 Hey, good afternoon everybody, Tom Stewart here. I'm with Liz Trotter. Our guest today is Joe Walsh. This is smart business folks. All right, the people that are watching, do you ever wonder, what does Tom say to them right before they go live? Why are they all with these big, cute, cheesy smiles? Yeah, that's what he says. Cheesy smiles. That's why we all have these cheesy smiles. And the topping of that's important. You can't say that too soon, because then the smile goes away before we go live. So I guess that's what makes us professionals, right? Yes, yes, that's it. Nothing else, that's pretty much it. Wait a minute. Somewhere I heard that the definition of professional is somebody that gets paid for what they're doing. Are you getting paid? You're right, you're right. No, absolutely not. So that makes us rank amateurs. That gives us more latitude. There is a classification between an amateur and a professional, where you're not getting paid, but you spend too much time with it for it to just be a passing hobby. Well, we have to work on that. All right, we need a new word in our lexicon there. I'm in. So what are we talking about today? Oh, wait, first, before we talk about our amazing topic, anything happening over the weekend that we should know about Tom? I don't know. Stock market's going crazy. Bitcoin took a big dump this weekend. Came back a little bit. I don't know, Joe, what's going on in your world? You're up there in the middle of a snow country. How deep is the base? Well, I was skiing this weekend and we have a good, solid, almost two-foot base up here. So I'm pretty excited about that. We just need another six to 10 inches of snow and I'll be skiing in the woods, which is where I like to be. I like to ski in the trees and the glades. Kind of be careful, people don't hurt doing that. Yeah, have you ever heard of Sonny and Cher? Are you old enough to know who they are or were? Yeah, Sonny died in a ski accident, didn't he? He was in the woods. Yeah. So you say that and the first thing that comes in my head is don't be Sonny. I don't go that fast. I go fast enough for it to be fun though. I'm nervous in the woods, that's for darn sure. But I haven't been skiing in years. Here's the best tip I ever got. Don't look at the trees, look in between them and then it's way easier to not hit stuff. That goes for anything. Yeah, what is that called again when you get that target fixation? Yeah, you wanna look at that thing or you'll get it? Yeah. I love to mountain bike too and it's the same when I'm mountain biking, same thing. Don't look at the tree, look past it, look around it. That's where you wanna go. Nice. It's kind of like the old saying in golf that trees are 70% air, meaning that the odds of hitting it should be in your, of missing it rather, should be in your favor. But often it doesn't work that way. I like it. Tim used to be a volunteer firefighter and he talks a lot about like how many accidents they had to deal with where a car would be broken down on the side of the road and somebody else would come along and hit them. You know, or hit the person or like that's very common because they just are looking at it and then just that way. Yeah. All right. Well, I don't know how we got off on that. We're gonna end on weird little topic there, but we're losing money. Yeah, I spoke weekend and I spent most of my weekend skiing. So, you know, it was, it was fun. I mean, if, if I wasn't skiing, I was probably picking up children from the snow and dragging them around. So it was one of two. Did you make these skis? We have a three year old and he is learning to ski. Yes, but it's a lot of picking him up off the snow. We also had a little friend here too. So there are two of them. So it was like one in each arm, you know, we were having a good time. But every once in a while, the parents get to go out too and we trade off. So that's fun. Yeah. That's the benefits, I guess, of having another parent with you. So they get to watch the kids now. Yeah. Exactly. Joe, I know that you're a really good skier. Are you like our ski instructor? Are you teaching this year? I am not teaching this year. You know, once we had our, once we had our son, it kind of changed the priorities a little bit. And I was a ski instructor before we had, before we had a child and I don't- Before you were a father, you were a ski instructor, but now you're no longer a ski instructor, you're a father. I'm a father, yeah. They're mutually exclusive. Yeah, so- I'm a father that does some ski instruction. Yeah, I still do ski instruction, except, you know, all of us parents know that our kids respond differently to the parents than they do to other people. So, you know, yesterday, I was trying to get him to do his pizza. That's how you teach kids to ski. You know, you got to start with that. And he just kept telling me, no, I won't. And- But today, he had a lesson and he was very good for the instructor and he was doing his pizza and everything. So- That's nice. I love it. That's so true. Get used to it, Joe. I like to tell you, that'll get better, but- It's gonna get more interesting, isn't it? Yeah. It'll get better one day, but it'll get worse before it gets better. How about that? Yes. My son used to say all the time drove me insane. I do what I want. No? I do what I want. I do what I want. Oh, goodness. All right, we should probably get to work, right? Yeah. Let's do it. We've been doing the KPI thing here for the month of January. That's kind of our ritual, actually, about at least the second year that we've done it. Just to- And this is much better than last year. Last year, we- Joe, we- Actually, I was checking our notes. We did it in February, too. We had a whole nother set of- February was supposed to be automations, but we never got to it because we didn't finish KPI. It took us two months to do KPI's last year. Wow. And we created a PowerPoint deck with over 100 slides and it going into painful detail about- What? To me- About what? What PowerPoint had 100 slides? Yeah. We built it live, talking about KPI's. We built it. And various KPIs that you need to run your business and got into the very, very nit-noy detail. So all the stuff you needed to note up to make those KPIs. Or see what Robin here- Robin- And Robin kind of gutted it out with us. I remember that. I think Robin was there the whole time. So Tom, really, that's what I was gonna say. To be fair, there were a lot of people that learned a lot during that time and now feel really, really comfortable with KPIs. And that is one of the challenges with KPIs is people don't even wanna talk about them, much less process them, work with them, track them. So I think it was good work. It was- It was awesome. It was a journey. But