 Hi, Tom Stewart here the clean business today. I'm with both my partners here are two of my partners. I've got Derek Christian there in the middle Hey Derek and I was with us the original cleaning business builders Trio going back a good long ways just wanted to Take a minute and thank everybody for for for taking some time out of the day and in joining us We were Liz and Derek and I were chatting a little bit before we started and we made note that there seems to be a number of Discussions floating around there about about acquisition opportunities. There's some companies that are thinking about Maybe reducing their footprint in the industry or people are thinking about they want to do something other than run a run a cleaning business now that things have in a lot of cases been temporarily shut down and Other companies think this could be an opportunity to go out and grab some additional business Derek I know that that you always have your ear to the ground on such things. What are what are you hearing? Yeah, a lot of people know that I've bought and sold a lot of companies over the years So they tend to reach out to me and we are seeing a fair amount of action particularly in the smaller companies They've decided that you know if there were a lot of people who are close to retirement Are not looking very excited at the idea of having to rebuild again because as most of us are expecting We're not going to come back to full speed We're going to need to rebuild and for some of the folks who are closer to retirement age They've decided that you know what I just don't have it in me again to do this again I just want to get rid of my clients let somebody take over Some other people have decided that I've seen a couple folks decide that they don't want to ever have that many employees again That they want to have a smaller employee base A lot of people have been really surprised Who thought they had a really strong team and as soon as people started having the option to not work for money? their teams evaporated on them and Up to a lot of them that felt like a pretty strong betrayal Now not a lot of people have a lot of cash out there So what's happening in most cases is people are selling their business or their clients for a percentage of revenue? 10% for three years or 20% for six months some type of listen. I I'm gonna give you my client list I'm gonna tell my clients. I'm going out of business Whatever you service out of them you can have I get a percentage of is basically what they're doing and people who get PPP money are kind of excited because they have to get their payroll back up to a certain level and Acquiring somebody else's customers is a relatively easy way to get there. So a Deal that would look pretty attractive to me is if somebody came to me and said I'm willing to give you my client base You got to give me 20% for six months if I'm getting the PPP money where basically my labor cost is free for the first what? Almost three months of that. I have no cost. So I'm still making money even given them 20% So we're seeing that in almost every market a lot of people are reconsidering whether or not they want to be doing this That is one of the things that is an opportunity in something like this is you're gonna see a little bit of consolidation Also, you don't really want to run an independent contractor model right now The PPP money is not for independent contractors. The EIDL money gives you money per employee So if you're running independent contractors, you're not getting much government aid right now So the independent contractor companies in particular are feeling quite a bit of pain Whereas the employee model companies are getting some government help, which I think is going to be an interesting trend to see as well Do you think there's a relationship between those two dynamics where? companies that are based on an independent contractor model might be looking to to reorganize or merge or sell just because the The grant monies are and loans are harder to get. Yeah, I mean for for those of us that own cleaning companies We're looking forward to getting some money and you know, you can argue how quickly we're gonna get the PPP money and the various Grant monies, but I think most of us think we're eventually gonna get it That's a whole other topic will get to in a little bit and that gives us some money to rebuild I can't imagine trying to rebuild from a dead stop with no funds. I Can't even imagine how you would do that. I mean, you're basically starting over again from zero and a Lot of those folks. I think I've decided to leave the industry Also, they just got an abject lesson a lot of the people who opened on the independent contractor model Kind of got into the market post 2008 sort of the handy business model Just go online and get some independent contractors to send out to houses and they've never had a bad market And they just got an abject an abject lesson in that owning a business Isn't all straight up and there are some really crappy times, too And they are now maybe reconsidering the idea that owning a business is a fantastic thing And maybe they should really just go get a job. So you've got some of those forces going on as well They're seeing the bad part that you can go four months without pay potentially So I feel bad smiling because I'm not I'm not happy this is happening to anybody out there but It's kind of Yeah, but but on the other hand, it's like I'm glad they're finally getting to see like the other side. It's not just Straight up all the time and everything's not amazing. Like there's there's downsides to everything too. So I'm not at all happy that it's happening to To our independent contractor friends, but I'm kind of happy to be sharing the the The smart business move idea here that we're all kind of in yeah Well, and like I said, I'm definitely happy that we've got employees. I wouldn't want to have independent contractors right now Um, I know cleaning company owners that are getting two hundred and fifty thousand dollar ppp Grants or loans, but when they spend it on employees, it's going to turn to grants and that's just a huge competitive advantage That'll generate what half a million dollars or more in revenue with no labor cost for them And that's awful hard to go up against so And you know, I mean just to kind of Dig the hole a little bit deeper. If you will It's uh, I've heard, you know people in both saziol and congress say that since independent contractors are able to apply for for unemployment benefits that The rules are going to change to where it's going to be more difficult for companies to use The ic model the way it's been used in the past because They aren't paying into unemployment, but in the future they will so the thinking is that that when the dust settles on the other side of of Where we are right now that more companies are are going to Have to use the employee model because the rules of doing ic's is going to be a lot More restrictive than what it has been in the past Yeah, there's going to be a wrecking in at some point Now for us, there's some bad news in ohio. They've already increased our unemployment from 2.5 percent to 4 percent So yeah, they already took us up about one and a half percent Um, and somebody's going to eventually have to pay for those independent contractors And I think they're going to start looking around I wouldn't be surprised if you don't see some type of independent contractor tax coming out soon Um, because everyone's now paying for their unemployment and eventually someone's going to say well, wait a minute We got to get get that money back all the employees paid in But the independent contractors took money out. They got to start paying in now too Yeah, I've thought about that so Derek one of the things I really have always