 I can only do it. I can't explain everybody. Tom Stewart here with Smart Business Moves. Got Liz Trotter with me. Hey Liz. Hey y'all. And we've got some awesome guests today. You guys are gonna be blown away. I hope you brought you good questions with you. I got Yusuf and Zaina Mahmet. Mahmet Olw. Mahmet Olw. Manitola. Manitola. Thank you. We're gonna, they've got a really rocking business up in Northern Virginia, Washington, DC area. I've known Yusuf for a number of years, been very active in arts. They see him at convention every year and his business keeps growing year after year. So, you know, another five years, who knows where they'll be. Before we get too deep into it out, there is a little bit of news that came out over the last 24 hours. So we'll just share with you about the Paycheck Protection Program, PPP. It looks like our Senate has put forth some legislation and I guess it passed the Senate unanimously. Where they're extending the application date for PPP into, I think it's August, August 8th. I know most people on these discussions have already applied for their funds, but if for some reason you haven't, you've got another month to do it and there's discussions about maybe doing another round of PPP or coming up with some other things to kind of keep the program going after that. Nothing solid yet, so don't start spending those monies yet. It hasn't happened, but it looks like that the fund is gonna keep going for a while. Liz, have you heard anything more about that? You know, I did get some stuff today from our good HR friend that we have, but I haven't had a chance to actually look it over. It looked pretty interesting. I'm gonna forward it over to you in just a minute, to you, Tom. Okay, awesome. Maybe we can talk about that a little bit tomorrow once we opportunity to read a little more into it. So Yusuf, Zana, you guys are in Northern Virginia, correct? Yes, Northern Virginia. And how are things in Northern Virginia? How's business? I think like anywhere else in the country, right? It's a little bit slower than normal for especially this time of year, spring and summer months. Usually we are normally busy, fully staffed, but I think due to the pandemic, it's slower than usual. Yeah, it's that way in a lot of places. I don't know, there's probably some people with us that might not be familiar with your business. Could you guys just give us a little bit of background? Maybe your company and how long you've been in business and how you guys are doing? Sure, Tom, thank you. Thank you, Liz, for having us this afternoon and hello to everybody. So my name is Yusuf and Zana Mahmetolo. Our company, we are located in Northern Virginia and we service DC Metro area since 2004. And our company, we specialize in home cleaning services just residential cleaning services. And before the pandemic, we were until actually March 13th, we were fully staffed with the 50 teams. In an average given day, we were cleaning around 190 to 200 homes a day. And after obviously March 16th, pandemic heat and then the first Monday, our numbers significantly declined and we went down to 140 cleanings a day. And then the next couple of months, we have seen 65, 70 percent dropped in our business. And I remember some days we were around 57, 58, 60 homes a day. So some of our employees, they voluntarily decided not to come to work, which we respect them of course, because they were taking care of their family members, the schools they worked for and some of them they were probably having some other issues. So they decided to protect themselves and their loved ones. And then, so kind of like it went smooth that period, decline of the customers, they decided to put a halt to their services, especially considering 99 percent of our customers, they are recurring customers. And most of them, after the announcements, we were hearing from the news and everything. People decided to put a halt to their services. They supported us a lot, our customers, they were great, they were awesome. They didn't cancel the services or they just said, we don't know what's going on, we prefer they just cancel the service for a while. And then as a company, we decided to just spend most of our times to go with our own procedure about the way that our operation day-to-day operation, we ran all the doors and we talked about what are we doing? We were having more meetings than usual, more visual meetings than usual with our teams at the office, at the management. And then the first couple of months, it was a little tough because nobody really experienced anything like that time in the past. It's an unprecedented event. That's the word, yes, I agree on that big time. And then so we were just talking about what should be the best thing for us. And then we were also trying to catch up with our suppliers and demands, our kind of like some of the protected improvements that we weren't stopped those. And then we were trying to get those supplies immediately. And then that was the challenge for us, but we were able to, also that gives us an opportunity to find out who are the good, provided suppliers who were not good or unsuppliers. Some of them they were trying to, they were doing some practices that were in good business practices. And then we realized that they are not a good fit for us. We decided not to work with those suppliers anymore. And then we realized that some of the suppliers that we were purchasing, little by little, they were better to us. So that gives us an opportunity to work. Were these new relationships that you had to form just because your normal supply chain was disrupted, your normal sources weren't able to give you what you needed? You know, Tom, with all respect, especially many suppliers, they were giving the priorities to hospitals or more urgent centers. So we were having that difficulty. And after that, we were able to, from our connections, we were able to find masks, shoe covers, gloves. We weren't using masks before. And then we had to purchase, stop some masks and extra shoe covers because like, you know, in the normal given day, we were just using a shoe cover for a day. But now we start using shoe covers in every house, new pair of shoe covers, new pair of gloves, new pair of masks. So they were very hard to find. You know, that was one challenge. And then we were having our weekly meetings on Friday's time with all the office and the team members, you know, in our office. And we paused