 Trying to say hi. Good afternoon, everybody. Tom Stewart here. I'm with Liz Trotter. Hey, Liz In today's Friday, that means it's on the spot Friday and our special guest today and you guys are in for an awesome treat Hey, Elena Lado. Hey, Elena Happy Friday. Happy Friday. Yes Elena is Has many different diverse talents and interests and runs a really large and successful house-meaning company in Las Vegas, Nevada I guess your your your husband has a firm that does Security screens I mean you won a national award was it last year with Was it was small business administration? Yes SBA Small business of the year for state of Nevada and then I also won Entrepreneur of the Year for National Association women business owners for state of Nevada. That is that is wacky incredible Congratulations on that. We're so excited. We're excited to have you here today I know you have a lot going on all the time to Elena so really we really do appreciate it Now I'm honored. I love you guys to show so Well, you know, I'm wondering if anybody got my clue on Tuesday last week When I said that I would always bet on this person. Did you all get that she was in Vegas? anybody Well, I can't even see comments. So I have no idea if anybody's even here yet You say person you said I would I would bet on her which basically no I didn't because I didn't say her until later on in the week Okay, I said on Wednesday. I said her Okay We try to give hints throughout the week as to who our guest is going to be nobody gets me right That's good. No The initials mm Yesterday I don't know who they were the only person I could think of was Maria But maybe they were thinking of Maria Montserrat Yeah, that could be Sarah Mitchell said that she goes. Oh my god, I knew it would be Elena So Elena fill us in on what's been going on for you during coven did you close did you stay open we stayed open? I basically started with being propaganda my own propaganda machine and I realized as soon as corona broke out that If everybody's gonna hear you all gonna die you're gonna die you're gonna die from every out Outlet from every Facebook account Then it's just gonna kill our business. So I went on Me and you know part of the our group that we're belong to, you know, some of us went on TV newspaper magazine saying like Not everybody's gonna die and we got you we killing viruses were in your corner where essential business So we did this the kind of PR cycle So that helped a lot to stave off some of the losses initially and then started doing grocery deliveries and Fogging, you know disinfection stuff like that. So that went pretty well. We're still offering that I'm not gonna that's not gonna replace our main business anytime soon but it had a lot of I Think like there's such a positive sentiment because so many people wanted to see Somebody small trying hard and succeeding right they wanted to see positive news They wanted to see somebody pivoting in the storm instead of just Seeing the devastation and you know, everybody's closing their doors and shutting down So we got celebrated as like the little, you know train that could Think they could write little made that could So we felt very much embraced by our community and so that was great And it's both like our industry as a whole and our local community in Vegas So that was amazing even my neighbors are saying we got you we see you we see what you're doing, you know, hang in there Good yeah, so and then afterwards a business survived obviously we took a hit in revenue But we're very profitable still and then our revenue is almost back to normal And which allows me to be in the on the farm right now in Washington. So Sidra woolly and I didn't know you were here. Where are you at? I'm in Sidra woolly Washington. I'm gonna show you I don't know if you can see it, but there's like a cat Washington is known for our cats Yeah, so I kind of feel like that cat right now So trying to unplug with my family we're sailing for 10 days and Then for 10 more days we're living on um ocean cottage oceanfront cottage and then now we're here in the farm with cows and cats No, it's just the random My cats do travel but not quite that far tom Okay. Yeah, so life is good. I mean, I'm I'm I'm sure I feel like I've been through a washing machine cycle uh, so it feels good to unplug a little bit and kind of decompress Boy, I could relate to that it does really feel like you know being thrown this way and that over the past couple of months Right? Like every time you turn around something new Yes I I do feel like being little businesses was really helpful too for the businesses that stayed open I think Our customers, you know kept paying us and donating money Like I I had no idea that Money student the poor It was crazy Hey, I've been a business a long time and I I have never seen anything like it before Yeah, you you're breaking up a little bit But I could understand that you know, it was it felt nice to have your clients embrace you and just stay you for Not even cleaning and all this other stuff So yeah, it feels good for sure So today is on the spot friday So for anybody who's here that doesn't know what that is That's a rapid fire q&a session Where you guys can ask us a question and each one of us gets one minute to answer that question We have a clock here that basically counts down once we start answering the question And uh, we can answer it in less than a minute. That's great But if it gets to uh zero and we haven't answered it, we have to stop right there and that means you as okay You know Elena that means you and I have to stop but tom's just gonna keep on talking I'm gonna have to like I'm gonna have to like stop him with my hands and it's not gonna work We should probably get started though tom i'm looking at the time. It's all right. We I think we actually started on time for a change Yeah, we did I don't