appreciated about having you as a partner Is that you think differently and it's always Like a great brand new perspective for me. So yeah, that's awesome You were one of the first people people that ever mentioned to me The independent contractor model way back in the day. You're like, yeah, this is going to be a new thing This is uh, this is where things are going. I was like, wow, really? Yeah remember when was it that home joy and handy first started doing their thing and Oh, was it before it was handy? What was it called? Handy was in the name wasn't it? Yeah, it was handy book. I believe Oh, yeah, handy book. Yeah Yeah And we did the uh disruptive innovation summit We're in atlanto. I think at one of the issa conventions. Yep. Yeah Well, you are seeing some of the bigger guys shut down. I don't know if you saw but cool Which was sort of like handy shut down like three days into the Stay at home order also I'm sorry. Who did tackle? It's like CKLE They were more in my space the handyman space, but they also did do Cleaning and the idea the brand name was tackle your to-do list And uh, they were running really aggressive ads on facebook of people magically mounting televisions for $50 and things like that The other thing which has happened, which not a lot of people have talked about but I know some people who Who earn their living this way is amazon completely shut down their independent contractor cleaning marketplace You can't book a cleaning on amazon right now. Um, they didn't want the legal liability for fear of spreading COVID-19 So people that were making their living on the amazon platform, they've temporarily just shut it down And said, you know, we're a big enough company that we don't want to be in the news Seeing sending people into people's houses and be responsible for the hygiene or lack of hygiene of our independent contractors And there's too much liability. So to be safe, we're shutting it down Which I wonder to what extent that might be a permanent decision that someone in amazon sitting around going We decided to shut it down temporarily because of the liability, but do we really want the liability ever again? They never really were able to get that thing off the ground They didn't have much traction. So i'm wondering if it just makes sense to just be done with it and not try again I'm thinking of what that's kind of what happened with proctor and gamble back in the day They wanted to to get into this market and it was like heavier lift than they had anticipated right gary Yep, um, they decided they didn't want to do it because the brand risk their big concern Was somebody would eventually steal something And if it was a mr. Clean branded company, it would get in the news, you know, mr. Clean stole 500 Thousand dollars from some little old lady and they said, you know what I don't want to do it And right around that time because I was on that team Um Paula Dean's home cleaner had stolen a bunch of her jewelry and it got in the news. I don't know if you remember that at all um, and At the time everyone was like, you know what? If some random cleaner stealing from Paula Dean got in the news imagine if that had been a mr. Clean or a swiffer branded Cleaner that was in there and they said, you know, let's just back away from that. We make an awful lot of money on product Let's not get into the service space And you know, I think to a certain extent same thing with amazon if you go to amazon home services It'll still be up. But if you actually try to book and any zip code in america it says come soon Oh Oh, that's kind of good. No, though Because I I know a couple of people my former cleaners that had gone out and decided they were just going to work for amazon That are regretting that decision now Oh, I bet So, you know another thing I was wondering if we could talk about today Not to cut you guys short on on this conversation But I was wondering if we do have a question too before I hit my point. I'll hit bet you question Any idea when Well Stimulus and unemployment deadlines are Stimulus is that the $1,200 that The irs is sending out to individuals. I don't know if it's a deadline for that or unemployment either Unemployment's july 31st currently they could potentially extend it, but it's currently till july 31st Both for the extra six hundred dollars and the loosened restriction But the but the stimulus is kind of Everybody gets it and then they'll be doing it until everybody's qualified gets it. Isn't that correct? Yeah, I saw something they said they're expecting they'll be sending it out as late as a year from now That most most the people who had direct deposit and stuff on file got it right away, but it's going to take a long time to issue all the checks Well, they had to stop for a week because they decided president trump's name on all the checks Which I thought was funny. They can't send them out without a signature I love it What have you guys heard anything about this $2,000 the new $2,000 stimulus thing? Have you guys heard anything about that? I don't think it's going anywhere. There is some discussion about it, but Most major areas are starting to reopen Texas is opening up next week here in Ohio. We're opening up on may 1st Now not completely our governor's been very clear that i'm not just going to throw the doors open But things are starting to turn. I was actually telling tom and lis handyman connection the company that i'm now running in Cincinnati At our low point was getting six work orders a day and today we had 25 work orders Our normal for this time of year is about 25 work orders So when our governor on friday said we're going to open back up on may 1st It's like somebody opened up the faucet again. I think a lot of people Are just happy to know we've reached the low the stock market is rebounded almost 50 So a lot of people have said, okay, this isn't the bottom You know, this is the bottom. This is as bad as it's going to get. I can live with this. I still have some money So I don't think we're going to see a lot more stimulus. I think you'll probably see More snap money. I think you'll probably see heightened unemployment still, but everyone just getting a check I I don't think you're going to see that at least that's my opinion Um Of course stock markets still a bit rocky. We were down two and a half percent today I think the really really interesting thing uh in the markets today was boil and i'm looking for that Crude you can buy barrel of crude oil for 13 dollars right now Yeah, you're starting to get a fair amount of of pushback on the stimulus stuff though A lot of people are starting to feel like it's getting a little out of hand Yeah Um, um betty let us know if we didn't um answer your question the way. Oh no, it looks like we did Thank you bunch of sorry. I've topic. No not off topic at all. Everybody don't have a topic Yeah, anybody that's on this facebook live feel free to um chime in with any questions that you have related to What we're going through right now I mean originally honestly, we were planning on talking a little bit about the ppp plan this morning They were saying they were having a deal they were expecting it to pass this afternoon. Yeah, I didn't pass Um now I still think it is going to pass Honestly, I think what's going on is there was so much bad press about people getting the loan that shouldn't have gotten the loan That they're probably trying to fix some of that before they dump another 250 billion in because they got so much bad press So that would be my guess of why it slowed down a little I don't think it's not going to happen. They've already announced what's going to be in it And it's not a bad program. I think it was what 250 billion dollars for um small business 75 billion dollars for hospitals and 25 billion dollars for testing