that for the past three months and we are communicating, we are texting at emails and we try to, not we try to, we are texting all of our team members weekly basis to make sure we are still telling them the importance of wearing shoe covers, masks, and then, you know, it's not a job, you know, it's still not completely gone. So we are some states there, the numbers are still increasing. You know, the cases are still increasing. Luckily, where we are in DC, Maryland area, I think people, they are more careful. They are taking more caution than some other part of the country. Well, people, they are still very hesitant. We are now at phase two. I guess we are going to go to phase three if I'm not mistaken, starting from this afternoon. But still like people, they are very, they're not like... Cautious. They're still cautious and cleaning, getting their homes cleaning. It's not a priority considering many people, they work from home, men and women, they work from home and they are getting their homes cleaned by themselves. So... I have a bunch of questions already. Already, I have questions, I have comments. So I'm just going to keep raising my hand because I always have a ton of stuff. And I don't want to interrupt too much because I'm like, everything's gold. So one thing I just wanted to point out to everybody really quickly is that it's a really big company and you guys had a lot of the same problems that we had. You had a problem with, you know, shoe covers and masks and all of that stuff, trying to source it, et cetera. So I'm pointing that out to everybody. Even big companies have problems, you know, they were in on this too. Then another thing is, I really love that whenever we talk to really successful companies, they always say this one word. And you guys have said it a couple of times. They actually used it, you've said it multiple times now. And the word is opportunity. So whenever bad stuff happens, one of the things that I noticed is that really successful companies always find the opportunity. And you guys mentioned a few different times and ways that you found opportunity, find who are we going to work with, different suppliers. So I just wanted to point that out to everybody also. And then one more thing that I really got to point out to everybody is really successful company. It's the first time I've heard anybody talk about the exact date from March. You know, on March, what date was it? You said 14? March 13, Friday, March 13. We were just on the staff and then March 16th, it was a new start for us, you know. New start. I don't know anybody else that has those dates like that. What that means to me is, you watch those numbers with an eagle eye. And a lot of times we see, you know, smaller businesses that we don't do that as well as we should. So if you're looking for what are some of the things you can do to be a bigger successful company, like Maybright, I mean, look for clues. You know, that's something that people always say, success leads clues. And you guys are just like dropping clues all over the place for us. All right, so that's just if I had to point out for everybody. And then I have a question. So you said that you had had a 65 to 70% drop overall. Did you guys ever close? At least we haven't, because luckily, you know, we are, we are, you guys know me, but I have two other brothers. They are my business partners. We have a couple of other businesses that we are, we are partnering, we work together. And we have tough times we were having. We were meeting every couple of times a week, thinking about the best route for our companies, for our employees to make sure. I can say probably we didn't lay off or fellow any single employee during the time. Even before the people start, we didn't, we didn't, we just, we didn't lay off any of our employees because they were always with us for over 15, 16 years. So we were, we couldn't do that. So they, you know, we didn't close, but we took all the necessary routes, like the office stuff for instance, they, we just, we just have them to work. Like what we did was we gave a pink color to the half of the teams and yellow color to the rest of the 25 teams. And we rotate them, pink teams, they work three times, three days a week. And then yellow teams, they work two days a week. And if you work three days a week this week, you work two days a week the following week. And the office staff, some of our office members, we decided because they were having some other, you know, work on each as we told them to stay home, work from home. And some of them, they work their vacation times. Some of them again, they work, they work the whole week, but they came early, they left early half day. And then some of our employees at the office, the members again, they just work from home. But you know, we didn't close, but what we did was, you know, of course I respect everybody, they are trying their best. But you know, what we did the most, if you ask me what was the best thing that we did to our chefs, we really focused on our operation. We have done over all the customer data venues. And then we created a fund to our employees, employee relief fund, Zainab was leading that fund. We have a great response from our customers. I would like to thank them as well, any one of them are watching. And then, you know, we checked all the, the way that we respond to the emails, the way that we follow up with our customers after the initial service, recurring customers. So we went everything, the last week for instance, I had a meeting with our HR person and then we just, they updated us with the current changes with the COVID related. So there are certain things that I guess everybody needs to know, I guess maybe it's too much in detail, but you know, we tried to focus on our job. We didn't like any other companies or businesses. We didn't get into commercial cleaning or we didn't go into parking or this and that. I am opposed to that kind of stuff because I just don't think that this was the right time we talked to many of our customers. There were so many people that were, the term pivot was what everybody was using. We're gonna do food delivery. We're gonna walk dogs. We're gonna fill in the blank. And that's not scalable and that's not sustainable for a lot of people. So I respect that decision. You mentioned that you used to have team meetings every Friday and you replaced that with a text. So you have company cars. You have like the