know how that happened I think it's probably messing with people and and you guys I um because i'm on my phone today I can't see your comments and I can't Comment normally when you guys say hi, I I say hi back and I like it. I'm not ignoring y'all So bridget if you're there lesley, you know all the normals didn't eat if you guys are there I'm not ignoring you. I just can't I can't see your comments today Sarah I think I heard tom say I'm guessing at sarah mitchell. Yep. Yep. She's here Yes, all right, sarah Start us off sarah. What kind of question do you have for us today for on the spot? I actually have a bunch of questions that people gave me to tom. She does have a question for us It's right here. Just popped on right. She's asking. Have you ever had your quality start to go downhill? And how did you fix that? Um, okay, who's going first? I'll be glad to I can go you want to go okay So we're gonna go we're going to go in a circle. It's going to be liz tom alayna In that way because you gotta watch liz. She'll get us like tangled up and she'll want to go laugh everything It'll be a mask. Okay. Dang. Let's go. He's like my mean older brother It's okay. Yeah, you're you've already wasted five seconds Oh, have you even turned the clock on? Okay. Okay. So yes, sarah Okay, I'm sorry. I'm I failed There we go Okay, yes sarah. I have had that problem I wish I could say that I'd only had that happen once but I've had it happen So many times over the past 27 years That I couldn't tell you how many times. All right, so here are some of the things that I have done during those time frames Um, when quality goes down, I typically try to rally the troops That's my main thing that I do is hey you guys check out our scores. What's going on? What are we going to do first? I hit the leadership team Get them all rallied up and excited and enthusiastic to Fix whatever the problem is and then we together rally More and get them excited to figure out what's going on and how we can all step up and what we can individually do Um, I think that's the key is we sort of tag into each individual person. What can they do? What's their contribution going to be and collectively it's a One thing Yes, sarah If Anybody that's been in this business for any amount of time had that happen. I'm sure it's happened to us numerous times Um, typically it's just a matter of putting more emphasis on it paying more attention to it Typically if you're having quality problems, you're either getting bad Scorecards back customer surveys if you will or customers are calling and maybe complain or work shut cancelling service, so You want to look in your organization and find trends Who's having the service problems the quality problems? And you want to pull those people aside and coach them at the same time You want to be telling your entire organization that you're struggling with quality And you recognize people who get compliments in your morning meetings. We have meetings every morning So we celebrate the compliments. We celebrate the the the good Scorecard scores and we take the people that are struggling and pull them aside and talk to them That typically fixes it after a week or two Hey tom before Before Elena goes let me roll out my window because it's getting Busy here. Okay You good Yeah, it was just getting loud Okay, here you go Elena you're on I've never had that be happening. I'm just kidding. Uh, it happened So what we realized is that when the quality goes down that hurts my company hurts our company And the only time people understand that pain is when they feel the pain So it hurts me hurts them then they understand it pretty quickly So we tied the compensation and performance reviews based on quality pretty strongly. So as soon as Quality of an individual technician goes down. There's the performance review their pay goes down or they go They become suspended for a week or two weeks and that fixes it right away because No amount of pleading dancing. Here's the bunny helped at all The only time it worked is when we succeed and they succeed and when we fail they fail That's the only time, you know, it happens the magic happens. So That's that's our secret basically to that problem Perfect. Oh, she's gonna be one of those fast ones tom. She's not even gonna need all her time Well, we'll see later. Tom's gonna love that because he's always gonna take your extra seconds Okay, go ahead. You can you can have him Elena, you know me well enough to know that you can't believe you know, Liz well enough to know that's true I want to prove them so you can go ahead and take more time Okay, sarah Has another question here. This is a good one. She's asking let's say the other was a good one They're all goblins, but I particularly like this one. What do you look for in a trainer? parentheses, I know I need to revisit foundations Sarah was one of our foundations participants. I think Sarah you've Came back as an alumni too. I believe Is that right? Liz? I think I feel like she's been there twice. Yeah. Yeah And she's coming again in in march. I'm I'm sure So Okay, I'll start with this one. I guess since we're going to be going in a circle Yep Yeah, we look at trainers as as people in leadership roles leadership positions So it's important to start to find people who embrace your company values and So it needs to be somebody that's been with your organization for some amount of time So you get to know them they get to know you and there's some of the basic stuff You know like like attendance and following procedures things like that They don't even necessarily have to be you know rock star cleaners in terms of you know having the That the highest levels of productivity, but it's important that they have really good communication skills and can relate well to people I mean being a trainer part of is actually the technical part of of how to