 Hey good afternoon everybody Tom Stewart here with Liz Trotter and our guest today is Trisha Lake. This is smart business moves How in the world are things going in Fargo Crazy crazy, yeah Go ahead even prior to Kobe even prior to Kobe and we had I think it's like the United States like world's Lowest unemployment rate. We talked about that one of the times of foundations and so with COVID now. It's like just even worse What is the unemployment rate up there? Right now, I don't know. I know before Kobe it was I think right now It's 5% which I think is not horrible for the situation But I think before Kobe it was like 1.5 percent So it's not an apples and apples comparison though because no for COVID The other and yeah So now we're fighting our other competitors Yeah, it's a different scenario right now, that's yeah, yeah, I know you can't really go by unemployment rate at all It's interesting to watch though because you know knowing pre-covid we had only like 1.5 percent And even now if it's up to 5% or whatever it is that's a big increase and we have we have employers is begging people to work here I mean You get a it's just kind of crazy Yeah, it's the jobs are definitely Yeah It is really hard. So I have been approached Recently though by a few people more than one Wants to know about Coming back to work here because their government jobs are requiring vaccines. Oh, okay So they're like, yeah, I don't I don't want to work there right I have a few really good like nurses like that work in the Emergency rooms and like incubating anything is incubating client patients and stuff and they work all of your COVID with no additional pay or anything and They're looking to hang in up the steps scopes because of this So it's gonna be interesting Because they're being required to yeah But then in our area we're starting to see a big corporation starting to require it So we have Blue Cross Blue Shield just announced that they're gonna be requiring it and I don't know just crazy So it might change the game, you know Yeah I've already had people approach me about it. So coming to work. I'm like, hey, all right I'm gonna hang outside like hospitals with tents All of that and this is the capital here, so we have a lot of government employees here Yeah, I'm like, oh, I'm thinking there's gonna be a good chuck of them that are not going to want to There there's some I know there's a lot of anger Angry all those angry people to work here though Do you have customers asking about you know, do are your employees vaccinated or not me here with yeah, either one of you Yeah, well, we we did and we don't get it anymore really But I was pretty it's starting with my with my office team and I just said it's no it's the truth be told is I don't want anyone knowing anyone's personal business and So when our clients ask our customer service team just says unfortunately, we're not allowed to We're not allowed to disclose our medical history. However, you know, if you want someone to mask up we're more than happy to and You know, we've had a few cancellations but hardly any so it's not affecting us at all client lines. I Have you had just skips? Oh, that was loud. I think I'm not sure we've had a couple cancellations like literally like two or three But just because COVID numbers are going up and they're getting nervous but really nothing that I am concerned about changing anything for I Have had a few but not very many. I have not had For a while there I'm gonna see if I mute myself It Test test Yeah, that's it if you can turn the volume down on your computer. Sometimes that helps Okay Yeah, that sounds better for sure No, I'm on my laptop. No, it doesn't know now when I talk when Tom talks, you're okay. It's when I talk But when oh anyway when we started actually tracking how many people there were it was very very few people that were actually Calling and asking about it But initially they're like everybody's calling and everybody's Want somebody that's vaccinated like give me numbers. Give me real numbers Digits not not everybody. Nobody thing So yeah, and we We have it to where it's like our email reminders and our text reminders Have like a little thing notation at the top and it just says simply says, you know If you would like your clean technicians to wear a mask, please let us know and so people are responding to those and saying Hey, thanks for asking. Yes, I do or but the majority of people are saying no There's just you know, there's I would say 10% or less that are asking for so and then we just notate their account and do so so We don't have an option here. You have to mask up. Yeah, we've been doing the mass thing all along The question of vaccinations comes up occasionally. I don't say I don't know to what percent Liz you're doing something interesting on their name badges You actually have like a hyperdermic needle or a needle with a red circle in a line through it. Yeah Yeah, yeah So and it worked out well for us because the people that are not vaccinated don't want to get vaccinated and they really like it Say on their name tag. No, I'm not vaccinated And the people who are vaccinated really want people to know they are vaccinated. Yes, I'm vaccinated. So So yeah, it's worked out well they can't talk about it so they feel like Just can't talk any any politics so they feel like they at least get to get their voice out there Yeah Yeah, well, it's it's getting crazy. I know At least one Actually multiple people right now that are in the strategic success groups are Down to a bad place two companies here in Washington One of them had normally has I think eight employees. She's down to one all seven the other seven are all in quarantine or have covered and then