 Hey, good afternoon everybody Tom Stewart here. I'm with Liz Trotter our guest today is Matt Ricketts, and this is smart business moves How's everybody doing today? Good Matt. How are you today? I'm doing really well. Thanks for having me. Yeah, man. Thanks for being here You know we're like t-minus Just a handful of days before Las Vegas, right? Yeah Yeah, coming up not even a week at this point Tom. I leave on Sunday when you guys leave in I Leave tomorrow Good for you. Wow But I have other stuff I'm doing so that's why I got What are we talking about systems at scale but first or first Tom we have to do my new thing Matt Tell us something Tell us something that is not business related about you that people might not know Um, all right um So, uh, I really love to swim. I grew up Playing lots of sports, but I think of all the sports that I grew up playing It's the last one that I can do without getting hurt. So that's like my favorite still that I That list is getting shorter. Oh, it is getting shorter by the by the year like mountain biking selling that like pickleball freaking dislocated my shoulder. I mean just like I'm like a walking injury, but swimming. I haven't hurt myself yet and I'm still pretty fast. I like to like to you know, if there's You know like a group it's kind of fun. So that um, you know Lots of other hobbies. Yeah, that's probably people didn't know. Yeah, that's a cool one. I like that I never would have guessed that ever Yeah, I mean I do you swim but Like when you were a kid you were like doing um Summer league things like that. Yeah until like it kind of like we grew up grew up playing hockey and so we were good enough to probably My brother was probably good enough to be varsity swimming and varsity hockey, but it's too hard to do Overlapping sports in the same seasons and stuff like that. They're both winter sports, believe it or not. So At least for high school Swimming winter sport. I know Endure pool winter sport Yeah, okay. I guess it kind of makes sense because the summer sports are all taken. Yeah Yeah, I got it Here is the summer club sport Liz before we get going I'm gonna go ahead and just drop this link in chat I mean one thing that all of us here have in common. We're all speaking next week in las vegas at the ISSA show and If you want to go it's still time I just bought my big bash ticket I You know, they said it was going to close out. I think last friday and I forgot I was like, oh darn So I was maybe the big bash is What I don't really know what it is You don't know but you're going What they say it is is that it's a big networking opportunity to meet people and You know, they they're gonna have food. They got food on there Okay, curious how much is the ticket? It's 150 dollars Wow, okay. Must be good food. Well, I got like five people coming So I'm gonna be buying big bash ticket on top of everything else, but like five people Wow, Angela and myself and then my daughter is coming. I'm actually I have six people coming I think Um, so I'm bringing my 16 year old. She wanted to come check it out and see what it's about um And then I have mel who's doing that house cleaner the year thing um An operations manager to kind of keep track of mel so she doesn't Vegas And then matt totra who's my controller to have him learn and go to a lot as As many sessions as he can and you know kind of really understand the industry better and meet some people That's cool I love that. That's that's quite the expense there though Yes, people so for the people that aren't bringing anybody matt Why what tell tell everybody why you it's worth it. I mean it's worth it enough that you're bringing six people If you learn one thing it generally Like one idea is worth 20 or 30 thousand dollars You know for a for a small business for a business our size, you know One idea might be a hundred thousand dollars like that we that we implement. So it should pay for itself and like um, you know seeing some products up close and personal and seeing them um Is is valuable there's a lot changing in the industry right now technology You know time's on that front but also physical hardware that like we clean with like robots and stuff like that I mean I would be Going to kind of see how that is being Is is shaping the future and how you can be a part of that? um There's there's a lot of value that's that's gained by going to these things and I know it's an expense, but we went the first time when we were our second year in business and You know, I don't think I've missed many but You know, it's it's been a good Since I started going, uh, I didn't go to the first one. I didn't know about it um, but since then I've been to everyone since then and I don't plan on missing any of them Unlike you I always get I I've never only gotten one thing I always get multiple things that I'm like, okay, that's gold. That's gold Yeah, you you talk to people you wouldn't otherwise meet they're not on social media. They're not um You know, they're not on facebook. God bless them like, you know, they're they're Doing their own thing and not worried about other people But when they're there they're willing to share and if you can you know network and make some friends and peers um Again, it's how we became, you know, all friends and Joe walsh and I still connect usually once a month and met him at a trade show another friend of mine actually sold his business recently, so we're Not really talking business anymore, but uh, greg got a pretty good exit, you know and He's doing his own thing now. You know, he's outside the cleaning industry Yeah, and you there's people you just don't really have opportunity to talk to too I'm super excited to I just talked to usif and i'm a tovalo and Always look forward to talking to him So i'm gonna meet up with him at the convention So that's great 18 is by the last time I ran into usif He goes to the shelf fairly regularly Yeah, I can't think about