clean But just as importantly is somebody that can build relationships with with Your new cleaning professionals and make them feel welcome and and appreciate being there So somebody who can handle the technical side who's got your your core values, but Is really good working with people as well Ready Alana? Yeah, sure When you're looking for one thing which is results So basically I want we take a trainer We give them two, you know candidates and we tell them to train them for two weeks And then they're supposed to provide daily feedback and then we get a feedback from the trainees as well And then the end of two weeks we take those two people away and we work with them Like the my partner actually goes out and watches them work And then if they're ready to go and they can just work independently that trainer passed and it's a great trainer if not Because we tried everything else the kindness the empathy the intelligence the obsession of quality All of these are great starting point, but if they don't produce the result nothing nothing matters Extra time Yeah, we got extra 19 seconds there Really good. Liz you ready? Yep, bang you're on all right, so we Depends on what we're doing if we're hiring somebody Cold that somebody we don't know we're looking for two things somebody that's really curious and somebody that Pays attention to what the other person needs instead of just trying to do something if we're hiring somebody that is currently Um a client or an employee and we want to promote them Then we are looking for somebody that obviously those same things But also that has already shown That they can and not meet the numbers that that we need to meet and by that I mean our payroll percent revenue So they need to have time They need to have quality and they need to have attendance. So if they can hit those three numbers consistently Um, then that's a good trainer in my mind Perfect Okay, oh, we're all gonna be fast today. It looks like All right, you knocked my car Elena, you're going to be going next and here's your question Great Okay, I know I say you had a question tom It's on the screen if you can see it Yeah, it's like one one one z two one one one one one one one one Oh, I can't see it now Yeah, it's your area. Yeah. Yeah, you know, my husband always jokes. He's he's very movies a blade runner He says like you are the closest to the replicant that I could find in the woman I think I can read it and respond But I can't I'm not that advanced. I'm the old model So Okay, very good. So we are sorry starling Yeah, um If if you want to if you have a follow-up question, please go ahead and I have a I have a question over here on my side Okay So the the qualan you can't put it up on the screen. Sorry, but the question is Um, how do you manage the time and the amount of time that your team members spend cleaning How do we manage? Okay, oh, I think I'm first too, aren't I I think this was Elena actually Yeah, I can yeah, that's okay. Good How about that? We good? Yeah, all right All right. Good job Tom. You're on So management of the time again goes against, um Goes with that value of when we are making money when we're thriving the team should thrive and we're not They're not so we pretty much align we give them the budget because we get paid We paid them hourly, but we get paid with flat rates So every single job has a budget and when people go over budget consistently There's a problem then we start like reducing their pay or putting like Given them a break from the job for a week or two weeks taken off the schedule and that brings them back in line and You know, everything is good. So it's very tightly controlled for us because that's directly tied to our profit So and if we don't make money, it's like nine one one emergency like everybody everything stops and we start looking for a problem Excellent You ready Liz? Yep All right, so our people all have a form that they fill out each day that tracks where they Track for themselves. Um, it's it's like a job form that they track on their phones How much a lot of time they had and how much time they actually spent cleaning? and if that number is Going in the right direction then they are up for bonuses and rewards, etc But if that number is not where it's supposed to be then they they're not eligible for a lot of the different things that we do so our our strategy is to just Watch those numbers and if somebody's struggling in whatever way offer help And if they need some help, um, usually it's just a matter of a quick retraining around, um A flow how to how to flow through a realm and stop bouncing It's almost always due to bouncing from thing to thing if their time drops Very good We're really big on what we call work measurement You know, we use we use our software made central to Track all of the start and stop times and basically all of the labor content we have in each job Each job is quoted at a detailed level at a room level. So we have a pretty accurate idea as to How many minutes it should take to clean a home? How many how many labor minutes if you will and the team gets feedback on that and they get rated on that We have a number of reports that we get that show us as management Which jobs are within standard and which ones are missing it? We have a compensation plan that that's based on A revenue share we pay commission which creates an incentive for people to work productive and into to manage their times If we have individuals that aren't making their time we we coach them and bring them back into alignment Good job tom. I can't believe you haven't gone over even once Not even once because you know me. I'm a seasoned veteran at this. I never go over I think alaina is just giving you a really good model to watch While you're feeling the pressure 40 seconds Yeah Yeah, ernie's with us and this is a this is an interesting question Yeah