this year, we're doing it differently. And I think that we're having fun. I know that we're having fun with it. And I think that we're providing value as well. We have guests that come in and speak to KPIs that apply to a specific process in the process flow. And the process flow is the same pretty much for every house cleaning business. On the top here, you've got to find cleaning professionals and evaluate people who wanna clean homes and you're gonna interview and hire some of them. And then you're gonna train- What's up, Tom? I don't know what it says. And you know, I have a 60 inch screen and I can't even read anything on there. You have a 64 inch screen? I lied, it's like 48. Still, that is a massive computer screen. I have two of them. Wow. That's a lot of screen real estate. Yeah, it really is. They take up my entire desk. I wonder if you have the biggest screen on this call. I know you're kicking my butt. I'm not even close. Yeah, and Tom's underneath this figure there. You can just even do the top part, Tom, would be helpful so people can see. I know if I can't see it, nobody else can see it. It is small. I have to. Okay, well, now I'm all messed up because I don't know how to undo this now, so. Well, it's not critical. They've seen it before and we can always post it in the group. Well, I'll describe it. Just close your eyes and imagine that you have to find people who wanna clean homes and interview and hire some of them. At the same time, you have to market for homes to clean and you need to sell them. And then once you have people to clean homes and homes to clean, then you kind of have to mix them and match them together and that's called scheduling. And that's what we're gonna talk about today. That's this green box right here and Joe is kind of a subject matter expert on a lot of things, not least of which scheduling. He has given a whole lot of thought to some of the finer points of how to use scheduling to get the desirable outcomes in your house cleaning business and he uses all the basic metrics. So we're gonna talk about that, but he's layered over a strategy that I think is unique that actually is designed to get a higher level of satisfaction both for your cleaning professionals as well as your customers. And I'm excited to have you here, Joe. It's been a while. I actually, Joe, I think of you as a scheduling savant. You look at it from a different direction and you bring completely new thoughts and ideas too. Does that make him like Dustin Hoffman and Rain Man? No, it does not. I definitely don't feel like I can just instantly count all the jobs for that day on the schedule by looking at it. It's not that level, but thank you, I appreciate it. And I really developed this, I had the kind of vision for this, but the actual process, I developed working very closely with my management team. So it was a vision, but it was also a lot of asking questions. And I kind of think the best process involves asking a lot of questions. So we developed a new scheduling process in 2019. No, I take that back. I was like, just before COVID, actually it was during COVID that this all happened. Man, it's the past couple of years still they're a blur, aren't they? Sometimes I get years confused. Like which year was that? We've been, what is this? This is almost February. We've been doing this COVID thing for two years now. I know, I mean, yeah. So anyway, I apologize, it was 2020. So a little bit of background here. I've been on a mission to stabilize my cleaning business for quite a while. We had reached 35 full-time employees and we're cranking and kicking butt in a lot of ways. But also I was just personally getting a little tired of the instability of it, the kind of constant putting out fires and with people calling out sick and quitting without notice and sort of all those issues and the employee turnover and all that. So I set up to stabilize the business starting in 2019. And you talk about KPIs, I've been measuring unplanned absence rate as a KPI for a few years now since I did that and driving that down. I've had a lot of success there. And also measuring employee turnover rate, critical KPI, I've been really working on pushing that down. And so we started there and had a lot of great success. And also- Can we talk about unplanned absence rate just for a moment? I know that's a little bit of a detour, but I don't, I mean, that's unique. And I'd like for you to share that as well if you would. Yes. How do you measure that, Joe? Unplanned absence rate is just the total number of shifts that you had scheduled for a week divided into the number of shifts that you lost because someone called out of work. So it doesn't matter the reason. It could be that they're sick, it could be that they just need a personal day, it could be that something came up at home, whatever the reason, it could be that they hurt themselves, whatever the reason, if they miss a day of work unexpectedly, it counts as an unplanned absence. And we measure it, because I look at the unplanned absence rate as a measure of the stability of the day-to-day of the business, I also count it as an unplanned absence. If someone quits without notice, you're supposed to give us two weeks notice. I'll count it as an unplanned absence for two weeks from the time they quit without notice. I've actually gone back and forth with Tom on this question. That's not really an unplanned absence. It's more of a quit without notice. And I agree, but I sort of look at the unplanned absence rate. The way I look at it is it's kind of a barometer for how stable the business feels to the people managing it for me on a day-to-day basis and to the other people that work there. So that's kind of how I use that KPI. That's putting the bar up there pretty high though. Yeah, really, really high. But I love that. I'm gonna tell you, we focused on this and it was around 10%. And 10 to 11% we were averaging when we first started measuring it and we drove it down just before COVID hit. We were consistently below 4.5%. And that includes, and that's everything. That's call-outs. So to get now- No call, no shows is included in that. No call, no shows is included. To get the number that low, we really had to look at engagement. I mean, there's a whole story there and some of it's actually easier than you might think it is and some of it's harder, but we really drove that number down. It was awesome. I mean, I'm talking 32, 33 field staff coming to work every day and having only three call-outs a week on average. Like three that you'd consider to be a regular call-out. So you'd have multiple days per week where everyone showed up. Like, isn't that a novel experience to have? So it was pretty great to have those kind of