I I just saw a Chantel from Little she's just a little ways up north for me. Maybe 40 minutes up north and She just said that she's right back to where she was with everybody in quarantine and I'm like, dang dang it. Dang it There's quite a few people. There's Yeah, like oh closing down again. Yeah, we kind of we unmasked probably two months ago, maybe three months ago and We didn't get any Feedback from it at all and We haven't had any COVID cases any of our staff We had two in the very beginning of COVID One neck of wood for you, Trisha. Yeah, one they got from the roommate because the room it was a nurse and Yeah, so we yeah, we've been doing good here and everyone in at least in our area is me I hate to say over it but they're just You probably live in an area that is more Just different than where I'm at, you know, oh Different parts of the country are definitely handling it differently. That's for darn sure. Yeah, absolutely we have concerts like we have huge concerts going and We had all kinds of stuff already We just had a big festival and now they're like tracing back to All of these people the huge percentage of people that are all coming down with COVID so One of my so my son's ex is a nurse. She's a COVID nurse and she went to the festival and She's like, oh my god, everybody's getting sick now. What the heck? Why? So there you're tracing it back to this festival that she went to she's like, I should have known better Yeah, you don't know so she's hoping she's quarantined Is she sick? She's not sick Okay, no They quarantined her just because so such a large percentage of the festival is coming coming up Positive testing positive. She's not sick at all. She's not testing positive yet. She's vaccinated. So You know, they I guess if they're if you're vaccinated and you test positive they test you again in two days Because of the back of the throat thing or whatever, I don't know what that whole deal is She explained it to me. I only I only 70% listened SOP You sound like me now Okay So the topic for this month is leadership and I guess there's a pretty strong Relationship between leadership and team building and during, you know, trying times certainly Strong leadership can make big difference and and and building a team Trisha, I know that you've got a really successful business in your market You basically own Fargo in the house cleaning industry So I know the labor market is tight, but at the same time, I mean you guys are are You know, are you back to where you were pre-pandemic? How how's your state of your business now? Yeah, we are bigger than we were pre-covid right now So I'm trying to think like pre-covid. I think we have 35 techs and now we we went up to I can't I guess a hammer-on text we have but we went up to almost 60 employees and Now we're trailing back down to 50. We have like a mental health crisis basically happening in our company currently so we are Implementing a crap load of stuff to Take care of our staff mentally right now Yeah, that's awesome. Talk to us more about what you're doing. I've seen a few things that you're doing Trisha Can you share a little bit more about that? Before you do that, could you first explain what a mental health crisis looks like? I've seen a lot of things happen and I don't know. We might be living in a mental health crisis and not even know it It's a good question. It's a good question Yeah, so if anybody knows me knows I'm kind of a hard-ass This is kind of who I am and so we started to notice that call-offs were Excelling and yep, our company has grown a lot. So we're gonna have more call-offs, you know, of course but I Just wasn't sitting easy with the amount of call-offs we were having each day and so that led me To the truth be told get a little feisty some people And then that led me to down the path of figuring out why these people were calling off And I swear 90% of the situations were mental health. So anxiety depression We had a gal pull up into our parking lot one day to go to work And she had an anxiety like panic attack and she hadn't she left and so we're like what is causing this to happen? You know because we our company culture has always been really good and really strong And so to me if something is broken, I want to figure out how to fix it And so to me this this says hey something's broken in our company right now. And so you know, we started talking about it more and more and more and There's so many of my employees have so many different things going on you know, we have one that right now is fighting through cancer and we have You know multiple other ones that have just traumas and they're in their past Childhoods and things like that that are kind of just getting brought up with a lot of the depression and things like that in our life right now and 95% of all the things that the reason why they weren't make it to work had nothing to do with our company But it had to do with their personal life situations And so I thought okay. Well, how can we fix this and so right now? We're working on bonus structures to be able to start offering our staff things that are going to be beneficial for their mental health So massages chiropractic care Yoga classes all these different things that I think is a way to nurture them in those manners. I Also did a group therapy session in my company. So the other day. Yeah, the other day I put on a notice to anyone that was struggling emotionally or mentally they could come into the office at 530 and we're gonna have a pow wow or into my office and 12 people came and 12 people cried and 12 people stole told their stories And I learned a lot about those 12 people and I learned so much that you know When they're calling off, it's not