capacity for like 50 teams. You've got 50 automobiles, don't you? Yes. Yes. So do your teams still meet at your office every day to pick up cars? Do you come not currently? So we paused all the in-house office meetings in definite. So because we prefer everybody comes in the morning. They grab their tablets and they hit the road. We try not to have more than 10 people still at the office. I'm a little worried about them, about customers. So their safeties are number one priority. So we try to be still careful and then we are communicating more than we were before. Like if we have new highways, we just wanna make sure they're comfortable. They're learning everything. The biggest challenge that we were having come, we are working team of two people and whenever we have any highways, they go as a third person. So that was a big challenge. So we didn't wanna have three people driving together. That was just my personal thing that I thought maybe three people too close to each other might not be very safe to them. So we kind of hold off that training period quite sometime and we were training them one-on-one. So we were assigning, we have some trainers from Supervisor taking them one-on-one and sending those teams to our family members' homes to make sure they're comfortable. They can take this with time to learn. So that was a lot of learning for us to, you know, that was new. We didn't know. Every day we were thinking about something else but we were able to text them. We are using text messaging. Every Friday we write a paragraph. What is the most important description? Sorry, go ahead. Do you mind sharing? Like what did one of your texts sound like? You know, we were just updating our team members. I'm always very positive person. I don't like to say half of the glass is empty. I'm always positive. I'm always motivated. I never thought that this is gonna last forever but I know it was tough time. So very encouraging. We are supporting them. We are supporting you guys. You're not losing your job. So it started out like that and we told them that, you know, they're not gonna clean three houses but even if they're cleaning one houses, they will still get paid, whatever they were. So what we did as a company, I'm sorry that I'm jumping multiple topics. What is the grade? The office, what we need to do is, I told that, I told our office manager, I said, can you please bring me three months of average of each employee, how much they are making and then we decided even before the PPP started, we decided to pay our employees, whatever they were making before the PPP. So you wanna take that home or? No, I'm just silencing it. Are you kidding? No. You mentioned PPP, so you guys got PPP funding? That's correct, yes. Okay, are you still in your period where you're using your PPP funds? So not really, that's what I was gonna say. If you don't mind me, let me finish what I was saying before. So all of our team members, they were still making like towards the end of March until the end of April, they were still making what they were making before but our numbers weren't there to give them a full schedule. We told them, please, we want you guys, we don't want our teams to go clean three houses. That's not safe for them or four houses. We're gonna give you one or two houses. You're still gonna work as long as you feel comfortable but you'll still get paid. So clarifying that time of the period was a little difficult for us, for me especially because I had more stress than because I had a lot of responsibilities to them and their families. And then for right now, our numbers are back. So yesterday we did 130, our numbers are still improving. Any given day, we have two sales managers still doing in-home estimates. Each one of them, they have like five, six estimates. So we are averaging like 10, 11, 12, estimates, 14 estimates a day. The sign-up rates are overwhelming people. And you're doing home estimates, right? Please, that's what we have been doing it and that's what we will be doing it. But we are planning to do, we are also, we discussed that with my coworkers, with everybody at the operation. So we are working on a new feature where we will be able to provide like next day services. We are setting that up. So we are almost done. In the next month, we are hopefully, by the end of July, we will be launching that. If you need a one-time service, we will stop very little. It's gonna be very small steps. Let's say if you need a move out cleaning tomorrow, excuse me, and you're busy, you don't have time. So you should be able to go, not cookie-cutter like some other people they do. I have seen their platforms, they're not really to the point that what your pricing should be. So we wanna be clear, very close to whatever our home estimate would be. So we are working on that. That's gonna be, we will be offering that for one time or I don't wanna call one time, but I wanna call more like maybe move in, move out kind of services. We will have an instant estimate available in the near future. We are not rushing so much. All right, well, I just have to drop another little truth bomb on y'all here about Successly's Clues. So a lot of times we'll hear these things that, oh no, you can't do home estimates. Nobody does home estimates anymore. Wanna bet? Only the largest company does. Do you have to do home estimates? No, you would agree, right, Yusuf? You don't have to do home estimates, but that's what's been working for you and it can still work. It does. You have to just design all of your systems around what you're doing so that everything supports everything else. Do you agree? You know this, I agree, but I respect everybody runs their business the way they wanna run their businesses. But one that I'd like to tell, you know the good thing about it, they're considering the good thing about home estimates, there's a higher retention rate. So we are not thinking about just Tum's one-time cleaning. Of course we value that, but what is our goal is as a company to have Tum become a main drive customer for good. So he gives us a credit because our managers, they come to his house. It is completely free, no obligation estimate, and then we extend our services. Sometimes people, they're asking certain stuff that we don't provide, so we can clarify the expectations. At least we are not over-promising and under-delivering. So we tell Tum, Tum, you know what, we appreciate your time, sir. But due to this