numbers. So that's the, does that answer your question, Tom, about the unplanned out? It does. Part of the- I know it's a little bit of a detour, but it's kind of part of the story of scheduling. So it- Yeah, I don't really feel like it's a detour because it absolutely is part of scheduling and it kind of goes to the point that you're always saying, Tom, that you have to look at the KPIs based on your current situation. So what you're going to be looking at one week, one month is going to be different possibly than what you're looking at the next month because of your situation. So I feel like that's a great place to start. And you know, it's really awesome. March is an employee engagement month and John might ask you to come back again and do a deeper dive on this. And I'll even try to remember to invite you at the beginning of the month to give you some time to prepare. So just so everybody knows, I get a message from Tom on, what was it, Friday? Saying, oh, you know, just confirming smart business moves on Monday and I'm thinking, wow, did I flake this? Like, you know, I had a little bit of a rough Thursday so I was like, I am not having a good end of the week here. Like, look, how did I miss that? Tom's like, I actually didn't tell you about it. So it's not your fault. Well, I thought I did. When Joe said that he missed it, it was like, I immediately assumed I screwed up because Joe doesn't miss stuff. I went back and I couldn't see where, you know, I reached out and was like, yeah, I blew it. Anyway, I could have, I could have struck it out. Oh, come on, man. You remember we talked about that? I didn't know. Did he gaslight it in? No, Tom, I'm glad you didn't. I wouldn't, I would never do that. No, no, you never would, but in any event, so yeah, I'd be happy to chat more about the unplanned absence thing, but that, you know what it is, is the reason that that became important is, you know, I'd experienced quite a bit of management turnover and management turnover is painful. I mean, it's just, it's a big deal, you know, and then I'm talking about a general manager level or an operations manager level. And what I kept hearing from them was, you know, it's the chaos of it and I was burning people out and I realized that, you know, the only way that this is gonna work, the way that I need it to work for me is it needs to be more stable and you know, how are we gonna measure that? So that's how we arrived at the unplanned app. It's the call outs were burning out managers. We're also burning out good employees to good field staff because their schedule is constantly changing because people are calling out and the staffing isn't stable so you have to move cleanings around. And so that was, that was the beginning of that. So how does that feed into scheduling? Well, once we got the schedule stable, there was really no excuse anymore for why we had to keep moving cleanings around. So we had this interesting situation where, so COVID happens, right? So everything gets blown up. I shut the business down for six weeks and we go to a full solo model. So it's all, everything's new and different now. We're back without COVID, we're cleaning with masks. I mean, we're back after COVID cleaning with masks, everything's different, yada yada. And we're cleaning all solos. So, there's been a lot of changes but one thing that hasn't changed is the schedule is still a mess every day. And I was hearing it from my staff still and we were also, we were starting to lose long-time staff members in an environment where I couldn't hire anyone. Like, I mean, the labor market was bad before COVID hit, but we all know it's even worse now but it was really tough in those early days to get anybody. I mean, everybody was on 600 bucks a week of unemployment in Maine and it was just a really tough time to get staff. So I went to my staff and I said, I can't lose any more of you guys. Like, what do I need to do to keep you here? And scheduling came up again for probably the 10th time when I've asked that question. But I heard it differently because I was in a different state of mind. I really had to think outside of the box and COVID had forced me, and I think a lot of us to kind of rethink how we were doing business and everything was on the table. And I was like, well, scheduling is still an issue. Let's practice now, let's figure this out. And we didn't have a reason anymore. It wasn't like everybody's calling out because they weren't. You know, it was pretty low call out rate. There wasn't really a reason why are we moving things around so much? We worked on a protocol and developed the protocol for scheduling and we made scheduling consistency, meaning sending the same employees to the same customer's homes, the number one priority of our scheduling protocol. And second to that was geography. And then below geography is customer preferences. So it required- Okay, you just got a hammer on that a little bit because I know a lot of people are just listening and they're going, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. But I think it's easy to not hear the importance of the order to just be like, yeah, I pay attention to those things too. But it wasn't just that you pay attention to the same things. It was the order that was really, or one of the key things that made a difference, right? Yeah, yeah, it was shifting around that order. So I suppose it's also worth saying that it wasn't just talking to the field staff. It was also brainstorming with the managers, with my managers and like my ops manager and my salesperson and even my admin person to talk about the reasons that employees have left and you know, cause we do exit interviews and so kind of talking about that and the reasons that clients complain and the situations under which they complain. And then also looking at the employees that have stayed for six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years, those longer term employees, what when we ask them, do they report back as a reason that they stay and consistency in their schedule was always, it was either the reason that they left cause it was inconsistent or a major reason that they stayed because it was consistent. So it was like a light bulb went off and I was like, we just need to make sure the same people are going to the same houses. Like that can't be that hard, you know? Do you find that maybe some of your more senior people, just by the fact that they were more senior people had more customers that they were kind of locked into and it was easier to keep a senior person more consistent than a junior person? Yes, but I think it's important to define when we're talking about senior and junior, that's true. And what was happening was it was like this