He knows that how valuable do you all consider do we consider outside help or counseling? He knows that We have been around a long time in due counseling But also know we receive it as well So I guess and alaina also does consulting tom. She um, I think she does consulting through conquer, right? She does Yes, that's correct Yeah, so I can answer that I gave her a lot of thoughts Um, I think I'm first this time. Okay. You're you're you're on go Okay, so I think it's hugely hugely important. Um Everybody that I know that is successful It has some type of coaching or consulting that they are are doing and Investing in themselves in some way I have a weekly coaching call with with my coach and I Even though sometimes I'm like gosh, do I really need this next week? I'm like what the heck was I thinking? So absolutely So for me, uh, and my coach is not in our industry, which I really like as well So I know that's going against hiring like any of us and we three Um, but I I love the outside consulting because I get a bigger business view instead of just a cleaning business view Very good Yes outside, uh consultants coaching you know coaching in particular. I think is really important. You know, I've uh been in and out of vestige, you know over the years which is like a ceo peer group of uh, typically they they meet locally with within whatever city you're in and People in that group are from different industries. So you're able to get different perspectives. I find that very valuable I've had individual coaches off and on over the years. I'm kind of Taking a radical from from some of that at the moment and um, I guess just another another aspect is you know I'm lucky and have the privilege of working closely with a lot of other other people at coach and A lot of times I I get pointers and some help just through Being in the right place at the right time. I guess Elena I'm relatively new to coaching but I absolutely love it To me, it seems like the biggest benefit of coaching is you're collapsing time So do you absolutely need to have a coach? No, you can figure everything out on your own little skin And it's going to take you like five to ten years Or you can collapse all of the time in months and get it all done with the correct information and guidance, right? You know exactly what to do, you know exactly how to do it You just do it and then uh, there's a misperception that the coach is going to just create magic and things will happen The magic is going to come out of you not the coach, right? So you got to do all this work. So there's a lot of suffering involved on your end This reminds me of the personal trainer. I just hired like several months ago. She kicks my butt But I feel so much healthier so much better than me sort of pretending I'm exercising for like years, right? So it's very much like that I really love that you say pretending like you're exercising Elena I know this feeling well Yes, exactly Hanging out at the gym doing my thing for an hour, but yeah, not really not really putting it in Yes, it's like running business without a coach Okay, that was a good question Arnie. Thanks. Thank you Arnie Um, you have another question Liz I do hold on What are your top favorite books? Not exactly sure what he means by top favorite, but I hope I'm not first I have too many books swirling around in my head. Who's first this time? Wow I guess uh, I guess I am Okay, you know, I listen to to audio books a lot. I don't know What favorite ones I have typically it's the most recent one I've I've been working on. Um I got this book white fragility from robin de angelo The other week and have been talked about that last Tuesday And it helps give a pretty interesting and useful perspective on racism and and and It's it's a good read. Um, I like business books for the most part. Um, you know, we've Wow We did a Book not long ago. I actually been working with uh, mike mcowlow. It's fixing next that was a book that Liz put me on the other week and like that. He's a virginia tech grad who wouldn't like that, huh? Do you want to go to labor? Yeah I actually have a trailer board on all the books that I recommend But my favorite author is a tool go on day. He's a surgeon and he writes a lot in a very accessible language about the medical field and also about operations how dysfunctional You know, healthcare system is and what what he thoughts are on like mortality and what are we doing to healthcare system? So being mortal is one of my favorite books checklist manifesto. It's about operations. I love that Atomic habit is another great book that I read recently and currently I'm also reading listening to the book royal art of Poison or something like that. It's very interesting historical and medical and it's just very well done So I love that. So I read I like medical stuff and I like Um, also like wartsmiths and poetry like new rudas my favorite poet. So everything like mishmash That really is a mishmash It is poetry and medical. Yes You ready Liz? Yep All right. So you guys know I read a lot, but I am like tom I always say that I read a lot But for those that know me know that I'm actually listening on audible or actually most of the time I only buy I think it's three audible books a month And I tend to read two to three a week. So that means most of the time I'm reading through liby the library And uh, I have a ton of favorite books. Most of my favorite books are business books I love the book drive by daniel pink. I recommend that to almost everybody I meet I also love the book. Um, what got you here won't get you there by marshal boldsmith I've reread that many many times I also love the book. Uh, think and grow rich by napoleon hill. A lot of people don't like that book. I do um I I like the mike mcallywitz books profit first and The one that tom just mentioned fix this next I also have a huge list