So it didn't feel like they crammed a lot of junk in there. It seemed like to me it looks logical so Yeah, it's it's it's going to be you know a good program, you know, they still have a lot of issues though I mean the companies who need at least seem to be benefit benefiting from it most, you know Yeah, I saw something. Did you know who the biggest ppp lenders been so far? No jp morgan, you know And you know accounting firms a lot of uh, you know people who are able to work from home Those companies are getting those funds and this is all pure profit for them because they're not the number one industry actually is construction Construction got more ppp funds than any other industry yet in every single market construction is concerned essential service and is continuing as normal Not here Yeah, really Is uh biotech and medical testing And uh, you know even even some of the some of the the larger uh companies who you know got like 100 million dollars and they're Decided to give it back um The way the law is written basically they're just repaying the loan immediately and those funds cannot be redistributed. So those go back to the treasury, so Even though they're giving it back They might as well have kept it because it isn't going to be going to any other small business I think people still want to see them give it back. Yeah Now i'm seeing on here, uh, betsey just made a comment that um, There's no one else she can talk to no one else given advice tom I thought you were gonna share a secret of how you can actually talk to some people Yeah, we got a Super secret I know i'm really into by putting it too early in but she asked the question so Do you want to explain what this number is? um, basically the number that you just put out there is the uh customer service line for the small business administration Um, and they have like no weight. How long did you wait when you called them tom? Well, it depends what I call sometimes I've waited for about a half hour I've talked to them multiple times over the last 24 hours, but today that they were were pretty uh, pretty fast Yeah, I was calling eight to five today and in less than two minutes. I was talking to someone every single time And when you talk to them, I mean these are people that are like working from home They're not together So you're you're talking to somebody different each time and it's like the left hand doesn't know what the right one's doing So it's like a whole new discussion. So yeah, sometimes you have to call back a couple of times But um, what most people what this is good for isn't ppp because that goes through your bank. What this is good for is the economic Disaster loan. I forget the acronym, but the other That is a good number for this Um, it what it seems like talking to people is if you got $10,000 deposited in your account Um, if you call them, they will tell you They will send you a link to your portal page Which will show you how much you were approved for the big loan and uh, the two people I know who did this each had approved up to half a million dollars for the bigger loan If you're lucky, this is where you have to call multiple times I didn't get that much. Yeah I've talked to them at least a half a dozen times and But you know, I'm talking I'm calling for different companies and this conversation because I'm learning something each time I do it And I'm making friends because they're really nice. I mean, they're trying to be helpful and they feel bad when they aren't able to Like tell you how much money you're getting so You know in the part almost got to talk to somebody's supervisor one time. So I'm starting to When I was calling on the behalf of a company that applied for five different branches And they were actually really helpful because they were able to say this branch and this branch Were approved. You'll have the ten thousand dollars in your bank account within three days. These three were flagged as duplicates Um, eventually, you know, when you get a call for your bigger loan be sure to address that these three are duplicates and have a discussion from there. Um, and uh You know, we found that sometimes you got a call in a couple times because like tom said they're all working at home And they don't all have the same knowledge The first time I called in they were like, we can't give you any of that information yet The second time I called in he's like, yeah, sure. Let me look what looks like we ran your background check You know, you're probably about three days away from getting the money in your account. So They're they're not a giant call center and if you can imagine how difficult it would be to train your people If you couldn't bring them into the office Sbh tried to train all these people remotely with no supervision. So yeah, your results are going to vary But if you call a couple times almost everyone I know has been able to get some useful information Yeah, and you know when I uh call i'm typically calling like i'm looking i'm representing just one company And when I don't get the answer i'm looking for there it's like well I've got a few other companies that I run and I just kind of go down the list and I did that I don't know about three times maybe until I went through that list again and one of them somebody caught and started looking at like bank accounts and One of the bank accounts for one of the companies was ripping a digit And I was actually able to get that corrected over the phone. So I don't know why they didn't call me the first three times, but uh Yeah, I and I'm going to be calling them several times a day Oh, yeah, and they're open from eight o'clock in the morning till Eight o'clock in the evening and this is eastern time seven days a week And I noticed last night because I like called like at 750 eastern time got done about eight 10 or so And immediately called back and an auto attendant Answered I mean auto tends going to answer it anyway, but it's a different auto attendant You just wind up bouncing around into some endless loop and you know They won't answer the phone after eight o'clock at night But they were supposed to open at eight in the morning and I called maybe five minutes after eight and bang They were they were right there and it kind of gave me the feeling if I they called before eight It would know what I take that back. I called before eight. That was the part that that threw me I called about 750 and somebody answered the phone and that was what really got me confused is like crap I should have called earlier. So I don't know how early is early, but Don't don't wait until exactly at a clock because I thought I was going to be stuck in queue for 10 minutes or so I thought I was going to be stuck in queue for an hour. I got myself already with a little side project Had him on speakerphone, you know was ready to be doing something while I was waiting for someone to answer So in the answer, I was almost confused. You know, they're like, hello, I'm like There's someone on the phone. What so? You are going to get various answers You know, Greg's posting that he's had some problems what I've seen in generals the people who got the $10,000 When they call get emailed the portal if you haven't gotten the $10,000 yet Most of us are being told Quite to the stage yet, but in my case and I think in tom's case, they got into some pretty big details Let us confirm your bank account number. We've run your credit check We've run your background check So I kind of know where I am in the process and he even told me based on what I'm seeing here You're about three days away from getting the $10,000 in your portal. I'm like, great Now they keep telling everyone that you're going to get an email on how to log into the portal Nobody I know has gotten that email I think it's broken Um, but the people who