reason, maybe it's better that you may go with another provider or you may need these services that we don't provide. So what I would say, like if you clean 10 house, 10 initial houses, I would say 70, 80% of our initial clients they turn into recurring customers. So this is my, I am a good number guy, so I think this is important. So I don't know what they do, but you know this. Do you find your close rate on in-home estimates is typically higher than the numbers you hear with people who like quote over the phone or do online booking? You know, Tum, I can tell you, like let's say if you got 10 estimate requests on several multiple platforms, such as like Google, PPC, SEO, YAD, NGIS, LIS, Consumer Checkbook, Nextdoor, House, so there are a bunch of platforms, right? So I would say seven out of 10 estimates, that estimate request, they turn into an estimate. So three of them, they don't like us the ideal of in-home estimate, which we respect that. But 90% of that seven estimates turn into a recurring customer. So I personally care about the retaining part of the sign up rate ratio is important, but retaining retention part is more important. So out of that seven customers, I would say again, 80, 85% they become our regular customers. If not, we make sure we make it right immediately. Next day, you'll get an email, call, and text, make sure you were happy with the service. If not, we don't make it right, we will send a team, whatever it takes, come to be happy. So we don't take it personal. We never take anything personal if you are not happy, period. So we just wanna make sure, even if I will refund you your cleaning fee, but I will sit in your house for free to make sure nothing goes bad about us. So that's how much serious we take our job. So people, they appreciate that. I think I wanna add to that. I think that that's been a huge factor in our customers helping to contribute to the fund that we created. So at the beginning of the pandemic, before the PPP, we had set up a fund so that we could pay our teams, even though they weren't working on site. And to do this, we asked our customers if they'd like to contribute. And on top of their contribution, we told them that our family, the Mahanatoli family, would match their contribution. And the support was extraordinary. I mean, it was mind-blowing that everybody wanted to do something to support our team, support our company. And I think one of the reasons for that was that they got to know us on a personal level. Because when you go to their homes, you do spend at least a half an hour, maybe longer sometimes because you chitchat about the company, about how long we've been in business, what we do, how we do it, and sort of customize the cleaning to their likes too. And I think that was a huge factor in us getting that much support from our customers, doing those in-home estimator. People probably are looking for in-home estimator, looking for a relationship. Exactly, I agree. You've got a lot of, I mean, you're in a very large market, a lot of different options. I know there's a lot of companies up there that you go to their website, you plug in a number of bedrooms, a number of bathrooms, they'll give you a number, and you plug in a credit card, and you're not talking to anybody. You need some market for that. There's people who want that and they don't want to talk to anybody. But there's another market that they want to see somebody face to face. They're giving you a key to their home, you know? I mean, that's a relationship that has a high level of trust. And this is really good because we don't hear a lot from companies that are doing in-home estimates. And I know that a lot of companies have gotten away from that. I know that we used to do a lot of in-home estimates, not so much anymore, but you're inspiring me. Maybe we need to take a harder look at doing a little more of that. And things do go in cycles too about what people want, where their sensitivities are, et cetera. But you guys have been very, very consistent over the years of building this business. I think you said, Yusuf, that you guys have 99% recurring. No, 90%. 90%. 90% to 95%. Daily schedule is different customers on this. Yeah, I mean, that's a big number nowadays. And then also, I also was curious what your number is around. One of the things you talked about was doing in-home estimates increases the longevity that a client will stay with you. Do you have that number? Like, how long does an average client stay with your company? So usually, I would say this, the area, like we are in the symmetry area, I'm sure you're familiar. We have a lot of government employees, defense industry is in our area, a lot of technology company. They call our area like Second Silicon Valley, so there are a lot of high tech companies in our area. So most of our customers, they come here for three, four years, five years, and they go overseas or they go different states, but I would say average around three years, we have a retention for our customer. Of course, we have customers, I can tell over easily, we have about 3,000 recurring customers. I would say over 100 customers, they have been using our services, made that over 10 years. So probably that number, I'm not quite sure about that number, but I'd say 100 to 200 customers that we have, they have been using our services over 10 years. So that tells us a lot, you know? Yeah, absolutely. That's funny because I think that a lot of times we see big companies who are thinking, oh, they must be doing things so different, but I'm not hearing that you guys are doing anything that different as far as operations. The thing that I'm hearing that is different is a lot of care, a lot of care, a lot of respect, a lot of flexibility around caring and respect. That has always been the thing that stood out for me that you guys did that was really different. You didn't have some kind of new flashy thing that you were doing, this brand new sprayer, this brand new mop thing that's gonna revolutionize your business. You've just been really steady with caring and showing that care. Everything we talked about today is around that, right? How are we gonna make sure that people get paid? And it's also one of the things that just came to my mind, when you take good care of your employees, they will take good care of your customers. And then when you have a quality, when people they value your service, that I really need made by cooking my house