I'm so hot you guys. It's hot in my car How hot is it? I mean it doesn't get hot in washington. How hot is it? Oh my god. Well, of course, it's the how to stay of the year so far It's 84 here today Do you have an air conditioner? So I don't die Yeah, crack the window or something. That's kind of like leaving your dog in the car. You know what can happen Is your nose still wet? I had to turn off my car because I couldn't hear you Before we take another question Elena, what is the I mean medical books that's Unique quite is the Is it just the intrinsic value or do you are you able to take what you learn from those books and translate it into your other business activities? Very curious For example, if I meet in the restaurant, I'm curious to see what's going on in the back of the restaurant. So Uh, human body is one of the most fascinating things and what's going on. It's not fully studied We don't understand all of it, but it's if you look closely, it's amazing what it does, right? So and we can't replicate it either Like our technology like what the way it heals itself or the way like for example pregnant woman like You know to protect the baby will actually produce the antibodies to protect the mom right the pregnant woman So it it's it's fascinating. So I'd like to understand that so maybe let's my next career I'm gonna be a doctor. I won't be doing any work. I'll just I just want to know what they know You know, I don't think that we mentioned tom That alaina is actually an attorney. So for those that don't know her So it's very very varied interests. That's why I can respond, you know, I used to be litigation I can do like the rapid fire one minute on the spot thing So it's the figure that's why you can do it so quickly. You're like Yeah So it's seeing to figure that you would be a medical doctor So we're further down the line in your career kind of balance it out with another question over here tom Yeah The are you ready? I've got one here unless you're you want me to well, let me give okay, you go ahead and put yours up Okay, before I get there though, we've got Alonzo here He's telling us he loves atomic habits and he says that wow liz we read the same books Good sir in sir michael says 84 is a cold day Because she's now when you're sitting in a closed car with the windows closed sarah Do you have an air conditioner? It's not too loud. Do you have an air conditioner? Hold on. I gotta roll my windows back up. I can't hear y'all And I wish I could get some more volume. You have all these people all over the country worrying about you now. Yeah If you guys see this Worry Drink plenty of fluids Yeah, I don't have any. Oh, yeah, I do. Okay All right, go ahead tom. What's your question? Brian o'neill's question. He wants to know what software do we use to track kpis? Elena I think that uh, you're up first here Okay, actually. Oh, go ahead. You got Yeah, we actually, uh Tried log it manually. So we We tried we follow the system the eos Which is the traction book, right? So we have weekly meetings and then all the kpis get logged from different software and so one of them is reputation scores So we just go look at the reputation like one is the revenue or the profit So we actually look it up in the accounting software and then we plug it in so That there's no software the traction system does have its own software which we tried but it doesn't I didn't like it. So we just use google spreadsheet. That's all Keep it simple You're ready less Yep So we do the same as Elena. We um bring everything in from other sources and we put it all into google sheets We have five main metrics that we track But depending on the needs that we're going through at the time For whatever that might be then we might be tracking three or four more other things that will tend to change out every month every couple of months um the five things that we track regularly Our revenue the payroll percenter revenue. How many customers we have how many employees we have and profit those five things look at me Yeah, 21 seconds left. Do you do you want those like on account or gift certificate or something? What is that wheel of fortune where you can use these for another? You know, we don't play that do we? I do remember I was on wheel fortune tom You were weren't you forgot and that was when your name was buffy That's right back in the day That's a story. Maybe you can share here, uh sometime, but Not the moment because I got a question to answer um We use our own software we use made central that we you know license and and share with a number of other cleaning companies as well um We got into the business, uh, I don't know 20 some odd years ago There really wasn't a lot out there in terms of off the shelf production management software so We started off with a simple database access database and it evolved over the years and Like I said for the last several years. We've been licensing our software to other companies, uh under the brand made central It captures everything from from leads to sales to all of our production metrics, uh revenue you know payroll to revenue to you know revenue per hour to customer attrition employee attrition attendance it, uh Is very rich and in kpi tracking because I guess i'm a engineer by nature and we like our numbers Hey, alayna, you're a really good influence. I don't remember us getting our answers done on this consistently well ever Right. Well, we're we're we're doing pretty good today. That that is true Yeah My question I am. Yes Okay, so my question is Hold on. He's got a bunch together here Who is this? Is it your question? This is somebody from the mma group tom. So from the success group got you. Okay All right, so he he wants to know if you could only give one piece of advice for very very small companies and then for for advanced companies What would those two pieces of advice be? If