it. The only one that I really remember missing was uh, 2019 I I signed up for that iron man and did it that week and uh, it comes like it was like I think it was the same week or it was the week before and Like being on my feet all day in vegas for like a week straight did not seem like a great way to rest before that so Um, there's something like that. I think that might have been the only one I've missed in a while Yeah, it is a lot of walking you are going to be on your feet Uh, there's no way around that But you're Seeing stuff and you're doing stuff. It's not like it. You're just Walking down the sidewalk going nowhere. You're on this massive trade show floor that you're Seeing so much innovation in the industry and you're talking to vendors and You know your product mix will you know in terms of the products you use and your your cleaning business will Possibly change you'll you'll see some things that you've never seen before that you might introduce into your business Not even to mention the educational uh sessions again and get into the business side of your business and uh You know, they cost a little bit of money But you think about you know, what a what an extra recurring customer means to you over the course of the year You really don't have to do much with your business Or just a modest rate adjustment So to get that money back many times over, you know what? I actually pulled out some data from made central since I got on in the summer of 2018 But let's use 2019 for as an example. So Four years on made central. That's all I have basically right My average customer over that period of time is worth about seven fat Like I took all my customers average them out about seven thousand dollars and so You know, like you said one customer should pay for You can figure that out and you look at the life and value of customer. You should be able to Make that justification Hey, Wendy Glad to see you. I am on the innovation um team that is judging this year And I love that so exciting all of that. Have you done your homework yet? Yeah I did that last year and I mean it was cool, but I mean it's a lot of time Yeah, I was actually surprised. I just jumped in there to check it out thinking I'd get it done like in an hour or two hours maybe So a lot of work A lot of work there. You spent more than two hours on it. I guarantee you. Oh no, I know I thought it was only going to be you know hour two at the most but No What 30 minutes or something like that? Is it? Uh, it was a lot of reading a lot of reading having to Oh, I thought they were in video form. Okay, I did a lot of reading So Did I miss a whole bunch of videos? Oh You gotta go back and watch the videos now. No, I'm gonna be wrong I I was at the innovation x theater a couple years back and I thought that's what they were They were showing all the videos, but maybe those were just promos that were made for they didn't watch the videos Liz Is there a whole bunch of videos? Did you do it rainy? It was rainy, right? I'm filling in stuff. You have to fill in stuff That sounds fun Yeah, well, it's exciting to see all the the cool things that was kind of my point, but now everybody's got me nervous You're signing up for stuff though, but you know I'm a huge supporter of Like all of us are right huge supporter of issa. Hey y'all help me out. How do you pronounce issa? Issa Was that it? It's not like people say issa issa issa. I've heard all of these things I think they refer to it as issa when you hear like the That's what they say. Yeah. Yes the issa team or if you hear You know like john barrett Speaking he's announced as you know president of issa Yeah, yeah, I've never heard it From any of those people that way either. That's why I was asking. All right. All right They used to be the international sanitary supply association Oh, and I remember back 20 some odd years ago That was it and they would just say issa for short But they expanded and they got in to build a serving Building service contractors and residential cleaning and institutional cleaning and so many different things that They just dropped they that part and just called themselves issa As much as i'm a huge fan. I don't know if I had to like Memorize all of that. I don't know. I might have to tap out That's a lot So we're going to talk about scaling stuff today, right? Yeah, I'm super excited not only just doing a bit systems What do what do we mean matt when we say a system? I mean when I'm thinking about it's just something repeatable that you can hand off to anybody that That is part of the makeup of your business. It can be a lot of things. It could be a manual. It could be You know the technology that underlies your business, right? Like if you're using made central or some other Production managed software. I mean I just went to a conference for all the other trades and Service titan was you know a real big one there. There was a couple others that were kind of up-and-comers in that space for for smaller companies So that's that's a system right and there's systems within the systems on how to do scheduling and how to do You know your your finance and You know you and I had a coach at one point dan martel And he just did a book called buyback your time. He's real big on On documenting things and it's so like we used the kind of thing. It was so simple It's like just get out loom and record what you're doing But it's like that's a system because then you can you know, you can hand something off to somebody else So that's that's an example financial system is a is a really great example So if you have a kpi model of your business and what the inputs are and you know we had a Pretty cool little talk about kpi is not too long ago and you're working on some cool stuff I won't spoil that you're going to show it at the show but um kpi's are at the heart of uh, you know any of our businesses and And you know being able to understand what happens