it's not that they're playing hooky and it's not that they hate the company or hate me or things like that They have some serious things going on And so now we're trying to develop how can we help them? so Wow, that's a tremendous amount of trust. I mean You know people what do you I mean, can you imagine what your your your your team members your employees were thinking? It's like gee if I do this, I'm not gonna get fired. I mean, yeah yeah, you know, I heard of you know drug addictions and You know, bless child molestations in their childhoods. I heard pregnancy losses I heard so many different things that has just happened to people and With with all this COVID stuff the last year and a half and being away from people and all the stress in people's lives I think it's compounding right now and it's really affecting some people at least it is for me in my company and so we're trying to figure out avenues what we can do and so One of the things we're now going to do is we're gonna have monthly group therapy So once a month, it's on the calendar. Whoever wants to join or whoever wants to come Can get and sit and talk with each other and they get to tell their story and talk about things in their lives But you know, it was like a week ago I think that we did our first one and it was so healing and I had so many employees reach out to me saying I just want to say thank you so much and I haven't ever told anyone this and all these different things and So that's one of the things we're going to be doing The other thing I've been doing is I've been doing a mental health check-in every day where They have different stars that you know, I just kind of put a thanks and hey, how are you doing and it has You know purple star. It is not very good. I need help, you know blue star is I'm start I'm struggling like and it goes up and every day they're rating how they're doing mentally And so for me, it's a gauge of what am I doing right? What am I doing wrong? How can I help them? What do they do with the stars? Is it something? Yeah, so let me show you here. It's it's pretty cool And at first the tricky toll is I kind of thought I was annoying them by me posting this Because I'm like doing it every day and then then they actually said something to me the other day And they're like, I just want to thank you for doing this. I'm like, oh, I'm not annoying you good So here's the picture. Let's see here So the picture just has Different color hearts and then different meaning and then they put the heart of color emoji of how they're feeling and It allows them to be able to just get out their feelings and then their co-workers can reach out to them for support if they need to Yeah, what do you mean we use slack so we have a Communication channel. So this is under work announcements that goes on there daily Another thing that we're doing Cut me off because I have a lot of things we're doing but another thing that we're doing is we're creating custom goals for each employee So, you know, what do you want to do? We create bonuses and systems in our company. And so, you know, do you want to you know on your goal list? Do you want to buy a house in the next year? Do you want to buy a new car? Do you want to go back to college? And so we're trying to create custom goals for each of them and then we're going to be using that for their bonus system So when they earn, you know, $10 bonus, it'll be going towards their specific goal So that they can achieve something that's very important to them in their life So will their bonuses go there automatically or will they have the option to put it there? So how our system works is it's an app. I use automate motivate and so you You get rewarded and you get points for everything cleaning out your vacuum at the end of every week You know cleaning your company car out Getting perfect attendance quality scores all these different things and then you are rewarded these points And then you can save your points for whatever you want to so right now There's like subway gift cards massages oil changes of all kinds of stuff dream vacation. There's like a $3,500 dream vacation So they can say whatever they want to But I see so many of my team members Using their points for stuff that I don't find very meaningful like, you know, just little silly things And I thought that if we can help them work on their goals together and we can create, you know A custom goal in there of let's say, you know, Sophie wants to travel in New York City New York City really bad, you know, I'm gonna say Sophie I want you to go make me a budget of what it's gonna cost you to take a trip to New York City That you've always wanted to do, you know, so she comes back and says, okay, I did it. It's gonna cost me $2,500 We'll create a goal in her in her things and hey, you need this many XP points for a trip to New York City Because the happier that I can make them in their personal lives The more you know, the more fulfilled they are the better co-workers are gonna be and the better teammates are gonna be So it's up to them to take that money and put it on a cookie jar or something. You're not doing that for them Well, we don't it's not money. So it's Yeah, it's an automate they don't get to touch They create goals and they can spend the points how they want to so if they really want to buy just subway gift cards They can or they can save their points up for their dream item Got it and so they'll they can just spend it however they want but everybody's going to have this Goal that's in there and your thought is that most people are going to want to save toward their goal I hope so and the truth we told is I'm probably gonna remove some of the silly things off of there I