positive feedback loop, right? Like the longer someone stayed, the more stable their schedule got by virtue of the fact that they'd be matched up because what was happening in our business was we were working in teams and solos. We were before COVID, we were a hybrid model. So some teams, some solos and the longer people were with us the more likely they were to go solo because they all wanted to eventually move on to work on their own. And by then they would have an established group of customers and then once they had that schedule they never wanted to stop doing it. I mean, it was just very comfortable and it was amazing to me how important that schedule consistency was. So what we had to do, Tom was kind of flip that on its head a little bit and say, how can we create that consistent experience earlier in the employee life cycle so that the person doesn't experience this chaos for years before settling into a schedule? And so that was kind of the challenge. And it's always at least in a relative sense more difficult to do that with a newer person because you have to have consistent homes. A block of a business if you will that you can lock them into. I don't know if that's the term you use or not but sending them back to the same home every day means that you need enough homes for that new person for them to go back to where we did. You do. It also means that if you're building the business so if you're hiring for not just attrition if you're hiring for more than just employee loss and you're actually growing and adding new customers that your newest people are going to be doing the deep cleanings. And that's something that's different from the way we always had experienced people do deep cleanings. But we flipped that on its head and now the new people do the deep cleanings. And the thing about that is it scared us at first but then we realized that the way you it motivates the new people because they know there's a good chance this could become my customer and it makes the connection with the customer start really early and it solidifies that person's. Now it's not always the case. You know, we don't work hard. It's not in our scheduling protocol to try and match the person who did the initial cleaning for the regular service. We don't really, but there's a good chance that it'll happen because there's probably only three or four people doing deep cleanings at any one time. So there's a good chance that they'll see those customers again and there's more ownership with the employee at that point of that particular account. So that's kind of it. I mean, is that part of the thought process? It's like I'm going to let this person do the initial clean with the hope or the expectation that they'll be providing the recurring service as well. Yeah, like, so not really. I mean, we're not really trying to model but it kind of just works out. It just happens, you know, like so it's a side effect. So I probably shouldn't focus on it because it's not really part of the model. It just kind of happens when you have your only your new people doing deep cleanings. That's a positive side effect. But the other reason that it works well is that deep cleanings, once somebody does a couple of them it's fairly easy for me to send, my field supervisors can spend, I have a field operations manager and an assistant and they can spend time at initial cleanings. It's easy for them to pop out into the field and check in and make sure everything's happening. And then if there are items missed, it's very easy for us to fix it the first time we're back. And it's also from a customer service perspective it's easier to leave things not done on purpose and say, we just need to finish the deep cleaning the next time we're there. I mean, there's a lot more flexibility in the deep clean process than we had, I guess, figured in and we were stuck in our thinking like experienced people have to do deep cleanings. That's not true. You can have your new people do it. You just have to train them. It's like anything else. So that's kind of how we are able to keep our senior people with the same customers all the time. You know, I have a question about that. Oh, it looks like we have somebody else coming on too that has a question. But one of the fears that you hear or you might not hear about, but I hear about because of my job is they're nervous. I don't want to send the same cleaner out all the time. Well, I do want to, but I also don't want to. So it's hard for me to make that happen. I'm worried they're going to steal the client from me, especially with solos. I'm worried that they're going to their work is going to start to, you know, depreciate because they're just going to get too comfortable. Those are the two big things that I hear about. What's been your experience there, Joe? Neither of those things have happened because I have and I think I know why. I mean, first of all, I have a workforce who is happier and more engaged because I've taken care of the number one problem that they had with the job, right? So they're appreciative of that aspect. So the inconsistency was identified as their number one concern. Right, yeah. But you're also not having that problem with people that are new that never had that problem. They were brought into this new system and right there. Yeah, no. And so, I mean, the other thing is that I always, I'm, you know, working to make sure that my platform, if you think of my business as a platform to connect cleaners with houses, that my business provides enough value to the customer and to the employee that they're stickier. So, you know, we have health benefits and a retirement plan and, you know, life insurance and short-term disability and, you know, bonuses and really good pay, like pay that's at the point where they're not sure they could make better money cleaning on the road, you know? And so, you know, I think if you can structure it that way, it's about, I guess for me, it's just about having confidence in my business as a platform and as a brand and just having the confidence to say, I don't care if you have a relationship with the customer, I want you to have a relationship with the customer and recognizing the value that that brings on, you know, for a bigger picture for the company, for the brand. And so far, it's, you know, it's worked really well. And to say, I mean, there's a risk, there's a chance, it's kind of like rate increases, I guess, and people are reluctant to do it for fear that their customers are gonna leave them in reality, they're making a whole lot of money by doing the rate increase and, you know, maybe, you know, 1% of your customers, 2% will leave over that, but you're still a whole lot better off. The benefit, I assume far