when one kpi goes up or down and the relationship and the financial outcomes so um typically when i'm thinking of systems i'm really thinking of like three things i'm thinking of Uh a financial system where you can create, you know predictable outcomes and you can predict what's going to happen i'm thinking of management systems Right like how you manage people how you get good outcomes. That's kind of like the dan martel documentation And i'm thinking technology i'm thinking made central i'm thinking Service tight and i'm thinking whatever, you know technology is the backbone for your business that creates Scale and technology is going to be such a huge investment that we are all making because At you know business my size people always used to ask me like how many people do you have? You know how many you know people running your office and you know I think sometimes we have too many even still um, but we you know my office is kind of quiet right right now this week i'm like um You know, but we when we were at two million when we had three and We have six now and some of those positions are like things like content creator, right? Um controller which is which isn't you know something i just wanted to take off my plate Which is i didn't want to have to do anything with tax compliance or Like any kind of like minutia stuff you know, so You know creating management processes for all those people Would be it so three three things basically single out there. You're just you're describing you're you're you're you're talking about numbers And you're talking about the size of your organization You have been scaling your business and You know we've talked about this before too I know that matt we have quite a bit that You know a lot of times scale Scaling a business and growing a business are used interchangeably but They're different You can just keep doing what you're doing in work card and you'll be able to grow your business to a point But then you're going to hit a wall And then you're not going to be able to get over that wall until you do Do something structurally to change it and I guess that's Really where you're talking about building a better system building new systems or additional systems to get over that wall Now you're growing again using that system until You know something runs out on the management side or you need to do something on the technology side or You know the financial side Scale grow scale grow scale grow Some of it is really interesting. So I really recommend anyone read This book it's sitting on my desk right now. This is like the second time I've read it I've listed on audible ones too. Who wrote that Dan Sullivan with Benjamin Hardy Um, it's kind of a conglomeration. It's called 10x is easier than 2x. It's kind of a conglomeration of the gap in the game And um, who not how like all kind of jammed into one really great book And it's really talking about what you just described there where it's like What are the leaps that you need to take to get from you know point a to point b? Who are the people you need to hire? What what's the mindset you need to be in to to achieve it like One of the things that I found really there's this whole there's a whole book that you wrote called the gap in the game And it's about how we as entrepreneurs don't really take time to reflect on how far we've come and improved And we like we live in the the gap of like, oh, I should have done more So I used to race bikes and I did did a triathlon and I never I never ever did a triathlon where afterwards where I talked to somebody and they weren't like, oh, I could have done better Like if I would have just done this and they never like stopping it. They're not like It was awesome Like I like I mean the experience was great But I really could have been x y z like they're like in the gap already of instead of being like wow Look how far I came and we do that as entrepreneurs all the time. So anyway, this book is about About all of that about shifting your mindset about like setting bigger goals than you think possible And then thinking about Like instead of like thinking like so two x is like, all right, if we just keep growing 10 a year We'll do this. Well What would it take for us to grow 40 percent a year 50 percent a year? What inputs would I need to do? So like what what makes that possible and then you start thinking about That path is narrower, right? Like it's so easy to get distracted with all the things you could do to grow 10 or 20 percent I'm going to start a carpet division. I'm going to start of this division But there's only like a couple or maybe one or two options to grow 40 50 60 100 percent, you know, so that That's what I think You have to shift your mind to is like, what are the what are the things I need to do to achieve that? Okay, I love that whole thing. I can't wait to read this book. I have had it on my shelf for At least a month now and I have not picked it up. So I started it again. I started it again on sunday and I'm at page 154 of 250 like this will be the second time. I was just looking Just to remind myself I read it like a couple months ago and I read it too fast and then I listened to it on audible on a plane and then I like I'm like I'm gonna slow down and just read it and take some more notes and Again, it's nothing. You probably don't know if you've heard of Dan Sullivan and read any of this stuff, but Um, it's good. It's you know Well, that's the shelf. I have it on have it on an amazon shelf Not amazon audible Yeah, all right, so I'm gonna listen to it. I'm excited. So I wanted to ask a question here. I got two questions First tom you were talking about Um, will you both kind of talked about a little bit the difference between growth and scale? Can you hey sam? Good to see you Um, can you give like a definition? Where does growth? Become scale like How are you defining that? I don't know that I have a definition other than