or I really need their services. And then you will realize that you don't have to compete with others. It's not a niche business. We are not selling like expensive cars or watches or jewellery. We are a service company. We know who we are, we are realistic. But when you have a quality service, people they value the service. They know that if something goes wrong or if something happens and then they don't nickel and dime with you, I mean, I'm not saying that we are very competitive with price in the industry. But I'm seeing some of my friends, others because I'm coming to the conventions every year. Some people they are just like, you know, just because something is not there, they have to go compromise on certain stuff. So it is also difficult for them, for the cash flows, for the wanting a healthy business. So the quality dreams, you know, puts you aside from the other businesses as well. So it's all kind of like a bunch of stubble together. It's a lot of, I think, consistency. And consistency too, in this sense, you know, I had a chat with Angela Brown a couple of weeks ago, a couple of months ago about, you know, what we were doing during the pandemic. And that was, you know, not quite different because we're already supposed to be doing these things as cleaning companies. You know, not much has changed besides, yeah, we have to put on a mask, we have to social distance a little bit more. But, you know, in essence, we were already supposed to be, you know, wearing gloves during cleaning, letting the disinfectants sit, knowing which disinfectant we're using, how to, you know, properly clean and disinfect the space. So, you know, that consistency and those details really matter and to keep up with them. You know, not just do it in one house, not do it in the other house. So I think they're all, you know, it's just a big, big cycle, you know. And if you break one piece of that chain or one piece of that cycle, then yeah, it affects your business negatively. So we were talking about opportunities and I mean, pandemic is horrible for so many ways, but for the companies that are doing what you're saying, this really is an opportunity because it's an opportunity to leverage what you've been doing all along now is perceived to have a lot more value. Exactly. Yeah. But before this, I think a lot of consumers were just make it look good and give it to me as cheaply as possible. Now I think a lot more consumers are interested in what you have to say about the things that you've been doing for years. So maybe the business hasn't come back 100%. Yeah, by stand to figure as time goes on, it'll represent a growth opportunity because they're gonna be looking for the quality that a company like yours provides. Well, also how you inform your customers too, you know, about what we were doing. So I think that honesty that we really appreciated that. And did you find that your customers are more interested? I know that we're just really, really busy people and sometimes you get in too much of the details then it's just, you know, don't tell me how you make the sauce is just go ahead and do your thing. But now they wanna hear more about how you do what you do. I think so. Yeah, we've been putting updates on our website and then also emailing our customers too to just let them know, you know, what are we doing? Are we following CDC guidelines? You know, are we essential? We have to let them know about that. So because they were interested, they were asking us questions, you know, how do you do this? How do you do this? Are you guys essential? Are you guys gonna be coming to my home? Are you closing? So with those questions, they're asking a lot more now than they would prior to the pandemic. I have a couple of questions that are slightly off but also on the first question is I think a lot of people would love to know how much do you guys actually work? Now, pre-COVID and while we're in this COVID, like how many hours a week would you guys say that you work? Personally, like... Yeah, yeah, as business owners of a large business. So Liz, you know, I like to work. I like, that's just my personality. I guess that's... I do too. The genes that I carry from my grand-grandfathers. So it's just, I don't think that I am working less. You know, I think I am working equal before the pandemic but more like it was a lot of learning and a little more stressful work than it was before because it was a lot of learning to make sure we are doing the right stuff. So that was a little taking time. So I remember several times that, you know, before we put out something on our website with the COVID related notice, we have really worked very hard to put that together and whenever we send a message to our team members, we were really working hard to make sure we are delivering the right message. So I think I want to say it was a little longer hours, more stressful times, you know. But now it's getting better. It's getting more like normal kind of. What's normal? Say again. What's normal for you? So usually, at least I wake up around like six o'clock every morning, I'm usually at the office by the latest data clock. And usually I don't leave the office until six o'clock. So that's my routine Monday through Friday. And then I guess we need to move the computer. I'm sorry, it's out of battery. That's okay, we get a chance to see your house. Your house is beautiful. This is our house, Zana, can I show you the house, Zana? And how about you, Zana? You know, during this time, I had to be more with the kids because no school. Working more from home, because a lot of what I do is behind the scenes, more of the social media, blog posts. That's film at your job. Yeah, yeah, I mean at home. So I would wake up and do the social distance learning with the kids, we have three kids. So I had to manage that from like nine to noon. And then after that would be my working time when the kids would play. So a little bit less than normal because I couldn't go in on it. You were doing another job. Exactly, so. Paging job, yeah. Yeah. I had different hats this period. Well, you kind of led into my next question too. I was curious, what do you guys do? Like what would your job description be? Like what are the things that you focus on in your company, your job? I think for me, it's evaluating from time to time how we respond to our customers, especially email responses, talking with the office staff about an appropriate response about, it's