don't really want them spending the money on Because I want them to achieve their goals right You want to be able to to reward them for that so I love that that sounds like a great idea and you're doing all of that and automate motivate Yep, and then I purchased the Dare to Dream program from you and so I have to get I Have to get my team together to do this, you know that that a Dare to Dream program to be able to come up with their goals Yeah Well, it sounds exciting. It does sound like you have a lot of stuff going on What have you noticed just since starting to put some focus on this? Have you noticed anything or with your With the people calling out or not, right? That was what you were trying to address initially. Yeah Yeah, so we really started hammering that's probably about a week ago week and a half ago because of the issue we've lost a Good handful of employees because of it. So, you know when I wasn't as caring about the situation I was annoyed by the callouts. I didn't handle it probably the best way You know and so they wanted me to be more mushy and I was more stern and that doesn't always sit well with everybody when they have personal life things happening and So since since we just took a look back and decided to change this, you know, we're starting to see some some better But I mean it depends day by day Our hope is in the long run. We will create Better and healthier people Well, I gotta tell you I kind of like that you're telling us this because it really Ties into what I'm always saying about matter meaning a measure, right? You're making the people feel like they matter Yeah, I talking about these things and you're bringing some meaning into their lives with the goals and You got a measure on there, too, right? This is what I'm bringing and tracking. So I Thinking is All those add a little bit of autonomy in there for that little a and I can't imagine that it isn't going to make a huge difference in your in your business Even if you still have a few callouts, I think your retention is going to be way better Than other people in your area. So I love that. I Just checked my stats for the day because I just posted it I posted our measurement thing 30 45 minutes ago and right now Every single one of my employees is above the line meaning good So that's all we have we have 13 people right now who have voted their Their shades, let's see. Yeah Oh So there is no green blue or purple today right now now, I can't say they're not going to be But they vote does everybody get to see how everybody's voting or Everything is really open in our company. I mean we we do everything open So when someone breaks and damages something they have to post it in this open communication channel, you know And when they call off they call off publicly as everything is open So are you at all concerned that people who are maybe in the purple aren't just going to want to post? Or whatever the bottom one is Well, we kind of know we always know what's going on and the truth be told. Well, so let's go. Let's find another day Here's another day So there was like six blues one purple so blues not, you know not doing well Yeah, so everyone's been pretty dang open now. There's I'm sure a few people that I know of that Haven't posted on here because they're shy too, but I was really impressed. I had one of my employees recently had a tubular pregnancy and she hasn't really came out about it with anybody. She's pretty private and She messaged me about the group therapy and she's like I really wish I could go and she's like I just don't think I'm ready to talk about it yet And she's like, but I really hope it goes well for everybody and I'm hoping I can go to the next one so We kind of we have a pretty good, you know finger on knowing where our employees are sitting mentally and And So our hope is really to start just being open and communicating and the cool thing is in that in that group therapy session I learned things about employees. I've had for years that I had no idea that I thought I knew everything about And they learned things about their co-workers, which truthfully bonded them together And then you know, there's what two particular people have gone through the same thing that was in that group And so the next day my manager put those two together out in the field and said, you know, let's let's improve and Let's let allow them some bonding time, you know Did you share as well in that group I did All right, so So one of the things that I like about what you're saying is like I do not recommend That every company out there hear what Trisha is doing and just go and start a group therapy session Right because that's not gonna work for everybody Good job Tom. Yeah Tom you pointed out something that I I think is critical for people to recognize Is the reason why that's working for you is because the people do trust you if there wasn't a high level of trust First off, nobody's gonna show up And then if they do show up, they're not gonna share So you're that that high level of trust already speaks to The leadership that you have going on in the company And before you ever and they even noticed this right that there was a problem and thought okay I'm gonna tackle this problem as well. I'm I'm gonna do something about it but a lot of people aren't Aren't I mean none of us are qualified to do it, but a lot of us aren't capable either of of doing it And without making things worse And you know, this is really an innovative Approach I guess I mean, I'm saying that I'm not aware of anybody else in the industry that is Is doing anything like this and In a tight labor market, you know a lot of times our go-to solution is we need to spend more indeed We need to be hiring