what we just talked about. It's just like scale is about setting just much larger goals, I mean I'll share I'll share with you our three-year what our You know org chart looks like in As you're pulling that up if you could think about it is like a path with walls on it ever so often and you can Move forward you can move upward you can grow but at some point you're going to hit a wall and Your organization is not going to allow you to grow anymore for example And you first start off you might be the only employee And you can grow cleaning homes yourself till you get to the point where You know if you're cleaning two three homes a day at max and you're doing that Five days a week no more than seven days a week You're kind of done You're not gonna you grew but now you're not going to grow anymore. You hit a wall So you're gonna have to hire somebody else You can do that until you then have to hire a supervisor and then you have to hire Somebody to answer the phone Slower for the stupid among us So I'm not getting it yet. You're gonna have to you have to slow it down. So Until you're okay, hold on y'all So you're growing you now you're working seven days a week Right and you're working every day. Let's say you're working five days a week seven days a week's disturbing But you're you're doing all you can in a normal Five days a week and you're working all the all the hours you're doing all of the stuff Now The next level you have to scale Yeah, is that what you're saying? So now you're going to have to scale your business So that you can then again grow is that how you're using this word scale? Okay um, all right, so that's not the traditional version of Of scale. That's not what people typically think of as scaling their business If I want to just be in st. Louis like what we're going to look at is an org chart That'll work for for me just being in st. Louis. So this is This is us for the next 12 months Okay, I can't really zoom it in without it getting too wonky here, but just I'll have to move around on it, but I'm sitting here kind of in the ceo co Like see like everybody's always like, oh, I need an integrator. Well, I'm a pretty good integrator. I'm actually I'm like, you know, like when someone is like the president of a company Like they're the ones that is like, you know setting the direction the tone like I'm sitting in that seat today um, and I'm also sitting in this marketing manager seat over here so, you know Tom was talking about you're sitting in multiple seats. I still sit in a couple of seats within my organization, right? This this model will take us up to 10. Maybe even 15 million locally I believe that and so what we have is we've got a sales manager. I'll zoom it back out a little bit. Um These c er's which is kind of like what a c s r is for other companies. It's a customer experience wrap is what we call Is that a customer service? Like we just have a different term for it because service is what you do experience is what you want to create, right? So it's just a different way that we we feel about it Marketing manager is open, but I do have a content creator. I have a controller Um, and he's also sitting in the recruiter in hr seat as well Right. Um, so people are sitting in multiple seats. I've got an operations manager Two field managers, and then what's different that you'll see about our organization is these field supervisors. That's our trainers But they have more responsibility than that. They they have leadership management account accountability They're the ones in the field that are that are training new hires, but they also have a pod of people beneath them 10 to 15 technicians geographically located Um, we're exploring some functionality within made central with the office functionality If you're a made central user to group all of our employees that live in certain areas Into a pod and kind of a pseudo office will kind of put it at a nice gas station quick trips Kind of the nice gas station here where they'll meet once a week and this these pods each pod will have A van loaded with supplies and equipment and instead of going back to the office back and forth they'll have a quick meeting there And and structurally this allows For a very remote workforce To feel more connected to have a team within a team, right? So we believe this structure is fundamentally the structure that'll get us To hear in the next three years Which would be about 120 technicians, maybe a little bit more um somewhere around here and around somewhere between 11 and 13 million is What we're talking about and so we're talking about big numbers that they sound like big But they're they're not in the grand scheme of things compared to what other service industries have been able to do I Let's talk about timing a little bit garage doors was like an incredibly fractured industry before Tommy came along and did some things to kind of you know Scale up in phoenix and then you know, I have no clue how he has so many locations. That's a whole another That's a whole another thing to learn but this structure will not scale past One this is a one location structure Maybe two locations because we're going to break our office into west county and And like that is more that's that's about redundancy. So we have Extra equipment like i'm going to rent a secondary space so that I have a second hypochlorous machine in another location and yada yada yada, but This this doesn't scale past that. I don't have the right people Right. I don't have the right leadership team necessarily to To do the multiple office So the way the way jimma lampied and he You know, we did a piece in cleaning business today Years ago and he came up with barriers to growth that you had to scale over and Just hiring a new employee could be considered growth but you get to the point where You've got to hire a supervisor Well, that's new for us. You know, I clean I hired my next door neighbor and my cousin