called in and got emailed that do get to the portal and see everything But they're gonna ask that every time and the question you're asking is I'm hoping you could help me get the link my link to the portal They just said we've got an email yet and it's like, you know, I've been having problems with my email A lot of stuff is going to spam. I'm looking for it. My it people are working on. Oh, that's true By the way, I got a ton of email and there's a real chance that if I ever got that email it might take several days to To dig it out. So You know part of my whole discussion is helping them understand that that you know, my email is not 100 reliable So if you guys could help me out, it would be awesome Haven't gotten That response I'm looking for you But at least that's the the angle that we're working But the cool thing is that telephone number works and you're talking to somebody that At least has a chance of helping you So long story short Greg call back So don't accept the answer that you have to wait longer for an email. That's only what that one guy is saying Call back. You'll get somebody else and ask the question again Go ahead Tom. I'm sorry. Liz a normal call center would say well, it looks it looks like it You've already called us five times already, but these guys have no clue how many times you've called So they think it's the first time you're calling. So just Just say, okay. Thank you and call again Um, but I have only heard that people are getting I'm going to getting their link and seeing that they were funded from people that have already gotten the $10,000 So if you haven't gotten the the 10 grand yet, you probably are going to have to wait just a little bit longer Yeah, once you get the 10,000 I think is when you want to really push to get that link Although like I said, it was useful for me because I found out that three of my companies are tied up as Potential duplicates so that I can start clearing that up You know, there's a lot kinds of weird stuff that could be going on So even if you haven't gotten your $10,000 If you've got the time you might as well. Let's go ahead and make the call You never know One of yours would have gone into the wrong bank wouldn't have gotten anywhere Yeah, it would have aired out And we keep saying $10,000, but it might not actually be $10,000. It's uh, $1,000 per employee up to $10,000 Yeah, so if you don't have I can tell you I've gotten The what are they calling it for the the ideal the the emergency grant the emergency Used to be grant they turned out to advance to I've gotten that for three different companies two of them have Rather significant payrolls. It was the full 10,000 one of them basically has no payroll So I bet they gave me a thousand dollars So and I'm I guessing I mean they do I do have a p&l and I do have operating cost and and In cost a good soul so to be interesting to see what that looks like with the rest of it But they even threw it thousand dollars in the account for a business that has no payroll Uh, so it looks like we have a question here from Leslie She says for those of you who have applied or have received The $10,000. Have you been paying all your employees as usual even though they are not working? Mine are not working at this time and collecting ui So I think that's not necessarily for the 10,000. It's more for the payroll protection plan Yeah, because on the payroll protection plan if you Um get back up to your original employee level and use at least 75 of it for payroll It should be forgivable and there's a lot of details on it. It seems like it's changing by the day So that may be a future one of these is to get deep in that if you haven't done it Um, so Times but the rules keep changing. So we can go back. We'll go back and do it again in a day or so Yeah, once they're the rules shift a little bit again But the challenge is what do you do to get the people on board? Um, part of it is some people are paying to send have their people out do firing Um, part of my plan was I was actually going to hire a couple people to do some search engine optimization Um, now not like third party companies. I was actually going to put some people on payroll Who come in maybe some college students for the summer and create a bunch of landing pages and stuff for me Um, other people are using the opportunity to fix their systems and their processes and clean up their manuals Create a better training program I wouldn't recommend paying them to stay at home Um, because I don't know. I just don't like it if you're gonna let them stay at home That's a bad to get into Yeah, it's a bad habit to get into and if I had a choice, um, if that was my only choices I would leave them on unemployment You know one question that came up today for the for the ppp because yeah, the ppp is really designed to Cover payroll and to to to keep people working while We're trying to get our businesses ramp backed up you know for somebody who's Purely well shut down and they get their ppp money bang. They're on the clock Does it is that eight weeks count for the weeks that they're working or is that eight weeks when paychecks are going out? Because at the end of that eight week period You probably have more people working, but they're not going to get paid to like the following friday And they were asking me should I like do two pay you know hand out Two paychecks on a on the same day on that last friday just to get it in That eight week window and it was an interesting question and it falls under that category of well We don't know how the rules are going to be applied but Possibly that would be one of the odd things that that that we might have to consider to get maximum value out of out of that eight week period Hope not, but yep you could So we're good We had a question come in that everyone's talking about the ppp and not a lot of people are talking about the other loan the idle loan Reason why there's so much attention on ppp is especially in our industries We're so darn labor intensive is if you get back up to full employment It becomes a grant which is a wonderful thing free money. Don't we all want free money? the economic It the disaster loan I always forget the eyes for economic injury disaster loan. Is that it? That loan is your more traditional sba loan that you get after hurricane and stuff comes It is 30 years at most people. I've seen quoted it is 3.75 interest It's supposed to be six months worth of operating expense But everyone I know who's seen it has said it seems to be Roughly twice your gross profit times for the last year It almost seems like they've changed the formula a little bit Um And you can use it for different things the ppp loans got to be very specifically used for payroll Um, rent or mortgage payments. I think utilities Those are the things you can use it for the the other loan the more traditional loan can be used for just about anything But it is not forgivable. It was just a loan. However for someone like me handyman connection We have a lot of materials But the first 10 grand Is supposed to be forgivable right on the idle correct. Yes We think they weren't calling it They were calling it a grand but now they're calling it in advance. So it's a little bit fuzzy But there's there's still fine print the last time I saw that you You you won't have to pay that loan back correct, but if you get it, they're going to take it out of your ppp loan Um, I I have seen that phrasing Oh, that's the reason why for those of you that don't like Leslie who doesn't want or need a loan That's the reason why The recommendation is that you might still want to apply for it is because it's like It's not actually a loan. It's just a like a donation to your company Right, and that was one of the reasons why I was told the sba isn't doing the more traditional thing