more you know what it you know increase, you know benefits pay whatever it's all about hiring and Really, you know taking care of the people that you have and helping them be more productive Might be a more rational way of spending our time Yeah, my goal has you know, the last five plus years has always been to take a really really good care of my staff and that allows my staff to take really really good care of our clients and so Seeing my staff struggle it. It's hard for me not to take that personally Because I've worked so hard to make sure that's not the case But looking deeper into this I've just realized it's really not us I mean it is a lot of life situations all piling up on people and people are stressed and So if we can figure out ways to nurture and take care of our current staff, you know That's really it's the same thing with a client You know, it's it's so much easier to take care of a client and then is to keep chasing new clients You know, but if your bucket has a thousand holes in them and you're losing all your clients You're just kind of the work five times harder. So the number one goal always needs to be is to take care of staff Take care of clients, you know so I'm kind of just Role playing this out in my head and You know, I I can appreciate that being able to share your story with somebody else can can Make the load lighter and it could be helpful. It could be cathartic. I guess maybe is is a fancy word for it, but a lot of a lot of the life challenges that people are dealing with they need help and Just the discussion go in a direction where you know, this is my problem and You know, can you guys help me solve it or is it just a matter of listening? I think a lot of it is listening and then again We're gonna work together on those goals of how to help them, you know And so one thing we're looking at as well as an employee assistance program and what that means is we're going to be setting up We actually have a meeting tomorrow It's called the village and it's a it's a mental health facility here in town where our goal is to be able to get Linked up with them. So if we have an employee that's having an emergency mental type situation, you know They have an immediate therapist They can go see tomorrow and that therapist will see him one or two times and then they'll make a referral And they'll get him in somewhere for a long-term situation And so just having the resources for my team I think is is gonna make a big difference But I mean in that group therapy One of the common things that I seen in there was loneliness So of the 12 people I would say 99.9 percent of them. We're all Just lonely and one of more friendships and one of more time and things like that So, you know that that made me say, okay, I need to have more TLC get-togethers to get their co-workers together So I created a TLC event page on Slack where every two weeks now we're having Something tomorrow. We're having arts and crafts night where we're doing string art Um, and then in two weeks from that we're having something else and so basically helping them With just that social side of things that we're starting to lack because of COVID uh hoping That you know, things aren't going to shut down for you in your area because that's really been no that's always been one of our strategies is to Keep that calendar going so we have we have weekly activities that are team activities and then monthly in-person activities and things down and COVID really made it hard to do any of the in-person activities so And that was only once a month. So doing them every two weeks that is You know, that's that's uh ambitious ambitious to get everybody together like that So when you say weekly team activities does that What's a team activity versus getting everybody together? I don't know team activities are just things that you might do online like um, everybody Like a game that we might play first person to send a picture of Whatever a lamp with fringe winds All right, you know that kind of thing just just fun fun stuff Just a regular activity, but not getting together activity I always want to do a scavenger hunt Scavenger hunts are blasts Really? I you have one in your Foundations material Trisha and your Team builders pack. There's probably one for Halloween one for Thanksgiving one for Christmas So there's a lot of them. They're they're pretty easy to do. They're very easy to do The thing I find hard to do is bingo Oh, yeah, that's what my In two weeks from this next one, whatever it's bingo. We have bingo at work Okay, bingo is fun in person, but it's really hard online Like slack or something. It's really difficult. It's kind of like we'll fortune Yeah, we tried to do We'll fortune in this group Trisha Um a few months ago. It was painful But and we tried multiple times we're like, okay, we gotta be able to do it. It's gotta be better No We're not doing it anymore Yeah, no Learned our lesson there. Yeah, not everything works, right? right So to show uh, one of the things you said early earlier was that you like to Really care a lot about your people And then they care a lot about your customers What are some of the other things that you do have done? That are along that line I know there's a lot of them. You know what happened. I done is more more it um I mean, we normally always do like once a month things like we take but we take a bus Um an hour and a half out of town. We load up a big party bus type thing And uh, we just go an hour and a half out of town and go sledding and with our company and their families and stuff Um, we do regular like dinners and things like that out. We do big barbecues at my house with bouncy houses Um We do Oh, yeah, I forgot this. I rented