big office week we we can lots of people let's put you on let's go yeah so is this where we would sign up yep that's it I'll drop that link in chat hey Pam are you're live streaming okay yeah yeah we have quite a few people live streaming this time we're looking forward to that oh you saw it done in Vegas uh Pam was at our event live in Vegas and she saw the live stream how well it works so I'm excited well we are at the top of the hour we're gonna be we're gonna be working next week so we're not going to be here but we'll be back week after that well we'll be in August at that point right sure well oh god where's the year going August 3rd same place it always goes Tom look Tom Froze so cute like look at how cute that is all right I don't think Tom can stop us I'm trying are you efforting Tom I'm efforting I don't know what happened there because my screen just