so and so problem or follow ups or estimate requests. I would say I do a lot of that. And then also like social media posting, keeping things up to date with that. And then blog posts. You're in charge of all of that. I'm a blog post online. So it sounds like you're in charge of all of the communication in your company at least? Yeah, before that it was a little of the community involvement too, with our local business chambers. Opportunities to get our company more involved with the community. So different roles. At the beginning I was more in the administrative role. I was the one answering the phones, writing the emails. And now it's a little bit more like I said, behind the scenes, but also important things. Yeah, absolutely. And how about you, Yusef? What is your job? What do you typically focus on? You know this, what do I focus? Nowadays, if you ask my daily routine, like usually we have like insurance part is one thing, the major like insurance renewals, hiring, and major issues that not really any more day-to-day customer complaints or concerns, that doesn't come to me unless I need to get involved. It's a very major thing that is, that means my attention. But I try to have a meeting with our office staff. I would say two, three times a week, we review the week. How are we doing with the crews, with the schedule, the training? I always, I always, I don't know what I'm doing I always, I always have been doing the interviews myself to make sure the person that we are hiring, it is, it takes enough attention and we review, we have become, we talk to them and we tell them about our company and learn more about them. So you've got over a hundred employees, but you still hire, do the interviews for all your technicians? I do, I do tell. That is, if I catch somebody filling out an application, I will immediately stop what I'm doing and interview that person because that's the biggest asset that I might be missing. So I will forget about anything, I'll sit down and get to know her. Or he, he, I'll, you know. You think that's another hint, Les? Thanks. See all my great staff that he's putting on there? They all have stars next to them. They've got a star next to it. Yeah. So I know I think, I'm sorry to say this very quickly before I forget that. So in our office, that's also what you said is very important. If you know who is doing what, that's so crucial for the business, but we also do cross training. So in our office, we are like eight, nine people all together, 10 people actually, including the sales managers, we are about, we are 10 people. So we are, we are certain people, they are cross trained. So they know in case somebody takes vacation, they should be able to do the daily bookkeeping or responding to customers. Or we have, you know, whatever it is, starting from maintenance, maintaining the company vehicles or equipment and supplies to the most complicated stuff. We have everybody has cross trained. So they know in case somebody goes on vacation or ending on vacation. That's all I want to get. So you've got 10 people in your office. What roles did they, what's your organization look like? So we have two sales managers, Tom. They are usually on the road, meeting with the clients. They do like five, six. They're doing your estimates, we have a general manager. She's also our HR manager. She is in charge of I-9, W-2s, all the employee related. She spends most of her time communicating with the, any kind of like rep-related injuries, hiring, I-9, we want to make sure we are educating. We are learning HR ourselves as well. So we know the, at least the basics of it. And then she does the daily sales as well. She closes the sales next day. So let's say, you know, today is Wednesday, next day she will be closing all the sales. So that's her job, make the primary job. We have three dedicated person. They respond emails, phone calls and messages. This year we add like texting in between the customers. So we realized that some people they're easier to get a hold of with the text messaging. So we just add that to our system. So they can, that's what they do. And they also do the follow-ups. Every initial customer we do our follow-ups the next day. Randomly we follow up with the existing customers. That takes about at least an hour every day to make sure customers are happy. So let's say we have 50 teams randomly. Each crew, we pick their first houses. Next day we do their second houses. Sometimes we, so quarterly basis every customer every three months they get a follow-up email or call to make sure we are not boring them too much but we are delivering what we supposed to. So that's what they do. So we have a gentleman he's in charge of our purchasing company vehicle maintenance, any customer issues. If anybody reports any damage or anything like that. He would like to go meet in person to make sure it was notified to us and we go take a look at it what the issue is. So that's basically what he does most of the time. And so two sales, three office, five, eight. Seven so far. Seven, yeah. Seven and crew coordinated. There's a lady, she's our scheduling manager slash crew coordinator. She comes early in the morning. You know, it's not like even if you have the best software that you use, being a good company also brings how flexible you are with your customers. Every morning we come, we are getting emails and phone calls, people, they say, you know what? I have this issue, can I reschedule it? So she shapes up the schedule very last minute. So she's our crew coordinator, scheduling manager, last minute cancellation. Somebody calls in sick. You got to move stuff around. She's doing all that. And then we have another gentleman. He also has us with the supplies, plus the schedule. He's kind of like a joker. He has a little bit of maintenance as schedule. Like a what? Like a what? A joker. Utility player. How do you say drunkard? I said joker, I'm sorry. Like playing cards. That makes so much more sense. Okay, I got it. Sorry, I just had to get clear on that. And also, he does our web updates and then our website and all works directly with ZNEP and then he's our kind of like business development, web development, technology person in the house as well. Is that your joker person? You're- Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Another person. Okay. Is that 10? I think so, right? Two, three, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. That's 10. So will you