out a camp. Um recently About a hundred people go. Um, there was 13 cabins that hold 12 13 people each or something like that um, and so we rent the whole campground out and it had you know paddleboards and kayaks and huge things for kids to to swim on and full commercial kitchen and we um, we all went out there for the weekend So Friday through Sunday and that was that was the first time and that's going to be a yearly event for sure because that was fun Um I just sent one of my employees to disney land um for her 10 year anniversary so We do we have like excellent benefits like medical and dental and vision and 401k and all kinds of stuff so Do you pay 100 of your benefits trisha? No No, if I pay 50 of medical And then dental and vision are super cheap for the employee because we have a group plan Um, and so they're I mean they're like five dollars a week or something like that So they pay that 100 on their own. Um, and then 401k we do a company match. Um, I think we match a two to one ratio Oh, I said that's a good match. Yeah. Yeah, that's a real good match How many people do you I would finish the sentence if I knew what the question was but I don't She looks cute though. Yeah Was that me did did I you feel Yeah Do you have that participate in your 401k program? I have never been able to get traction I've tried it multiple times and never really got traction with it It it really tells me a lot about people If they take our medical and go on 401k If they don't it makes me a little worried. Um And uh, not everyone takes it and I really wish they would because it's like an instant pay raise to them Yeah, but um, the people that are thinking hey, I want a long term be here They're all invested into it you know Yeah, so you think like I can feel out which of my employees are looking to stay here long term and which aren't Yeah, that that makes sense I have just never had good luck. I'm wondering uh, I always Thought it might have something to do with like the age of the people that I hire I I would get buy-in from older people A lot of young people So, you know in their 20s. I start seeing buy-in more with the people that are in their 30s 40s But yeah, and for us working a lot we have Very minimal 40s in our company. Um, we have a hard time getting the mistake because of physical work wise So the majority of our staff members are between 20 and 35 Except for all the staff. I'm the youngest Yeah We don't get any men that are old all of our men are young always Yeah, never have older mass not never actually I can think of a couple that were older but Majority of our men are young Getting the ever your demographic to participate in some of the benefit programs can be difficult though It's like, you know from my 20s. Why don't what am I thinking about the retirement? Yeah a long time to go For us what we do is we had an insurance Our insurance guy come in and talk talk it over with everybody and like kind of explain everything um, and I felt like that was really good because Previously we didn't do that. We just kind of gave them a form. Hey, do you want to do this? Do you not? And they'd all say no because they didn't understand anything and you know a lot of times This is their first job that they've ever had these benefits offered to them. And so they just didn't understand it Um, so once once we started having presentations and stuff like that We do once a year now it really helped people to understand to not be scared of it We do definitely have better Buy-in with everything that we have somebody come and present on Definitely been better doing that This is just do you want to do it? No Yeah, if if so it's just scary for him, you know Yeah, hey Denet Hey Denet, do you have any questions for trisha? I don't know if anybody else is on this. We never can see who's on here until you guys comment But if anybody else has any questions for trisha, she is She's one of those people that is pretty much an open book about most everything not just your company, but everywhere if you have never That's true That's true. If you have never followed her facebook page, you should hey Linda Uh, you will have clients are clients on there all about walnuts and everything else I didn't see that Why were they arguing about walnuts? Because I I posted um Well More you can't get people to bicker the funnier. I think it is So it was it was that post about um It was like a heart or something, but it was a walnut or Oh Somebody who like smoking. Oh, yeah the lung. Yeah, this is what happens for marijuana lungs, right? And Then all these people are arguing about that's a walnut and all this stuff So it was just really funny Uh, yeah, I do remember seeing that now. I I didn't see the the arguing, but I saw the post It's interesting they got a walnut out here was that a mistake Yeah, well, that's what they thought I think they thought that I like seriously didn't know it was a walnut and so then they're like that's a walnut and I'm like No, you guys just don't know what a bad lung looks like this is And then yesterday I put the um, I put this picture of britney spears You see that one? Yeah, and it says um It talks about like a side note of britney and it tells a story Where britney is in line at coals and she sees a sweet little boy And she gives them like like great. Um, I don't know great talk that he can be anything He wants to be when he gets older and uh, this little boy's name was steve jobs And so then people are arguing on that they're like what are you talking about steve jobs was born in All right, so It was funny TLC cleaning if you guys want to follow Trisha's page because you know, I'm sure she would love to have cleaning business owners following her page She