of reaching out and contacting you Because everyone in their brother applied for the idle program to get the 10,000 Even though more than 90 of the people don't actually want it. They just won the 10,000 dollars So the sba finally was like, all right We're not going to call you if you actually want this loan call us because we're getting sick of calling people and having them say I just wanted to grant Um, now the nice thing about the idle loan is you can use it for other things though You can use it to cover car payments. Um, you can use it to cover credit card payments You can use it in my case once again handyman connection We've got a lot of materials that we have to buy to keep operating So to be able to finance those materials is a big deal, but it is a loan So you've got to be um careful and strategic about it not treat it like a lot of people are treating ppp like free money I'm going to do all sorts of things like you know have my steps on work for me and Weirdness this is a loan and you are going to have to pay it back, but it's a really favorable rate um And on industries like mine that have more material or marketing expenses All those things can be thrown into that loan Regardless of what industry you're in Especially given all the uncertainty that we're dealing with now It's it has the potential of being a material amount of money At a really really low interest rate like 3.75 With a 30 year am so it's almost like Giving you enough money to buy a house, but you've got the money and There's who knows what's going to be happening with interest rates moving forward But it's likely that they're going to go higher rather than go lower because there's not much lower that they can go And in a couple of years from now having that much cash at that low an interest rate Is it's going to be worth more. I I guess or has the potential being worth more If you even if you don't like borrowing money just take it and and and stick it in an account and don't touch it for You know a year or so till you get out of This whole you know covid 19 world and and see where you're at that You know it's better to have it not need it and need it and not have it confusion because I've heard people say you can't do both but you actually can You just can't ask for the same things when you ask for the idle loan It's supposed to be six months worth of operating expenses But if you've got a ppp loan you can't count payroll rent and utilities Because you're using that for that portion, but you can still use it for your six months of everything else Well, the idle one you've got for purpose to for like 30 years you can do whatever I mean you you've got to use it within your business. I mean there's rules Right what I'm saying though is when you when you justify the amount you need You're supposed to take here's my operating expenses And you'll need to take your payroll your rent and utilities out of it then multiply that time six months Um is basically the formula you're supposed to use now what i'm being told by people is well That's the formula they're supposed to be using that They're just throwing numbers out right people that are getting getting material amounts of money So i'm not sure what the math is but Just another reason to call that number and ask for your link to the portal It's it's it's a it's it's an awesome opportunity. I think for for small businesses regardless of uh What industry you're in it's uh like I said you've been doing the right things and paying your taxes and are above board If once again you're someone who's been flying a little bit under the radar It's kind of a lousy time because if you haven't been playing the game right and paying your taxes It's uh the government's not feeling like helping you much right now. Yeah Another really nice thing when you get your portal link is it does tell you how much your payment's going to be two And another thing that nobody's talking about is your first payment isn't due for a year So, I mean that's really a a material amount of help right there too so And I wouldn't count on this at all, but it's something that's worth thinking about That from a political wins standpoint It seems like more and more we're all about debt forgiveness Student loans we need to forgive. You know, we forgive every other type of loan It's not beyond the realm of possibility like a couple of years from now and all these ppp loans Are are coming do that they're going to Do some type of deals where they're extending the terms or doing something again. I have no idea, but If you look at everything else that's going on it would certainly fit the narrative At least the current narrative Where we're going to be in two years Yeah, I think you're eventually going to have to swing in the opposite direction because somebody's going to have to pay all these Bells and you're going to have some pushback, but right now everyone's fighting over their free candy Nobody's paying back this trillions of dollars We're throwing out there. That's not happening. Yeah, even you know 450 billion dollars, I guess is coming out of this next charge and We we we just you know hundreds of billions of dollars doesn't sound like as much money as it used to Yeah Now when they're throwing around numbers with teas in it. Oh, this is our three trillion dollar rescue plan. Yeah Uh, so let's see. I did want to talk about something else. You guys remember earlier. I said What is right now? Say again, Tom. It was really important, but you were You were eating lunch at the time. So I kind of missed the just This is after lunch. I was still picking my teeth. I know it was after lunch. All right So it was about I do remember What are some of the things that? People are doing right now while they're What I'm finding is the people that I'm talking to most of the people are out of this pause stage There are a lot of people that were really angry really frustrated really just like Kind of apathetic just feeling like oh can't move at all can't do anything But most people seem to have moved past that a little bit and I'm wondering what some of the Um companies out there are doing To sort of reset an example is I know quite a few companies that are taking this opportunity Especially the companies that are closed to reschedule not reschedule reorganize all of their jobs so instead of having mrs. Jones on monday and Mrs. Smith way down here on monday now mrs. Jones is on monday mrs. Smith is on wednesday And all these jobs here are being moved around to match and all these are being moved around So I know a lot of people are optimizing their schedules I know a lot of people are focusing in on their marketing I know at least four companies my own included that changed our uniforms and we ordered all new uniforms I'm just curious what other companies are doing out there. And and what are you guys? Oh looks like uh the need is um We're doing training and documents updating her website getting her ready videos ready to add to marketing I know a lot of people are Yeah, that's a big thing right now What else? What are you guys doing Derek? Are you doing anything at the handyman company? Well, we're largely still open since we are in an essential service What we've been doing mostly is just working on search engine optimization since my office has slowed down a little bit There's all those landing pages and optimization stuff that we've meant to do the whole time So we've been trying to get all of that done Um, we've also taken the opportunity to reach out to a couple people who wrote us nasty reviews back in the day And um throw ourselves on their mercy and basically beg them to fix it and give us a chance to come And redo it. Um, we've have openings on the schedule. So hey, how about we come, you know Do a redo for free and see what you think get rid