you only give one piece of advice for a small company and a large company Is that what yeah small company and then a large company. I guess he doesn't care about the middle-sized company And by small I got the impression he meant new Okay So it's probably my start right because it ended that one ended on you Uh, good You ready? All right No, I got to open up the door so I can Can breathe. All right. Is this safe? I mean You know This isn't worth putting your life at risk Yeah, I can see how sweaty I am. Can you see the dripping? No, actually the your bandwidth is too low to see much of anything good. Well, that's good feel feel grateful for that there tom All right, we ready I know this is hard with with you know the excessive heat and everything's probably hard to concentrate Just put the timer up there All right, so for small companies I would say Systems focus on your systems begin right from the very beginning putting systems into place and That's that's going to be key If you can do that you're going to be able to grow really really well But without those systems you're going to get stuck pretty fast and it's easy to Think that this business is really easy when you're small because cash flow is so good That it seems like wow rolling in the dough But if you want to grow past just you cleaning then it's it might be a little bit of a struggle All right, the second thing for the big business is Watch for complacency the number one thing that I have seen kill Big businesses is when the owner gets complacent starts feeling like yeah, everything's doing it itself It's running itself and then things start to slowly decline All right, did you just shut your door again? Yeah, so I can hear I don't need to hear when i'm talking very good bang Okay, for small businesses the first thing that I would encourage them to do is try to get as much revenue on the board as possible But do it in a way where you're able to maintain it where you're not You know try to get recurring revenue and build revenue as quick as you can because When you're really really small and you've only got a few customers and a few people cleaning homes It's hard to get a lot of any systems in place in terms of You know staffing and getting some sense of rhythm because if one person doesn't come to work That's like half your workforce. So as quickly as you can get up to the point where you know, you've got six eight You know people working for you at that point. You have an opportunity to do more things as far as large companies You need to understand that the bigger you get the more customers you have to lose And the harder it is to continue to grow into scale that you constantly have to be You know reinventing how you attract clients and how you maintain clients in order to continue to grow when you start getting larger Elena you're ready. Yes I'm going to reinforce Liz's advice, which is if you're a smaller company or even medium-sized company systems are absolutely critical You will just explode and die if you don't have systems or you will not grow it become your bottleneck So definitely put all the systems in place for every segment of your business marketing sales administration production system system systems and then for a larger company have a goal in mind What is it that you're working for? Is it like that should be a number like the exit strategy or something don't work into nowhere Uh, so work for your freedom work for financial freedom work for x number of dollars Whatever that you want. Don't don't just keep marching into nowhere. So have a goal Very good I gotta say I like both of your guys's advice I I'm thinking that we need to try and find somebody to get on This show at some point in time that has a radically different opinion than we have Because that never happens. We're all like, yeah. Yeah, that's good Try drugs try drugs. I've heard good things about that, right? I Thanks, Elena So funny Okay, we have another question. Sarah has a question for us. What overhead positions do we have? In organizations Um, I guess I'm going next. Is that right? Yeah, okay Okay, we have uh several different branches. So at each branch, we have a a Supervisor who's who's in charge of that branch We have other activities that Are performed in a more centralized way. We have a person that's responsible for Recruiting and a lot of the hr activities. We have Another person that's responsible for all the financial the uh bookkeeping accounting payroll taxes stuff like that um We um Have open positions right now in terms of sales positions. We had to make some Readjustments, I guess during coveted, but typically we would have a couple of people doing sales um That's uh, basically our business model Elena Pull up our accountability chart, but basically we have um customer service manager Uh administrative assistant hr manager field manager Then there's myself and my partner, which are I don't know what our position is uh ceo ceo or general manager Uh, and we have trainers That's all great I guess listen didn't want to answer this question. I think she disappeared Liz can you hear us? Hopefully she didn't pass out. Oh my Hi So we should have asked for like an address or something where she was so if something happens we can call 911 Yeah, Liz is gone well She's okay Do a message sir Yeah Let's see This uh Hey, Liz you okay CPR stat Yes Oh my god, let's see phone might be dead Anybody have another uh another question for us while we're uh waiting to hear the verdict on Liz I have a starling saying the phone was in my pocket. That's very funny Okay, yes That uh that happens to me too often and I find find myself Calling people that I didn't intend to Then apologizing for it Yeah, thanks Sarah hit us up with another question Yeah, let me see jimmy's Yeah, I don't know Yeah, it's probably a battery or something like that. Yeah battery um