does anything we've been meddling in the last few months Yeah A lot of people are are hearing about the A mental health crisis that's going on right now that covet is really just causing so many people to Struggle with their mental health So which unfortunately when they struggle mentally Then they call off a work and then they struggle financially And then they struggle more emotionally and so it's this revolving circle that it's hard to get them out of And so we definitely have to just try to figure out ways in this new weird covet world Of how to nurture people now, you know Unprecedented times. Yeah, I don't think a lot of people I don't think they want To do anything about people's mental health And I don't think that they are most of the time they're not willing to I just don't You know, I'm not gonna go there So I'm sure that a lot of people are thinking. Yeah Yeah You know, I think of everything in our company as the circle, right? So if my staff are not doing well mentally They are not going to take care of the company well And then the company is going to financially Struggle and then, you know, everything is at circle So the more you want the company to do well, you really have to look at that whole circle and say, okay Well, is is their emotional health my personal problem? No Does it affect your company? Yeah, does that affect your pocketbook? Yeah, so now it's my problem So that's kind of where those that circular effect you need to really think about that is is We can say a lot of things aren't our problem, you know, I've bailed employees out of jail before I've Picked them up when they have flat tires. I've you know picked them up when their car doesn't work You just do what you need to do because it's that beneficial circle of of life, you know Do you at all concern yourself with Uh potential liability Because I feel like there could no nothing there Okay, and that that must be Tied into the trust there must be like a two-way trust thing going on there, huh? Yeah This is all a volunteer basis. So this is after hours. No one's being paid for it Which we're just all we're doing as we are allowing a safe space And so far we've seen really great results already Of just having people you can trust You know Yeah Yeah So then this is kind of from a leadership standpoint, you know Trisha, I mean we've known each other for for a while Would you say you've evolved to this point? I mean hold the clock back, you know five years or so ago would you know You begin the whole discussion by you're a little bit of a hard ass at times Um, I'm still a hard ass. Don't get me wrong I'm queen b of hard ass, but um But I love that I mean, I love that you're I wouldn't maybe call it that so much But I I do think that it makes good sense to you don't have to be one way or the other You can be strict and stick to the rules and still be very caring and very giving and Absolutely Yeah, I've always been that mixture Um, one thing that for me hiring a human resources manager has allowed me to step out more And not be so You know because I'm an emotional person so If I'm angry, I'm really angry and so for me to be able to have my human resources manager handle situations That um, I would immediately handle and not in a good way is is a great thing for me because he's he's like my you know calm Just I don't know. He's great It's great So having a good leadership in your company is really important because You don't have to be great at everything, but if you can find those puzzle pieces that are all good at each individual spots It's wonderful But you know for the last 11 years of business I feel like I have always been truthfully some type of uh therapists or psychologists because With employees comes issues, you know, and whether it's divorce whether it's miscarriages, whether it's whatever it is There's always been in my company an association with that And the more my employees Can trust that they have someone to talk with that we can help pull them out of there The better and long-term they're going to be here because this is their support system And that's one thing that when we have employees to part our company They genuinely miss being here Um And I want them to miss being here. I want them to want to be here Yeah Yeah, we we've always had that very caring Uh mentality as well Very helpful very caring and it does go a long way. It really does go a long way. Yeah My general manager too. She's great as well. She's irs. You guys know her She's a very caring person as well. Um, yeah, and so if there's something that she can help with that we're always trying to do Linda we have a Linda has a question about how long do your employees have to be with you before they qualify for benefits Yeah, so All of my benefits are After the first 30 days Except for a few so medical dental vision Disability all these different things are all at 30 day mark And then 401k And paid vacation are at one year So for paid vacation, they start earning it on day one But they can't use it until one year mark. So if they leave at you know, six months, they they lose their vacation Okay Okay And why a year for your 401k trisha? I don't remember Good answer. Yeah Some companies do a year some companies do 90 days might be in the middle, but I think a year and 90 days is kind of the Yeah, I think I decided on a year for vacation and the year for 401k because I want to know the people that I was investing in were long more long term That makes sense to me. Yeah Yeah It might make sense as to why you're getting better buy-in for your 401k too when you're I'm offering it at a certain point because When people are looking forward to something then they're more inclined to Use that thing Liz, are