of those. So we've been doing some of that type of cleanup stuff Uh, I could do that too. That's good. Uh, it's good timing, right? We have availability to do it Although we might not have as much money right now. Um, you know, if you haven't gotten any money yet I know a couple people a few people that haven't gotten any money not even You haven't gotten your stimulus either Derek. No, not a thing So The good news is we've been managing to crawl through and stay afloat with it also I'm kind of at this point hoping that uh When that money comes in it's going to launch me out the other side because I'll have money for marketing and Uh recruiting that other people don't have but yeah, the last six weeks has not been fun That's why uh, they were making fun of me and saying a couple calls ago I just looked them at the whole time. I probably was You know That there are days and the other thing I've had here is while we've stayed open I have given my people the choice that if they don't feel unsafe they can tag out And as the weeks were going out more and more people were saying I don't want to work. I don't want to work and uh With the joy of having to lay in your payroll is when people are doing that I'm paying payroll from two weeks ago when I had eight people working with six people working and you get the idea It kept going down. So now I'm on the other end of the cycle where guys are coming back and I'm paying for little payrolls It's like paying for when you pay for Christmas uh the week after Christmas every single week here Yeah, I'm seeing people say they took the hct course lots of people taking training Yeah We offered the gbs course um, yep we've been uh Working a lot on developing training materials. We've got a lot more in the pipeline It's been a lot of time doing research on you know For years through modern cleaning. We've been you know, kind of nerdy with with the science of cleaning and various technologies and earlier adopters on a lot of stuff, but um, we haven't aggressively gone after like electrostatic you know misters and and in some of that uh equipment But we're taking a harder look at that and you know, we've done the hypochlorous acid and We've we've played around with a lot of Stuff that we've never really put in production before but we're taking a harder look at trying to figure out You know, is that really uh something that that that we could use in a way where it would be value added in this uh COVID-19 world And on the other end of that spectrum And maybe you guys would have some somebody would have some thoughts on this Figure that we've we've got uh some time because we're closed down in some areas to go back and and and and look at bill rates for for recurring clients to see if we have anybody that Needs any rate adjustments or or or rate increases and I know it's kind of Counter-intuitive to go to somebody who might not even be using your service at the moment because they don't want People in their house and say that well, you know, it's time to to do an adjustment or or an increase But at the same time we we know that if we Let time go by and we neglect to do those things then the problem gets harder and harder to fix as time goes on I'll tell you what if it was me. I'd use it as an opportunity I I wouldn't raise their prices, but I would use it as an opportunity to look like I'm giving them a great presence In not raising their prices time for a price increase But because of the situation that we're in we're going to go ahead and defer that price increase So they still know it's coming. Yep. So that that'd be my strategy Um, uh, Greg no not Greg. Sorry Uh, that's actually rosemary. Good job rosemary. We're doing the same thing and congratulations. I'm getting that 60 back right away Um, that's gonna be nice to get upper money. I'm assuming you have the ppp. So yay for you Uh, Mary has a question here. How or which revenue numbers figured for a buyer to pay a seller those percentages Okay. Well, yeah, there's two different things. We're talking about normally when you buy a business Um, you're paying a multiple of cash flow So in a normal market, you're saying well this business last year made $50,000 So I'm going to pay two or three times that Since everybody's flat out guessing on what percentage of our customers are actually going to come back And since nobody has a lot of cash right now Most of the transactions that I'm seeing happen are people are giving a percentage of revenue going forward So saying here's the deal You send out an email to everyone. You say you're going out of business. You're sending everyone over to Derek's cleaning service I'm going to basically put them in my crm with a lead source of your company And I'm going to run a report every month and give you some percentage of that revenue Now it's typically either 10 for a longer period of time Anywhere from a year to three years or 20 if it's a short period of time six months to a year And you can debate which of those is better When negotiating sometimes it's good to be flexible. Sometimes people need the money quick Sometimes people like the idea of three years worth of paychecks even if they know they're going to be declining When I sold my dog decor, I did it with a five-year payoff And I got to say I liked getting monthly checks for five years when they stopped coming It was kind of a sad day for me because I got used to that We've used the term over and over again. This is an unprecedented event And selling a cleaning business in this time is an unprecedented event as well The scenario that Derek just described to you is if you're buying somebody else's accounts They're clients if you will if you're buying their their their business and their other assets if there's equipment and vehicles and and you know That deal would look completely different if there was somebody who was leaving their corporate job and was buying your business And they were going to run it as your business and use your website your brand and you'd be able to command You know a better deal than that But a lot of these deals that we're seeing is two competitors in the same market and one Of them's just selling their accounts to the other one that we would look more like what but Derek just described Traditionally it's top line revenue in residential cleaning I don't know three three months worth of revenue give or take But you just don't know like Derek said you just don't know what that revenue is going to look like now So doing it up here to climb off Might make more sense. Well, and it's also just why there's an opportunity right now Is there's a fair amount of people that are just done? The this is broken them and they don't want to do it anymore And they will sell for whatever they can get when the option is Close my doors and get nothing or give it to you and get 10 for three years getting 10 for three years sounds like a good deal Um Like do you have an idea about when people might want to make that decision? Like if you are this size company doing, you know, maybe you had to shut down Honestly, the punchline is you're probably going to get the same amount of money on both It's just a matter of do you get more up front or more late or more of it later on? um Because traditionally you guys know we lose anywhere from 30 to 50 percent of our reoccurring client based on any given year if you've got a 3% loss rate so if you just Just so you can do in the math in my head because I know that dick and I had a discussion earlier today And we're kind of brainstorming a little bit, but if you would accept that under normal times three Three months worth of top-line revenue is a fair value for for recurring accounts. That's like 300 percent of one month's revenue So if you're doing it at 10 percent you would argue That's 30 months and you're