so You know your your home office is in Las Vegas Do you consider Las Vegas your home? Yes, okay I understand that the casinos are starting to open up again Yeah, they are they are open and we're kind of worried about it. So we'll see Yeah, you I could tell about the tone of your voice that that you don't uh, you aren't sure that's a good idea I'm sure it's not a good idea. But I mean, what are you gonna do? It's like Damn if you do damned if you don't it's like Uh, I my second home is basically hawaii because I used to live there for so long and they are pretty strict They shut everything down. They're not reopening but it's killing their economy. So It's like it's tough Um, I see that we have questions. Um, like From leslie Yeah Am I up or are you up? I forget Let's go with you. Okay Bang, let's do this Favorite formal marketing, um You know, I've been in cleaning I've been in this industry for for a long long time back when we started our favorite formal marketing was buying a really big Yellow page ad and setting back and taking orders Um today for us, it's it's almost all, you know, digital online, you know getting a website that You know, you can do natural search you do ad words You know Using social media to get more more more people to your website But basically you're trying to get people to your website and then trying to get them to engage in a way where You know, at the very least you get contact information. If not actually purchase something right through your website. So um All of our attention basically goes into digital We haven't done anything in the uh the print world or like a lot of stuff that you saw Paul do, you know, the grilling marketing. We haven't done anything like that in in several years. It's all digital I just saw our sign from Liz that she's alive. So that's good. Oh my god Yeah, um our favorite forum marketing is uh, well our most effective forum marketing is digital as well So we started with digital and we're going with digital the second Most common is um, actually networking in-person networking Community building stuff like that. So that worked really well for us um, and then my current favorite form of marketing is uh, based on the book we asked you Yeah, educating Article content and putting it out there that fascinates me and we kind of live by that But not to the theme that's in the book. So currently I'm working on that Marcus shared in his book as I asked him Yeah, yeah We should have mentioned him during our favorite books. We love marcus Hey, Liz But we didn't know where you were Okay, y'all that is how hot it is that my phone was like i'm out That's that right I had to blast it with air. I had to blast it with air conditioning cooled it off Yeah We're sitting in the sun. It's hot All right, so am I up? Well, I don't know. I mean, yes. Yes, you are we had a question Sorry to this question that you I guess you didn't want to answer With that Was asking about your support staff your organization, you know, you're Do you want to do you want to answer that one? Where'd it go? Sure? I'll answer that one And then we'll go back to the other coast so you get the answer to in a row. I feel so lucky right now Do you have the stamina to do this? I don't know Let's go All right, so support staff, um, and I think the question was not so much support staff But non rev generating maybe was kind of what I was thinking um So I have two people That work full-time and that's all that they do is non revenue generating tasks I have six other people that are revenue generating employees, but that do some non revenue generating tasks um, so I don't know if If that answers your question entirely sarah, but most of my people Do revenue generating activities for the majority of their workday And then they have a very small amount of work that they do that it's non rev gen Good That was good under the circumstances Yeah, all right Ah, okay now marketing my favorite form of marketing Okay, I got it. You're ready Yeah Okay, so I suck at marketing So i'm not going to tell you what my favorite form of marketing is to do What i'm going to tell you is my favorite form of marketing That I like when other people are doing this video. I think that video marketing is awesome Well, it works on me when I see video for companies. I get sucked in especially if there's video and Text to go along with it so that I can do both that really can just suck me in It can be facebook. It can be By email. It can be on people's websites. I don't I don't even care how they're delivering it just By by video And I can hear you guys now. Can you guys hear me? Okay, you know, we can hear you fine awesome My earbuds are working. This is our next question Next Are there You're such a smart alec Ernie. No, no, there aren't i'm on i'm eastern washington. It's all desert over here Sarah is really on you hard About 84 degrees But how hot is it? Sarah my phone literally turned off Come on that's hot in the car Right black interior. Maybe I don't know I don't know All right. I have another question over here Okay, this is this is not from it the same guy. This is from a different woman And she wants to know what is your biggest regret or the biggest mistake that you've made in your business It already gave us a question here that I've got up on the screen which is Kind of in the same. Oh, I didn't see that All right, well, let's do Ernie's first and then we can do my gals Okay I was last last time so I think it's alayna actually. Oh, is it? Okay, alayna you want to go? Yeah, sure. Okay Um, yeah, again, as I said last last year feels like forever in eternity Now, you know, what I would do is probably um In a hindsight, I don't know our company is doing well Um, I would probably have some kind of contingency plans for the pandemic Because I have one could see that pandemic is coming and I couldn't see it right. I