and Now i've got five people and I can't do all of that. I got to add a layer to my organization For some of us we can't figure out how to do that and make that work And that's a barrier that we're not going to grow anymore until we do But if you do then you can go ahead and hire more people and maybe get another supervisor At some point you're going to have to hire a manager to You know Deal with the supervisors who's dealing with your cleaning technicians and the same with Some of the other roles so you can see there's several layers of organization that matt has and arguably each one of those Could have represented a barrier that he had to scale In order for him to continue to grow and at some point he's going to hit a wall But this organization isn't going to support it. He's going to have to Figure out how to do something with this organization. He's never done before in order to get over that barrier and keep going Yeah, that's a great. That's a great example. Yeah, I love that and I like that definition really a lot. I feel like um With that definition Everybody can be looking to scale You don't have to be a big company You can be Whatever size you are you can be a like like you said tom you could be a solo entrepreneur And to do it well You want to anticipate where those walls are going to be and make the changes while you're still growing You don't want to hit a wall and be flat and stagnant Then say okay now what am I going to do you need to ideally you anticipate that and you're building the organization At the same time you have to be doing this on the financial side your whole financial In the in the numbers the kpi's have to be More sophisticated as you go along starting out you just got to find something to clean right you need to Turn some cash you need to get some money in the bank And then you hit a wall and you really need to start getting better about pricing And and you know the the finer points and maximizing the lifetime value and revenue out of out of a customer And you go for a while longer and then you have to Figure out, you know, how am I going to lower my cost of goods sold, you know the payroll to revenue and Actually start maximizing the profit that i'm getting off of You don't have to wait till you hit the wall You know if you can figure that out and get that right before you hit the wall You can grow longer before you ever you can you can scale and grow at the same time if you can anticipate The changes you have to make and make them and the technology is the third part, but you get it as matt said it's It's it's the the management of the organization. It's the financial and You'll hit a wall and one and you're stuck until you fix it or you anticipate it and you fix it before you get to it And this model will serve me for I think this model would serve any location But then i'm going to need more sophisticated financial controls For a multiple location business if I decide to go that direction And I really don't know that I will right away. I mean there's we there is really It does not feel like there is a lid on what we can do in terms of like generating new business with marketing dollars um It's more painful than the old way of like, you know, just seo and you get some, you know, you get some leads and you get some You know some referrals There's a book that tom and I both like as well I'm gonna keep talking about books predictable revenue is a great example of that now That's a lot about outbound, but it's about creating a marketing system That is like, all right, if we put in this this input, then I get this output, right? um There's some painful things about growing this fast, right? So one of the things that's kind of painful is The attrition rate you're going to track people that are going to try you out And no matter how good your quality is and we're at like an Like I'll show you this is behind the scenes. I'll show you our q4 scorecard so far this month or so far this quarter but we are You know Around a 55 average response rate with a nine. Well, I'll tell you what I've got it calculating 54 With a 98.2. So if you're using made central You know, that's pretty hard to do if you know, that means you're you're really getting mostly the top scores And then maybe some threes and it's very rare that you're going to have anything Less than that. So that's killing it. Yeah, so this is But that's how that pushing that So that that org chart we looked at that's about pushing responsibility down and making your technicians Like giving them layers of responsibility. So you've got those field managers Well, They're their job is really to train the field supervisors. So who are your trainers? Who are like your your 10 they're your 10 percent? That's your That's your a players in your company that are like really committed That are and they're willing to take on more responsibility And you pay those people really well people think it's crazy what I'll pay these people But like a lot of them are making 55 56 thousand dollars to be a supervisor for me And it's still profitable for us because we're still maintaining You know, some of you all have better direct labor than I do our target is 41 we're below that we're We're right at 40 for the for the quarter. So I know some of you would would argue that you would keep that lower I would I would argue that it's worth Maybe pushing that a little bit more than you think but not too crazy because You want to have the money left over to invest in other things, right? You want to keep your your direct labor costs You know in line But your your field supervisors are like the heart of your company. You're most you call them trainers um, whatever you call them They're the most valuable people you have in in your company even Some of them make more than our well, they make more than our cer's for sure than our than our you know, than our office starting office employees Then you mentioned pushing