do all the financial stuff then? I'm assuming you still, you know, run the numbers, that kind of stuff? I'm sorry, I couldn't quite hear. Could you say about more time this? Sure. Do you do all of the financial aspects of the company? Like who does account receivables, accounts payables? I didn't hear any of that kind of stuff going on. Actually our person that mentioned she does the sales. I look at the report, weekly report. It comes to my desk from Mondays and then I take a look at it, compare week by week, how are we doing? And usually we don't have account receivables. Services are paid at the day of the service. We have one or two customers that if something happens with their credit card, it is stolen or something happens, they just immediately updates. But usually I look at those daily basis, but at the end of the week, I look at the whole weekly report to make sure or everything is. So I have to check in with something I just heard you say. Did I hear you just say, oh, we have some questions here too. I'm not even, oh my gosh you guys, my job is to hold my phone and to check these, I have not done it at all. I'm too busy thinking about my own stuff. All right, we'll get to your special in a minute you guys. But did I just hear you say that your customers pay by tax every day? No, no by credit card. Most of them pay by credit card. Okay, I misunderstood. I was like, what? I'm sorry. I think it's maybe my accent could be. So we cleaned the house and then we closed the next day. So they got charged next day to the service. And so you have everybody's cards on file except for those couple that you were talking about. And I'm guessing those couple are the ones that have been around for 10 years and old people. Okay, so we do have some questions here that I probably shouldn't get to. The first one, Ernie, I don't know if you guys can see your comments. Can you see the comments on your screen? It's on the right hand side. Yeah, let's put it up there. Yeah, now we can see them. Well, Tom's gonna put them up here for us. Ernie wants to know when you guys started out, did you pay yourself? Mr. Ernie, how are you? We say hello to Ernie. What is the question when you started out? Did you pay yourself? You know, Ernie, it's such a tough question. I remember when we started out, I was vacuuming. I remember that part. Working hard. So working hard, two, three jobs. So we were, the first couple of years, the business is not, it wasn't, you know, it was sustaining itself and we weren't paying ourselves to be honest with you. We were paying to us. But we were able to pay the expenses and stuff to run the business because we were investing to our business. We made sure we had it for cars, this and that, so more than paying us, we were investing our business. Yeah. All right, we do, we have two more questions. You're gonna get Leslie. Oh, you're excited up. Okay. Do you charge for late cancellations? My Leslie, usually there is a, there is a $55 cancellation fee, late cancellation fee. But due to the pandemic, we are not charging late cancellation for the past, since the mid-March, we are not cancel charging anybody for cancellation. Regardless. Okay, I have one more question somebody asked, made sure that we asked you this, is, can you explain your pay for performance plan for us a little bit? Okay, like any particular person or general, like what's... And I'm guessing, yeah, whatever you wanna tell us is what I wanna hear, actually. So Liz, what we do first, we have a two weeks of training. It's a paid training and we just wanna make sure the person that you highly likes our company, the atmosphere, we make sure they feel part of our team. So it's important we have a, we created from our experience, we have kind of like another employee handbook, but manual, so employee manual. So they are the basics of our procedure, what do we do, what English and Spanish to make sure if there's any language barrier, everybody can easily understand. So there's a two weeks of paid training period. So this time allows us to make sure the person likes our company and we think that that person is a right fit to our company. Before that, actually, I apologize. We have a very strict hiring procedure. So if someone applies for a job, we check their past employment, their driving records, if they have a driver license, we check their driving records to make sure they are safe drivers and then we check their past employment and then after that, if everything goes good, if they are referred by one of our employees, we offer them bonuses, especially nowadays, we are offering $500 sign up bonus for the ones who joined to our team and whoever brings that person, if they stay three months successful, after three months of successful employment, they are entitled to that. We just wanna make sure we can capture really the best in the industry. And then after two weeks training, we have three months of probation. So make sure that's also benefits start hitting, kicking. So we just wanna make sure the person is good. The training went smooth, but also they are doing what they're supposed to. They can be on their own. And after two weeks, after the immediate two weeks training, our trainer and our manager sit down, sit down with those individuals, welcome them and tell them that, you know, they passed the training and then they can be on their own. And also we just wanna make sure they're confirming that they're comfortable to be on their own. If they need an additional one week, we don't mind, we give them additional one week with the team. So that's going like that. And three months later we sit down with those people and regularly our office follows up with their appointments to make sure they're doing good. We are getting good compliments, good feedback from our customers. And sometimes, you know, we do internally in house that, you know, our office regularly follows up with those new hires. That's what we do basically. I hope I answered the question. And they're paid on a commission basis. Yes. Commission? That's correct. And then we are working teams of two people and that's what we do. But the training is paid salary. And then after that, once they join to our team, we pay them by a commission. On commission. And how do they get raises in your company? You were talking about how you've had people working there for years on end. How do they get their raises? They get a raise, we increase the prices on our