you wearing your sweatshirt backwards? Always. Yeah So when you put the hood on My arms get cold, but my back is hot But when you put the hood on you don't know where you're going It's easy Tom. I can still see. Yeah, it's no problem. You can't see me. Yeah You've never noticed that I've always done that No, yeah Now at foundations, you're gonna see me doing this. Yeah, like I'm excited to see you guys. I've missed you guys I know I'm excited too. Yeah, it has been a long time I haven't really flown anywhere or any events since before COVID All and I used to do four or five times a year meet up with everybody. So I miss everyone Wow. Yeah, I didn't realize you hadn't gone anywhere. That's a long time I can't wait to hear more about your business too To me it seems like your business is way different now than it was when you first went to foundations. Yeah. Oh, yeah, definitely Yep, definitely going through foundations just really opened my eyes to What the possibilities were and It just yeah, now we now we don't have an end in sight. We're just we're rocking and rolling so Actually, you know what? Didn't mean to be bringing up just foundations here, but since you're on here. It's actually perfect timing. Why Are you going again? This is the question that we get from people We get a lot of alumni that go back for foundations And then people ask Why are they going back again? Yeah So foundations for me my big motivator is multiple different reasons But in that environment, it was like just wow and the first time I went I was I just I feel like I actually knew nothing about my business compared to what I do now And when I had so much information at me I I believe me I grasped a ton and I utilized a ton But there is so much knowledge there that um, I feel like I can learn every single time that I come And just being around like minded people and like my individuals like I met some of my best friends at foundations. Um, yeah, so That's just like my best friends in it. And um, so if I can go back I can work on my business. I can improve even more Learn even more. Um, plus get to read around all my buddies like Now you're bringing all your best friends back too. Yes, I am I know I love it. Yeah Plus, I mean you get you get like a week vacation and you know, most business owners are obsessed with their business You know, that's probably just normal But you get a week to sit and talk about your business With like minded other people be able to work on actual strategies and people aren't annoyed with you about working on your business Hanging out at the beach for the week. Yep swimming pool beach hot tub great food amazing company. Absolutely And I really do think that you know, because I this is be my third time going And every single time I go I'm like, oh, wow, like I don't even remember, you know Like there's just always like seems like there's more and more knowledge. Um And that we take and put into place, you know, and I know some of my you know, my best friends that are going as well they um They even learn every single time we go to so and not only do you learn just from from foundations But you learn as you know Everyone around people you get to sit at night and sit and kind of bs and talk about each other's businesses and take things away from those and Yeah, well Natalie says she wants to go Do I understand that there's like an empty we still have an empty room? Is that or no to Two empty rooms down. Okay That's pretty good because we had a wait list on there for a while. So so that's in the third That's uh october 3rd third three time Yeah, Natalie wants that if Natalie wants more information. Is there a website? What are we doing with that? Throw it up there tom cleaning profit builders.com Okay, and if you want more information Natalie go go check it out um Yeah, that's pretty cool. I think the business from zero to a hundred like I mean that you know When I first went in there we had just I just hit the one million dollar mark And this year we should be closing at an easy 2.5 million And I don't see it ending in place And one really cool thing, you know, I told you before tom, but Me getting to tour your office gave me so many ideas You know and now we run three branches From one office and they're each an hour that way in an hour that way and We have no plans of stopping because now that I've realized like how you can run it. I'm like, oh man You can have a location anywhere you can hire cleaners No Yeah, as long as you can hire people to clean Yeah makes makes sense All right. Well, we are a little bit past top of the hour here tom Trisha, thank you so much one thing I have always loved about you Is that you beat to your own drum? No march march to the beat of your own drum. That's what you do You know what you bet Thank goodness because I'm not sure I did but I love that about you. I always learned something from you I know that you're always learning from you know, you come to foundations and as well But always learning from you too. So really appreciate coming on here and sharing with us You are a rock star in this industry and you you're getting an amazing amount of stuff done Yeah, I appreciate and the cool thing when I go to foundations I get even more vamped up and motivated because you have that time You know, I do and I come back from foundations We're just like killing it because I'm all excited about all these different things I'm going to do and so it's It'll be great motivation for me again Yeah, I know I can't wait to see what you do with this next one. Yeah Okay guys, well, we're going to wrap it up for today. Trisha as always. Thank you so much We'll be back Wednesday five o'clock eastern Take care. Bye. Bye. Bye y'all