outweighs the realized risk. Anyway, if you had a rogue employee, like once in a blue moon, go off and do something, you're still better off doing it this way, right? Yeah, I mean, so we've been doing it this way for a year and a half, and, you know, those kinds of issues have not come up at all. In fact, I just got a five-star review. I signed up with Nice Job recently, and which is like a review. Oh, Nice Job, it's a nice job. It's great. So anyway, one of the five-star reviews that we just got on Google yesterday specifically talked about how, unlike other cleaning companies, you know, GreenCleanMain sends the same person every time. So, you know, it's starting to be recognized by customers as a value. Yeah. And the other way that we provide value beyond, you know, where the customer might not want to go off platform is we're there every time no matter what, and we really take that commitment seriously, as I'm sure most people on the call do, so don't underestimate the value that brings to the customer. They don't want to manage this person directly. They like having you between them and this person. If the person they're assigned to regularly is on vacation, gets sick, or has a sick child, or any of that kind of stuff, you're gonna send somebody else, and their house is still gonna get cleaned. And if there's an issue, they know that they can, that they can get it resolved through you. And also the technology platform you're using really matters. I mean, I just, it's a plug for Made Central, but I mean, come on, it's so easy for a customer to manage their own account in Made Central. It makes it easier, makes the service really convenient, and they would lose that if the cleaner goes off and just deals with them directly. So, you know. That is a really good point. One of the big values that we forget to even think about as business owners is they want to hire a business. They don't want to have, to have to have those hard conversations. They don't want to have to say. There are, there's a large chunk of the population that does not want to have to say, my floors weren't as clean directly to someone's face. They don't prefer to give that to the company and let the company manage that person. That's true. And when that cleaner decides to move on, they don't want to deal with having to find a new one. I mean, it's all, it's all these, we have to remember as cleaning business owners, a value that arts types of businesses bring to the customer. Stand behind that, be confident in that and, and enroll with it. So, you know, I think that's, that would kind of be my answer to that. It's worked for me so far. I have the same concerns. Don't get me wrong, but COVID kind of forced my hand. That's why I didn't make it more of a priority earlier. I thought, well, you know, just sort of as the way it is, you know, but the fact is it doesn't happen. So back to my, you wanted me to emphasize the order Liz. So familiarity is number one. So that's whenever you're assigning, so that this goes for day of schedule changes too. So somebody does call out, you got to make changes in the schedule, it happens, right? You try and assign the clean, you try not to move cleanings off of people's day. So like before, what we would do is if there was a call out and someone was geographically closer, we would move cleanings off of another person's day to put these cleanings there because they're geographically closer, whatever. Absolutely. Because we have a metric for that. You know, we call that efficiency. You want efficiency to be high, right? Yeah, so we don't do that. So what we do instead is familiarity is first. So we do not move any cleanings off of anyone's day. What you have to do is if when the person calls out, you just have to find places to put the cleanings where they fit. Now, it's okay if you need to move the time of another person's cleaning, but just not move it off their day entirely. And so that's kind of how we approach it. So familiarity first, geography second, and then client preferences third. So if the customer prefers to be cleaned in the morning, but in order to get them cleaned in the morning, we would have to move a cleaning off of another person's day, we won't do it. So you just have to tell the client, I'm sorry, we don't have your preferred time today, we have to come in the afternoon. And it's just the way it has to work. So it's a different way to think about it, a different way to approach customer service around it and things like that, but our customers have adjusted and are so much happier overall because the staffing is consistent, you know? And so that's really worked out. And was there an education process with your customers? I mean, the why behind what you're doing would have a lot to do, I would assume with the acceptance from a customer standpoint. It's like, if you roll with it on this, you're going to get more consistent treatment as well. Yes, absolutely. So there was, and most customers honestly either didn't notice or didn't care about the change, just sort of the subtle, to them it was very subtle. You know, in terms of instead of us always saying, yes, like this person likes to be in the morning and then we have to move mountains so we can get Mrs. Smith then before noon time. That's used to be the way we do it, but now we have to tell Mrs. Smith, we can't come in the morning today, I'm really sorry. We're going to have to come in the afternoon. It's a subtle change, but the customers, all it takes is you explain to them, we have to do it this way so we can keep staffing consistent. That's all we've had to say. And they get it, they don't really ask questions, they're fine with it. It's all good. But I'm wondering why you would have to move somebody from the morning to the afternoon. Is that because, yeah, why would you have to do that? Well, let's say, all right, let's pretend that you've got Mary the cleaner and Mary the cleaning, the cleaning person has two homes that she's cleaning that day. So let's say she's cleaning two homes. She's got a morning client and afternoon client. Yeah. But the only place that we have room in the schedule and Mary calls out. So Mary's got her two customers, she calls out. So now we have two cleanings that are moved into not assigned, right? And our scheduled job. So we have to find a home for those. So the only two openings we have are in the afternoon. So that's why Mary's morning client really says she needs to be in the morning. But in order for us to clean here in the morning, we would have to move somebody else's cleaning to a different spot and maybe to a different person. So we're not doing that. And now we have two people jacked up instead of only one person jacked up. Yes, exactly. So then we