responsibility down in the organization You know that that it's an important concept. Could you explain a little bit about what that looks like? yeah, so you know With technology you can push things down like Checking in and checking out of jobs we used to have and then and then logging that in your software We used to have You know sheets that they would have to like this goes back a long time So I've had technology for a while but they would turn in a sheet and you'd have to do that, right? Some of you all might still be doing that but you can use technology to push down simple responsibility like that Where they're checking in and checking out of jobs like that's an example of using technology to push responsibility down We're pushing responsibility down in the fact that everybody owns a number as far as a management process that's Those those field service supervisors. They're the ones holding a weekly meeting with their team. So instead of it being Me or angela or even another manager holding holding that meeting They're responsible for holding a meeting. We might give them the content Maybe even re like record a quick video for them to show but We've pushed that down. We've pushed down Responsibility down to like the dispatchers or the cer's for you know doing a lot of the weekly trainings and creating videos on that We've moved a lot of our videos into like almost like a tick tock kind of format Where we're we're sending out three videos a week that they have to respond to and some of them are about training Some of them are about culture But but as far as you know, everyone has a number basically, right? Everyone has a has a responsibility So if we go back to that order chart Right, they train the trainers. They have to have a quality square of this. They retrain deficient staff actually if we go back to the new one it's going to be um service delivery customer service, but they also They also have a responsibility in terms of write-ups reviews You can't have one manager giving 50 reviews when you get to our size, right? So by doing this pod system, you have a field supervisor who has 10 to 15 10 to 15 direct reports We're stretching it a little bit right now with With that. I think 15 is too many Um, but we're trying to use technology to stretch that out so we don't have to have As many of these field supervisors. We're trying to see how much they can handle Um 15 may be a little too many 12 might be the sweet spot where we get a little bit more than 10 out of them I've heard Liz you've told me a number before on the the maximum number of direct reports People can have what is it 10? We say 12 12 And remember tom derrick used this system way back in the day. Remember that he started moving over to this pod system I don't enjoy it now because he you know follows debbie system But I remember that he was using the system with some pretty impressive results And his he was obviously much smaller than better life maids But I don't know. I mean but put it for time So much money we put uh sharon timbridge. I'd be listening. I mean, you know Time, you know put put a time factor in Sharon's business was bigger than mine. I don't know what she was doing So, you know, you go back for like number of employees. I think she was billing 25 dollars an hour on billing 60, right? Like sharon would have a 60, you know a six million dollar business today if she was doing the same The same things, you know, so people have figured this out before Um, you know, this is not groundbreaking. I'm looking at a lot of other industries. I'm looking at like how we can do this with technology You know technology is really important in this sense that like you can push work orders, you know down to the technicians You're not printing stuff out in the morning and handing them. So we've all moved Past a lot of that stuff that we used to do Right and you know the technicians are more and more responsible than they've ever been It's got to be a different tech than you had even maybe five years ago um You know if they can't Open are you learning? Are you learning things in other industries that? The residential cleaning industry could benefit from? um some I think some things that they're doing the way that they the way that they look at The value of growth like they throw the word ebita around all the time Which means to me that they're using a lot of debt to grow and they're not scared of it, right? so they're so they're backing the debt out of their out of their profit numbers and um I'm a little scared of debt. So I haven't really gone down that road of like, you know gobbling up companies with debt, right? But they're they're definitely consolidating and they're and they're They're paying each other well to buy each other's businesses because They see the synergies that they can do but because they do everything so similarly That works, but because we all do things so differently That doesn't seem to work. I haven't seen anybody Do it well yet. Um Now if somebody's running a solo model and you know prices their jobs, right and is doing a lot of things, right? um They might you know, there might be some like, you know overlap But once you once you get the model down though, do you think that you might be taking on some debt? to Like 10x this I I definitely think so. So I I signed up for a coaching program in the hvac and plumbing and trade space and um garage door space like with a lot of those guys and I just want to learn from I want to be in the room with them and see what they're doing I don't know that I know enough yet to say what I know yet And you're doing that not because you want to get into the hvac business You're doing it to learn their best practices to apply it to your house cleaning business Yeah, they're spending a ton of money on they're spending a ton of money on Branding and they're spending a ton of money on marketing And I want to see the channels They're really