kind of waved it off So I would think it through so it wouldn't be so emotionally shocking for me when it did come So that's what I would do differently last year as soon as it appeared in china. I would be like, all right, let's Let's see What should we do? Yeah, that's good Yeah, you ready less? gosh, um kind of right So I feel like this is really hard because I have a lot of things that I'm like, I could have done that better Uh, could have done it sooner could have done more of that So the one thing is kind of tricky. Um I think what I'm going to say is that I would have engaged my team in tracking their profit their individual profitability Um Sooner last I would have done that last year. I didn't do it until this year Where they were tracking their individual what was happening before was we were tracking it and then we were reporting on it Instead of having them track it and then reporting it to us and that has just sort of been a game changer Really really made a huge difference for us. So I think I think that's what I would have done my big thing One thing I wish I'd done differently here Too early to say actually it'll probably take me another year or two to get enough data to give you a really good answer on that um You know, like I said, I'm an engineer by training. So I have this affliction where you know, I really like Analyzing and getting data and we do a lot of things and sometimes we don't get the outcome that we're looking for but I look at that as as as as a data point and we're learning something and we build upon that and we do better. So you know, this is not a you know I don't really have anything that I can point here and say gee and I really wish we'd have done something differently You know because everything that we do where we're learning from it and we're we're modifying and and that's kind of you know We build on that for the next thing spin master Right there. We're gonna call tom's new nickname spin master. It's it's it's the real Keeping it real. Yeah, you're trying to pretend that you are uh, uh, carry carry knight So tom we are kind of out of time here. I don't think we have enough time to do I guess if we're really Maybe if we go really fast we can answer my gal's question if we all try to keep it to 45 seconds Sure, what's the question? Her question was what is the your biggest mistake in your business so far? Okay, I have the answer to that. I can go pretty fast. Awesome. Yeah, go for it. Elena Well, if tom gives you the 45. Okay, there we go Biggest mistake that I've done in my business so far is I didn't start creating people accountable right away So I went all the way into support mode and I never asked for results. I never demanded the results So that get to all of our profits at some point so until we put a stop to it and reverse it So that's the biggest Very good. That's good All right yep My my biggest mistake ties into an answer from earlier is I did not start documenting systems Uh, uh, when I should have I didn't start documenting them until way late And it really slowed me down slowed down progress. It it actually just stopped things in a lot of ways That's it A lot of you know for me Making decisions about personnel and putting people in key positions and making sure that you're Have the right person in the right job and Not waiting a long period of time to to to make changes if changes need to be made, you know People are you know, if all the indications of the year it's not working You know, don't put your head in the sand step up and and deal with it Those are all good Every single one of those are good, right? They're all they're all big. They're all bad Why you're in the car All right, Tom, you got to share our links. Hey Elena, do you want to share? Um, like how people might uh connect up with you as far as conquer or something like that if they Want a little bit of more coaching or do you have any info like that? Here's any website Uh, they have a website, but I think I'm gonna type a g of conquer But you just pay me on my personal people send me message to my personal Just like you mean there With the website All right, so for those of you that don't know how to spell Elena's name I think it's written here, but it's also e l e n a And then ladoo is le d is in dog. Oh, you x actually I think right Elena Yeah, I love that. I'm spelling it when you're right here Yeah, and the website is So It's so mean Tom Cleaning business today if you haven't subscribed It couldn't be any easy or just your email first name last name. It is absolutely free You've been doing this for uh, gee. I don't know seven years or so. Maybe um, Oh, wow There's a ton of information here and we got our super secret coronavirus All of the Goodies that we've shared here on smart business moves most recently uh, paul august F a q script which we saw earlier this week paul was awesome. There you go um Just so you know, uh class number seven is really close to uh being uh launched for uh phd It'll be uh coming out It'll be it'll be out by Monday. I'll say that way. It's coming up sometime this weekend. We'll be Sending out emails and posting it in facebook when that's there the final exam will be there Everything will be done and it will be in the can so Yay, uh, so we'll have more to say about that next week Anything else list Nothing except you guys have a great weekend. Remember to take a little downtime. We're still in it We're not back to normal yet So we are still like burning our candles at both ends and take some time because this is an unprecedented time You're welcome com You're very welcome Elena you are you're you're you're awesome in so many ways you're one of my Industry thank you It's true. You are really are you you guys have a have a safe week and please get some rest This is uh a long run here. We will see you Monday five o'clock eastern. Bye. Bye. Bye