have to take both cleanings and put them where the spots are. Or maybe because of another skip or whatever, all you have are morning spots. And the second client of the day, like you have to tell them, I know you prefer afternoons, but we have to come earlier. And I'm not gonna pay a cleaner to wait around at the office until one to go clean. You know, we just don't do that. So like I said, just a little bit of an education with the customer, we have to do it this way to keep staffing consistent. And so is there a, so when you are communicating that, is it, do you communicate that? I'm sorry, we're to be able to clean you today. We're gonna have to do you in the morning. We're gonna have to clean in the morning instead of the afternoon. Or is it, yeah, it's more like that then. It's not, we're just gonna have to do it just willy nilly, that's what we're doing. But- No, no, I mean, we always explain it. Like, you know, we'll say, the only opening we have in your area is in the morning today. So to do it today, to do it today, we're gonna have to come in the morning. And 90% of the time they're totally fine with it, you know. And on the odd chance they're not, they'll just say it doesn't work for me. And we just rescheduled them to another day in the week. Okay, when you can get it in the afternoon or whatever they wanted. Or whenever it works. And that's another hole in your schedule that you have to explain to somebody else that, you know, they're not gonna get their normal time either. So I mean, it kind of gets games. And use the same process when you go to tomorrow or the next day, we have to move them. You only put them in where there's an opening. So you're not like moving things around to try and get this person the perfect geographical spot. You know. Right. So I do wanna say this one thing for the people that are here today. That whenever you hear a new thing like this, it's really easy to see what all the problems are. It's like, yeah, but you don't understand. My people can't do that kind of stuff because they have kids at home and they've got school. Or yeah, but like in my area, we can't do that because of this reason, because of that reason. What I wanna point out for everybody is, Joe had those exact same things running around in his head. He was like, it won't work. You know, the reason why we're doing it this way is because like of all of this stuff, but he was, he felt forced and he also felt compelled to make these changes. And what he found is they work. So even with all of that stuff. So if you're struggling in the same area where you're having this chaos, we hear a lot of times, I'm hearing people all the time talk about chaos, especially Monday mornings. The Monday morning chaos, people are dreading to come to work, office people are dreading to come to work because of Monday morning chaos. So maybe just look at how this could potentially work for your company. And even if you're sure it won't work, maybe just try, right? Sometimes it's enough to just try and see what comes of it. Maybe it won't work for you. But what if it does, what if it does? Well, for me, it was a lesson in really putting, it was like putting your strategy where, it's like putting your strategy where your intentions are, you know? Like, I mean, I wanted to have a more stable business. I wanted to keep my employees for longer. And I wanted to, you know, to do that I had to keep them engaged and keep them satisfied in their jobs. And so if I mean that, I need to be willing to make changes to make that happen. And, you know, I wanna drive down call out rates and things like that. And when people know what to expect with their schedule, they're way less likely to call out. They don't have the anxiety, they don't have the stress of like wondering, well, what am I gonna be doing today? It's when it's very consistent, they come to work. It's amazing how much the schedule affects their willingness to do that. Absolutely, I do have one more thing I have to throw in here about disk. So, you know, we talk a lot about disk and the different behavioral styles. I'm not sure that everybody recognizes that the majority of the people who are working for you that you love, that you like, that do good work for you, they have two behavioral styles commonly, the high S and the high C. Now, the high S is the most common behavioral style that there is. So, those people like steadiness. High Ss like things to stay steady. So, meeting that need for them is like a kind of a core issue for them. Having a nice steady schedule is like, I feel at home. I feel like I don't like to change jobs, I don't like to leave because I don't like that change up, but I will if I have to, if there's too much chaos in the job. So, the majority of people want that stability, they want that steadiness. Just because of the population that is out there and that comes to work for us. So, it's a win-win-win on a lot of different levels. It is. And the customers are getting a lot of value out of it. Like I said, they really appreciate the consistency. So, and you know- A lot of high Ss with them too. Yeah, and there is the risk, I think of the quality dropping off a bit when you don't have, but that's what you have a field supervisor for a field operations manager or, you know, that's what you have quality assurance processes in place for. And if you have a good technology platform that solicits feedback from the customers and makes it easy for them to give you feedback, if something is slipping, it's really easy for them to let you know. I mean, Made Central has two-way text and amazing feedback system where the customers click one click and boom, that's their feedback. It goes to the customer file and it goes to the employee file immediately. And it goes into the company stats. I mean, it's just so easy for them that like this whole concern of like the quality could slip over time. It's just really a non-issue. It really is not an issue at all. It's, you know- If you're measuring it, you can manage it. Yep. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So- The people that don't use Made Central, Joe's point is still the same, right? It's still a valid point. You still need to be managing quality in some way. Look at quality-driven. Look at, what was the other one? Customer thermometer, right? There are, there are tracking programs that you can use. So if you're not using Made Central, it doesn't mean, oh, great. This is just a pitch for Made Central. It really isn't. We didn't talk to Joe beforehand and say pitch Made Central. It just so happens to be, he knows it's important and he does, that's what he uses. It's true, but I will say, I'm not just here to pitch Made Central, I'm really not, but I do use it. And I will say that when the feedback is connected to both the customer file and the employee file, and that happens automatically, that brings a whole new level of value. So it's different than a separate system. We used to have a separate system that we used and it just isn't the same. Not that those systems can't bring value, but there's another level you take it to when it's integrated with your CRM. So that's our protocol. Familiarity first always, then geography, then customer preferences. So a couple of other notes about this. One is that it's not that geography doesn't matter at all, it does, it's second on the list, but all we did was set acceptable tolerances for drive time. So rather than drive that drive time down to shave minutes off, we just said, if you're within a certain radius of Portland, it has to be 10 minutes or less between jobs. And if you're in a more outlying area and needs to be 15 minutes or less between jobs. So I saw a question pop up on the feed here about how do you determine geographic areas or something like that, right? Is that was something? I'm looking for it. Yeah. Right here. There we go. Yep. Yeah, okay, assigned regions. Yeah, so when we schedule things, it's not that we're trying to put them in a specific zone really. It's just that if you follow the protocol as you're adding customers or if a customer needs to move their day, whenever you're making a permanent schedule change, as long as you follow the protocol, you're just making sure they're not driving more than 10 minutes between jobs for a certain radius. And then for the second radius, not more than 15 minutes between jobs, that's it. You don't obsess over, well, it would be three minutes faster if I moved this customer to this person and move that customer over here. You just don't bother with that. It's not worth it. It does not create enough efficiency to make it- Overall. Overall. Like how do you do efficiency? Right, what brings you more value is keeping the schedule consistent. Because we used to be chasing geography so hard that we'd keep moving cleanings off of staff members as customers laughed or staff members laughed. The schedule is always changing. It's just always like a dynamic thing. It's always changing. So don't make it more complicated. Like just the geography can be, as long as you set tolerances, that's all you don't need to make it perfect. Just needs to be within certain tolerances. That's how we're managing and it's working really, really well. And the other complaint that's gone away is, why am I from the employees, why am I driving from Freeport, which is at the northern end of our service area to Bideford, which is at the southern end of our service area, probably a 50 minute drive. Why am I driving from Freeport to Bideford? And all those kinds of things used to happen because you'd make a perfect schedule and then there'd be two jobs left over. So then you just assign them to this person and then they'd be driving all over the place. So that, and the other reason we don't get those kinds of complaints anymore is the only time somebody's driving that far is in a reschedule situation where we've had to say to Mrs. Jones, we have to move your cleanings to another team member today because your team member called out and whatever, we'll email them and tell the customer that that's happening. And it might be the only person that had an opening was in the opposite end of the service area. And for that one day, they are gonna have to drive like really far, but we always put a note in the work order for the technician. This is critical. It's communication about schedule and it is absolutely critical. Put a note in there every time. This is one of the things I spot check as the owner. I'll go in and spot check, make sure my field operations manager is doing this consistently. Needs to be a note that says, this is not a permanent assignment. Then all the complaining about the driving goes away because I understand that this just happened for today because somebody must have called out or something changed and it's just a one-time thing. So they're not thinking. The field staff will tell a lot of stories about why you're doing this to them and like, why is the office doing this to me? And why am I, what are they thinking? And like, all these crazy stories can start to fester. But just a simple note that says this is not a permanent assignment. And if it's a really far drive, even something that says, I know this is a far drive. It's the only place I had to put it today, I'm sorry. That's my field operations manager will do that. It works. Guess what, people love it. They're like, I get it's fine. I understand, things happen, whatever. Okay, but I do have to point out one of the reasons why that works is because you've also driven down the amount of people that are calling out because it's happening every other day, that's not gonna work anymore. No, it's not just one piece of the, you know. You've established trust. And if it was happening every day, there would be no trust. I don't believe you because this is the third time this week that I've had to drive all the way across town. And you can say you're sorry all you want, but you know what? I'm sick of driving 50 miles to go to work, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, it's true. So that, I mean, that's been huge. And I think one more thing to note. So I noted about geography and the concept of... One more thing about geography before you move on, Joe. Don't lose your point because I'm interrupting. But when you bring on a brand new person, bring on a new client, you do focus on geography there. It's like that is the first place that you look, correct? Yes, yes. But only on that, not on their initial clean either maybe, not on their deep clean, but only on their first recurring, that's when you focus on geography, right? Yes, yeah. Did I tell you that before? That's funny because it is in there and I'd forgotten that that's in there. No, you didn't mention it, but it makes sense to me. And I want to make sure that people knew that because not everybody would not know that. That's a good question. So when we have, I've been talking about reschedules a lot, but let's talk about adding new customers. So when we want to bring on new customers, that's when, so we'll look at geography. Now, this is assuming we have a waiting list, okay? So we've had a waiting list for quite some time. So I can just go to the waiting list, pick out towns that we have openings in and bring those customers on because it makes geographic sense and I can plug them in to certain places in the schedule. And they don't need to know that, they were just skipping over people because nobody knows, yeah, okay. No, and