big on direct mail still Like big big on direct mail and I'm like I need to see why and how and I have no idea how direct mail works, right? And it seems so like old-fashioned, but it Like it could be 95 of some of these companies businesses as far as their new customer So Liz, I mean we've talked about this before the not specifically the drug mail piece, but the idea of What can you learn by looking at at other industries hearing speakers who Don't know anything about the residential cleaning world, but they know stuff that maybe we don't could benefit from Yeah, absolutely. Um, so one one thing that this kind of reminds me of is We do this thing in the circles called forum and you do some version of it. I think in eo and some of these larger uh networking groups where you get together with people that are outside of your industry and They share a core problem And then everybody sort of shares their experience around this core problem And you get more from the people who aren't trying to give you the specific Exam answer to your exact example When it's more industry Outside of your industry and it's the core issue that's being addressed. You get a lot more from that than when Some of you just answers your question, right? How are you doing blah blah blah and somebody says oh, we do blah This the answer you just don't get The results from that that you generally might agree and then sometimes we say stuff to each other that like and then People are like We think like oh, that's so basic or we're like, you know, like of course I do that and then we might even take a fence to each other Like but if like someone's looking at it from a fresh perspective We give them the benefit of doubt and then we might actually hear what they're saying better like there's You know, even if it is something like have you thought about a referral program? No, I've never thought But then they'll give you like the experience share of how like they did it and you're like, oh, that's interesting You will give them the benefit of doubt instead of shutting people down like Like so quickly you'll actually listen to them and hear them with a fresh perspective so I am in a group called entrepreneurs organization and it's It's a good investment. I mean, I've got my money's worth out of you You become close to these peers a lot of good education a lot of Good speakers and things like that that you you know, we actually have In St. Louis, we've got the guy that wrote Um Customer again never losing a play again Joey Coleman. Yeah, um, he's coming to st. Louis into some or january Um, so we just had a book club where he you know zoomed in and um, You know, that was a good experience. I mean, he's like, you know pretty fun. I've read his books You know But it's but it's good to be able to you know to be in the room with him and like maybe You know, maybe I'll actually take it a little bit more seriously if uh, but but I actually Get the benefit of handing a lot of these books off to other people like so never lose a employee again Matt Totra in my company is reading right now and he's He's in charge of reworking our You know first 90 day experience. We have this really great 30 day experience with our company But we're like, how do we stretch that into 90 days like the first 90 days? um like creating a really great experience for them and You know for for for your new team members new team members. Yeah, so never lose a employee again like creating Creating that first Joey talks about is the first hundred days We have the ability to track it as the first three months and made central with some of the turnover reports So we've got it broken down into the same way that we're matching up periods in in made central but yeah, I think that I think that the ideas you get from others Especially when they're not Doing things the same way that we have um And our our industry is a little behind the curve on a lot of stuff So it's just some of the finer points. I mean a lot of the things that we do We learn from other people in the industry and that's fine Not heard somebody say something the other day that oftentimes innovation has just plagiarism that hasn't been caught yet That you know If you go outside the industry to look at you know, how do they market or how do they you know manage? You know hr issues or you know filling the blank a lot of times They're doing the same thing, but they're doing a little bit differently that could could make a meaningful improvement in your business Yeah, and I think if you do it a lot like if you go outside of the industry often enough Then you can open your mind to these other ideas and see how they will Be able to be adapted for your industry if you only do it a little bit You you get stuck in this mindset of no, that's not the way we do it in the cleaning world That's not how we do it. That's not the right way, but Bottom line is there's a lot of right ways out there to be running businesses And there's a lot of right ways to be running service businesses Uh, I work with a couple of companies here locally that are considered small businesses At 22 million dollars. I'm thinking of one in particular. It's a roughing business. That's a small roughing business, right? So But you're bringing in some big money there But not really in that world So there's a lot of kinds of ideas and I think if you're trying to do something different, right? Like so this is our this is our 10-year target, right? 