customers every couple of years, depending on the, you know, we try to make it regularly, but not every year. Some companies did every year. We decided not to do that every year. We are increasing the prices. And when we increase the price, it reflects to their pay as well. So they get more, they're getting more paid. Great. We've got time for one more question. I want to ask it because you mentioned earlier that you work roughly a 10 hour day. I know you've got business interests that go beyond the house cleaning industry. So out of that 10 hour day or 50 hour week, how much of that's spent and made bright and how much of that is spent and other businesses that you have an interest in? You know, a very good question. Tom, I would say 35, 40 hours, at least with made bright and 35, 30 hours with the other businesses. Yeah, that's great. But it doesn't feel, I know you, it doesn't feel like work. You do that because that's what you want to do. That's what I want to do with this. And then if we have some hours left, he'll be home, he'll be home in a few minutes. Same thing. He's got to work better over the years about that. You know, that was when we first got married, that was our big argument topic all the time. And we have to modify if you're a business owner. I know Tom is gonna pull up some stuff to share, but I'm gonna sneak your question in while he's doing that. How often do you guys go on vacation? We go on vacation two times, three times a year. Okay, great. And for like a week at a time, would that be a normal vacation? Usually we go more than a week because mostly we go overseas and then when we go overseas, we spend about 10 days to two weeks. Okay. So I think that helps to balance it out for people. When they're hearing, what he's got big company still has to work all these hours. Well, first off, he doesn't have to, but he won't have to do and it helped. But also he can get time off. This one thing I wanna tell you, I guess we have a great team of people at the office. I don't really, I'm not, I don't wanna give a feeling that I am a micro manager. I know the things that I need to know, but usually everybody has full responsibility or can take initiatives to make it right. So I don't, I like to be on top of the business, but I don't wanna do, I'm not like kind of getting involved day-to-day every aspect of it. I just tell every one of my co-workers, just make it right. Nobody's gonna ask you why you offered this, why you offered that at the end. It needs to be good experience. So when I'm away, I don't really need to get involved unless it's a major accident, traffic accident or major, very major stuff that I need to know that other than that, when I like to enjoy my time off too. Or if there's somebody filling out a job application. Oh yeah. That's important though, Tom. It is. Don't forget, that's important. What do you mean? You cannot give the... You don't have to know what's coming up tomorrow, Liz. Tell us about our guests for tomorrow. Well, we have Chad and Diana Hemley and I know they have a lot of time gives their topic here, you guys. They have a test control business and they also have their home cleaning business. And they are coming right after Yusuf and Zena because they also are family owned. And we didn't get into that today very much at all. But we won't. We won't. We won't. Yeah. Hey, Liz. Yeah. You know, I am not, usually I'm not active in social media but one thing I saw today, one of your employee, I believe she was diagnosed with cancer. It's very kind of you. I think if anybody, whoever is watching this, we should all support that kind of good cause. I'm wishing she will get back soon. So I just wanted to say that's very kind of you what you're doing. That's great. And we will also support you in that cause. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Yeah. We're all, so yeah, let's move on on with our crime. Okay. Friday. You have a hint for us? Shoot, I didn't pull it up. I was so busy thinking about everything and making notes. I will pull it up real quick. Tom, are you, are you look up the next piece? On the spot is our rapid fire Q and A session where I use myself and our special guest each one minute to answer your first pressing questions. If you haven't subscribed to Cleaning Business today, you really want to do that. Just your email, first and last name. That's all you have to do. We've got some really cool stuff coming down the pike with Cleaning Business today that we're going to be telling you about over the next few days here that it's going to give you even more reason to subscribe. It's going to help your business in ways that we have been able to help your business before. And we're kind of excited about that. And that's all you're going to get out of me on that today. But take my word for it. If you haven't subscribed, please do. If you subscribe, you'll be getting our newsletter. This is our resource page for all of our downloads and resources that we've been doing on smart business moves over the last few months now, right? All right, here's my, here's my clue. Family sailing, wine and work are some of her big passions. All right, that's it. It's getting pretty, pretty easy now. I think I might even know. Yeah, it's getting pretty easy. So TMC, and that was the very first one in case you don't remember that one. It might make a little bit more sense now. Initials TMC with this person and family sailing, wine and work are some of her passions. All right, well, you guys, thank you so much. Thank you guys. You guys are awesome. I really hope in a few weeks we can get you guys come back again and pick up on the discussion because I feel like there's so much that we didn't talk about that we would like to. It would be a pleasure. Thank you so much for having us. Yeah, I just always feel better whenever, actually, whenever you talk, I really feel up with this. I feel like you speak to caring for people and for the world. I really just want to tell you that I always feel so much better. I listened to you. So thank you. Thank you for having us, Liz. Thank you, Mr. Tom. We appreciate it, sir. We seriously, we need to get you guys back in a few weeks. We'll have that discussion here shortly, but you guys be safe tomorrow. Chad and Liz, Henley, they are awesome and you'll enjoy that as well. So we'll see you guys tomorrow at five o'clock Eastern. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye, y'all. Have a nice day.