the way you communicate that is, hey, great news, we have an opening in your area on Thursday afternoons. Like we don't ask them, when would you prefer? We used to ask, when would you prefer? We never asked that. We just say, we have an opening in your area on Thursday afternoons. Oh, Thursday afternoons don't work. Oh, that's fine. I'll just put you back on the waiting list. Like it's, we just go to the next person, like, you know, and it's not, but now if we don't have a waiting list, the process changes slightly, but it's still the same idea. So if we don't have a waiting list, we have, we actually created a board in the office that's got a, that gets updated weekly, that's like, these are the pluses or minuses in these towns in terms of what days we have open and available. So if the salesperson's taking a call and then the person is in, you know, a town, say they're in Portland, and well, Portland's a bad example because Portland is our city. So we always have openings in Portland, but they're in an outlying town, say. So they're in this town that's outlying, it's called Durham and they're in Durham and they want service on Fridays. We can look at the board and go, the only spot we have in Durham is Monday mornings. That's it. If you can't take that, then I can't help you. And then they'll go, Monday mornings are fine. You know what I'm saying? I wanted Friday, but Monday is full. And I don't know, if you run into this, we run into, okay, but can I get a list? Can I get on a list? So if you get a list on Friday. Yep. And you know what? We do have a list, Liz, and we maintain it and we mean it. We're not just pretending. We do. I'm happy to put you on a waiting list for Durham for Fridays. Absolutely. We have a Google doc that just has a list of everybody who'd rather be in a different day. But often by the time you get back to them and say, hey, guess what? We've done this one on Fridays. They're like, I love Mondays. I don't want to change. And I love my cleaner. It's great. This whole process has been amazing. And that's because customers fall into the same category as employees. They're all high S's, y'all. They all also want that steadiness. Most people are high S's. If you give us just a roomful of people and kind of go through it, more people, like half the population is a mess, right? That's right. Now if you put a whole bunch of business owners in a room, you're going to run into a different thing. But it doesn't matter, right? We are. This whole thing has taught me a lot about how my previous conceptions about how customers view the scheduling portion of our value proposition in terms of our service is way different from, they do not value it as high as they think they do and they don't value it as high as we thought they did. What they value more is consistency. And that's just played out, you know. That is such a good point, Joe. I love that point. People don't really know what they want. Just like your employees will tell you the number one thing they want is money, but the reality is not that they, that's the number one thing. Do they want money? Of course. Who doesn't want more money? But that is not the thing that is going to keep them there. Yeah. And if we do it well, we have an opportunity to help them appreciate things that maybe they didn't even know it mattered to them in vice versa. We are pushing the top of the hour. Just wanted to give a shout out to Sharon Timberg. She's been watching and she's got a thumbs up for Joe here. And, you know, here's a question from Robin. You think he can give him an answer in maybe 60 seconds? Let's see. You know, next month we're going to be talking about this too. So you can probably get a... Well, that's in March actually. Oh, in March, sorry. Well, you can get it in February. February is scheduled to be automations. Okay. And so are we talking about this? Are we talking about the core values question? Just generally with a remote workforce, how do you... That's how I would read this. You know, how do you train and still core values with Solos remote workforce? So we are struggling with this. And actually I'm in the process of overhauling our training. It's my number one focus. It will be for all of quarter one. We're totally overhauling our training. The process itself, for how we clean a house is staying the same, but how we deliver the material is changing and how we engage the employees is changing. Because, you know, if my answer to Robin's question pre-COVID would have been, well, it's easy. It's our team leaders. Our team leaders just live the core values and that's how we spread the culture of the company. Now there were the trainer for three weeks and then they're off on their own. And that's presenting us with real retention challenges. So, you know, our workforce that was with us before COVID is not going anywhere. They, and I mean, the stickiness is amazing. There's virtually no turnover in that group, but it's the new people that we've hired since COVID. And it's not just the labor market and work attitudes and all that. It's the experience of working at my company is different than it was before COVID. And, you know, we've only recently really begun to fully understand that and fully understand the impact of an all-solo workforce on the company culture. Our culture has always been really important and really strong and it's different now. And so we're having to rearrange things to make it better. So I have some ideas, Robin, but I haven't implemented any of them yet. So as we can... So come back at once. Like March and you can hear those ideas. That's right. Yeah. Sharon's got another shout out for you here, Joe. Thanks, Sharon. Or at the top of the hour now, we are. Joe, as always, you know, some of our guests have done this long enough. We refer to them as smart business moves contributors. So you're a, you know, SBM contributor running to get you like a plaque or something. Yeah. I don't know. He gets a plaque contributor at this point, right, Tom? T-shirts are easy. That's what we're going to do, right? We need to get some swag, a hat or something. T-shirt. And I also, I love water bottles and coffee mugs. So like, you can always say, you're easy. Me too. Yeah. Hey, we're done for today. We're going to be back Wednesday. We're going to be talking about dispatching on Wednesday. And Chris, will it's going to be our guest? Awesome. Does Chris know that? He does. You told him, OK, good. Were you in charge of telling him, Tom? No, I was Liz's. I was like, Chris, but. Yeah, we're good. Well, Chris was struggling with COVID. So let's hope he's feeling better for Wednesday. And we'll see you soon. We'll be back Wednesday at 5 o'clock. Bye-bye. Thank you. Thank you, everybody.