going to have ammunition of that because those accounts are going to dwindle down But you can probably do the 10 percent like over a three-year period Yep And if you're doing 20 that would probably be at least a year to a year maybe 18 months Yeah, and it's off of we had a question. It's off of just like revenue or sales What do you generate from those customers as opposed to profit? And the reason why 10 percent's attractive to some people because most of us run into 20 profit margin So if I'm paying 10 percent to somebody else, I'm still making a little bit of cash for those three years 20 percent can be attractive because while it's break even once that short period of time is done Then you get to keep all the money So there's pluses and minuses of both models And once again, this is not the typical deal you see this is what's happening right now Because there's a lot of people who are saying I just don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to rebuild again I don't want to start from zero again And yet they've got a book of business and then there's some of us out here that are getting grant money from the government grants Forgivable loans from the government But we got to get back up to full payroll and we're thinking best case two thirds or 70 of our customers are coming back So how do we get that other third? Well, hoovering up some of these little companies and some of them aren't so little I just saw one with 300 000 revenue, but hoovering up some of these little companies is a good way to fill that gap Yep, I thought I saw a question over here, but maybe not Uh make sense. Thanks. Yep Anybody have any other questions concerns anything else that y'all are thinking about out there I was gonna say this could be our first ever live that finishes early Yeah We aspire for that This never works or there's not so much chaos that we can't talk for five hours Well, and people are starting to really settle in, you know, this is kind of the the new normal Even though we're not the uncertainty is the new normal right now Thanks for the info. I've been approached but did not know how to respond. Okay, great Kelly Kelly you should have talked about that in your mastermind group I bet you would have gotten a lot of feedback there Uh Caleb great info good. Uh, well in Caleb. We were talking with Caleb a little bit earlier. So that's good info great glad to Glad that was helpful Caleb Uh Good for patricia. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Kelly Sarah it's so nice to see the three of you brings back good memories. Yeah, you too. Yeah, I really Like being you Sarah, even if I just see your little icon there, we're putting the band up Of course at the blues brothers Yeah Linda wants to know we've got our new uniforms. We've got them from uniform advantage. They are swag pattern and pet pet American made a red white and blue pet also because we have a a pet friendly company and we have a pet friendly Um charity charitable thing that we do each month Change up some of my cleaning tools. Are you all using steamers such as ladybug protein vacuums? That's a good question. Y'all get on there and answer for Leslie what what y'all are using for products You know what I saw today, which was unique Um clean max just introduced a new device literally this week that is a steamer that can also be converted to a mister So you can use it to both refog and steam, which I thought was really interesting That might be something we want to get into at some point in the future. Yeah Uh Bobby you wanted to know where to find a course for certification Um about disinfecting fogging, etc Those things specifically you might want to reach out to your local jamsan Um, if you're just looking for how to use the that that equipment Um Here's a question about perfect clean microfiber towels. I think uh a rc si has a discount. Do they not They do. Yep, they do I'm not sure what the secret handshake is in order to get that it might be as simple as saying you're a member Let's see. Can you pay back idea idle? Yeah, you can pay back your idle early sarah. Yes, you can Um Go ahead. I see discussions here about UV light uvc. There's this technology out there. I was reading about this weekend about Far uvc and these are like devices where you can actually live in the space when these things are working and um You can use it to like just you put like you put this in your car And it's just constantly sanitizing your car or you can do it an indoor living space as well. It's uh I I can see the whole cleaning thing going where not only are we like removing sore from the surface But we're also kind of like consultants helping Uh consumers make changes in their home that's making it safer from uh from a hygiene standpoint But I think uh, you're gonna see a lot more of the the UV light Um, Tammy is saying just put arc seat in the discount code for um, perfect clean microfibers Linda your question when you need to fully staff So the trick is you have to be fully staffed on June 30th. Okay, so Um, they they haven't told us yet. How long you're going to have to keep that full staffing But June 30th is when you have to be fully staffed Yeah, I suspect somebody's going to catch on that we could mass lay off a bunch of people on july 1st, so Well, they've already been talking about that. So that's that's a conversation that's Being had that's you're not going to be able to lay them off. That's that's pretty sure The way the rule is written now it appears like you might be but the thinking is they're going to change that Yeah, they're they're saying that they don't have all the rules out Yeah, it's nice to take money thinking it'll be forgivable and they haven't written the rules yet. Yeah a little bit of a Roller coaster. Um, how does perfectly microfiber different differ from just microfiber? You want to get that one Tom? Perfectly is a hospital grade microfiber, but I want to be clear. It's not the only one out there. Um There's other vendors that you can do what you really want to do is is look at Things like how is it manufactured you want split microfiber and you want microfiber that has a high grams per cubic meter content and um Really, I guess we I'm sure that we actually have articles about this on modern cleaning I need to dig that up and share it because we researched the heck out of this a number of years ago um But you know perfect clean happens to be a brand that i'm familiar with Direct mop sales has you know the quality, you know product as well. There's That's who I use Tom several several sources for that, but you want to be Uh asking about the grams per cubic meter. You want to be asking about how is it manufactured? Is it is it is it split microfiber because it's when you get the split microfiber That the actual strand is exploded out into sharp angles and that's what cuts the The the the microscopic particles off of off of a surface and rather The smearing it around the way a cotton towel what is actually picking up and holding it and if it's uh, if it's High quality if it has a high uh grams per uh cubic meter, you know heavier weight if you will It's must let slightly to take any organic matter you've picked up and read a positive on a clean surface What time we got here? Yep, it's time Tom Derek. I'm just want to let you know to Derek lost his internet So he's not he won't be back Uh for the rest of this uh facebook live But yeah, if you could get the link for us that would be great and linda Sorry Tom go ahead I'm just saying unless his internet comes back. There's always a ho have you met Derek? He's not coming back Tom He's onto something else. I promise you Oh, yeah off doing something else So linda an answer to your question, but if you're eight weeks There he is see his internet just died if your weight eight weeks ends before june 30th Then what same story you still have to be fully staffed by june 30th So so the big problem there is hard to get fully staffed If you're you were funded 10 weeks before june 30th. There's direct mock sales right there. That's who I use you guys so um, they they have great microfiber and what did Derek tell us Tom that they are chemically and physically Um split is that right? Yeah, this is kind of the standard approach for making split microfiber But you know they they Be mindful they've got all kinds of grades. So you you might even serve Yourself well to have a discussion with them and let them know what your Interests are and you're looking for you know, you have a company that that that wants to do hygienic house cleaning And you know, what's the best product for that and they'll steer you towards You know the split microfiber that's got the heavy grams per Cubic meter ways You guys can see my screen Yes, okay fully Let me answer these question questions real quick Tom Sarah fully staffed to the number that they asked you for about last year Some people know that I heard they asked about december and some people I heard about their average for last year So that was a little confusing for me because up until I had heard about the february thing I had Only heard that they were asking about the average for last year and that was the number that we were telling they were using so Um, I hope you got the answer to your question patricia Uh, linda. I'm not sure I finished answering you. I think I might have sorry guys. Hold on Um, I think I might have started answering and then I didn't Um, what I what I wanted to finish saying was if your eight weeks ends before june 30th Like let's say it ends on the 22nd. It's a bummer because You won't unless you are fully staffed on june 30th. You won't get all of that money forgiven So even if you weren't fully staffed earlier on in the eight weeks as long as on june 30th If you are you will get all of those monies forgiven. Hopefully that makes sense All right, tom Several links here first I'm going to ask for a favor from everybody The link i'm sharing is for the modern cleaning youtube site we've got the links to the COVID-19 training that we did and people were asking for links to all like the bed making all of that's here I need subscribers to this page. I have 54 if I get a hundred subscribers I can do more with this page. So if At least 46 of you guys or friends of you guys could get help me out and and subscribe to this page That would would be cool And there's going to be a lot more stuff there are all of the videos on the modern Um cleaning channel tom All the ones that that that we did there's some links and actually I can put them on there too They're not ours, but like the johns hopkins, uh hand washing video I we can we follow that page so you can get to it Um, I also took all those links and posted them in facebook yesterday as well Like in a in a post including that How to remove the gloves some of some of the videos that we used in the the training we we Borrowed from other people Here's modern cleaning and this is where you can also get to You know class one class two and you click here it will take you to um the learning platform that will allow you to uh Get the certificate of completion Check your number tom. You should be over 60 by now I see people done done done done awesome. Thank you guys. I appreciate their If you haven't done this yet I I I need you to do it. I want you to do it because we want as many people as to get this as we can At the same time You know, I guess it's no secret that that Liz and I are in the training business and the consulting business and You know, I'm I'm calling in a lot of markers with a lot of people and actually Spending a fair amount of money on all of this as well to kind of get all this done and sooner or later We're going to wind up charging for this and versus later I'm pushing for tom's pushing for later. Just just so you know So it wouldn't surprise me that that I'll I'll go as far as say any day now You might find that this whole arrangement is changed and there's a fee associated For for for this and it it'll still be a value But for the for those of you who have taken advantage of doing this for free then It's the value of the investment of time you put into this has increased greatly once we start charging for this and I hope everybody sees it so um Take advantage of this now if you haven't done this tonight do it tonight um, it takes about three hours worth of videos and it's a 20 20 question test, but It'll be it'll be be time well spent I think you'll find too that the Test is not easy Um, but you'll find when you take the test you'll feel good about your training Uh, everybody that I talked to after they took the test was like wow, I didn't even realize that I learned so much stuff uh, linda next week Too late get on there get them on there now linda Yeah, this week. You need to get them on this week for free um, also the COVID bed changing video Leslie I did see that when tom just pulled up the modern cleaning channel So go ahead and and look there Yeah There's also a post that I put up yesterday in both modern cleaning and cleaning business today. That's got individual links for for all this stuff including this in the hand the uh, johns hopkins hand washing and The glove removal buffing the the surgical gloves Um, I'm not sure I understand your question once you charge will you switch to certification? so right now you can take the take the Watch them to the two videos And take the test at no charge and you will receive a certificate When we charge for it, it'll be the same thing, but there will be a fee So that's why we're trying to get everybody all your friends or your cleaning business friends Get them to get on here and do it now Um, is it the same as the arcsy test? No, it is not Amelia There are a few different arcsy trainings that have different tests associated with them But this is not one of them I did see that. Thank you. Okay. Good for Leslie and Anything else over here tom All right cleaning business today Subscribe over here if you haven't subscribed you'll be on our mailing list And we've got our super secret Page with all the resources we've been sharing since we've been doing this, uh, five o'clock facebook live How long we've been doing this A few weeks Really? Yeah, at least two weeks Why A lot a problem is just but a lot longer than two weeks I'm thinking two weeks in a day. Maybe Dear Okay Liz goofs on me all the time and I'm just like I take a hook up Yes, this is very very true Someday you guys remind me to tell you about the time when um, Tom was really worried that I was gonna run out of gas and drive him around the city Yeah, tell you on here. It takes too long to hit me up for it and I'll tell you uh Bridget it says four weeks You know what she's talking about with the four weeks. We've been doing this for four weeks What? No way Since March 20th not a chance. I'm sorry. I call foul Actually, we started up. We started on a Thursday. I do remember that That's why I said three weeks and a day because Thursday was the end of a week And then a day I I'm thinking we did one I'll look it up. I'll figure it out You want to have a you want to have a bet on who's closer three weeks or four weeks? Yeah, I guarantee you it's at least four weeks At least four at least four at least four. I guarantee you it's under four. Okay, you guys Bet Bet who do you think is the winner? We'll tell you tomorrow who's the winner, but I can already tell you it's me Yes, Caleb. You're right admit Liz knows best Tom. We'll we'll say it's Guaranteed under four guaranteed Yeah, all right Time for today. We will see you tomorrow and you'll see who the winner is See you tomorrow. Thank you. Bye