30,000 lives made better annual 1.2 million hours saved for our customers 25 million dollars an annual revenue That's a big target. I actually think we're going to shoot past it I think we'll actually Blow that away. I think we actually might hit 13 and two in three years and then be like this seems In consequential, but I don't know but here's the thing. I don't know The the path to get there But that's okay Because I'll find the right people the right the right knowledge along the way other people that have built the frameworks and other industries I don't have to do all this and think about all this on my own. I don't have to be a genius to do this Right. I have to find The who's right the people that have done it before me, right to quote dan selvin for the 15th time this This call I've got to find the right who's the right people Tom got me thinking about that. I was my own roadblock a lot in You know in my job. It made central doing sales. It's like You know and he was encouraging me to hire some people and do that and I couldn't get out of my own way sometimes because I was so Good at a job, right? We have like because we're so good at something But that's the problem that we face and so we have to so i'm a really good marketer But I have to hire somebody and take that off my plate It is not where I should be spending my days And like I had a really good opportunity to hire somebody Um probably last year and she might not have taken the offer But who knows and I you know, I didn't make an offer and I passed it I passed it on and I kind of strung her along for too long and he took another job And you know, I regret that and I like I look at that. I'm like how much further could I've gotten my business How many more leads could we've gotten if we would have brought a lot of our marketing internally instead of Agencies and like utilizing, you know, our own resources and building that internal knowledge Um You know, because I've done other agencies. I haven't done it all myself and I We need to bring some of it in how I am getting on my phone. I'm gotta get out to my car Uh, I got to head to an appointment. So you'll see me losing you'll lose me here, but I'll be back in a minute Okay, okay um Hey matt wendy, uh likes the idea of of like the employee engagement process stretching it from 30 to 90 days She says she'd like to hear a little bit more about that Well, I can tell you what we do with 30 days. I don't know what I don't know exactly what it's gonna look like You haven't figured that part out yet, huh? I mean, I'm not the one offering it. So matt has shared with me some of his ideas It's kind of confusing because there's a mat a couple of mats on my team I was on a call the other day where there were four mats. I was like, oh my god Nobody was that creative in 1980 were they like it's like Anyway, so So what we kind of do now is when someone starts there's a lot of touch points, right? Like at the one week there's there's like a sit down with the manager team where they actually review their training so far A two week where one of the managers goes out meets them Takes them out to coffee in the feet like like with their trainer Needs them at a quick trip buys them coffee and talks about them gives them a chance to do this They they review their training they get their pod shirt at the end of two weeks where they're assigned to their pod So it's a new another colored shirt at 30 days. They get a jacket Um, does every pod have did the pods have different different colored shirts? Yeah, we do that so that they can like on like training days They can all be kind of in their own little uniform But we allow them to wear that as like another like another shirt that they can use So they're not always wearing the same color shirt every day. No, it's just sort of mostly for the training days But it's sort of like a just a nice kind of team building thing if they want to wear it on their pod meeting day That would be nice. Um So then as we like think about it like how do we extend that out like so Um, we've got some jackets that we give it 30 days and part of why we give the jacket at 30 days Is because we don't want to give it a day one and then they quit and we gave them a $35 jacket I mean, we're just being cheap, but it's like, you know, like, you know, it's it's spreading it out a little bit Yeah And then we give them a hat is what we're thinking. We've got these nice Do you tell them up front that they're going to get these things and it's awards at certain times? Or do you surprise them surprise them to sort of like, you know, hey, here's this like um, and we we Document the process in base camp. I don't want to just open my base camp up and who knows what's open, but the Um base camp is our project management software and I'm thinking I can see what to have them in um Yeah So we're working on this some new vehicles for pods Well, what brand vehicle is that have you selected a van to a Mercedes mattress because it's the only one We're going to be able to order in the next year. It's the only small van that we can still order Um, so we're going to be fancy and have Mercedes Whoa, is that is that a ev? No, it's not it's not we we looked at the four devies my my employees felt they were too They were too big. They were not designed for The like the pedals was really the main thing was The pedals weren't adjustable and if you're under five four, it just felt like you're stretching Too much safety issue So is that a cargo van or passenger van? Cargo van. Yep. It's Shelving stuff in it. Yep. Um, but under people let's see There's probably a project in here somewhere that kind of describes Um, exactly what happens when we hire somebody so I might not even have that to it because it's not my not my business, right, but it's um Anyway, there's the project and the checklist for every for every new employee and we're gonna kind we're gonna build that out a little bit and um So again, it's about documenting it and being able to redo it. So every time we hire every time we hire a new employee um A project is created where we're where we're making sure these touch points Are being delivered on time so You can make a repeatable process You know With whatever software you use but this is base camp. It's This is one of my favorites. I learned this from time on made i've made central is that Simple is better sometimes because I can I can invite people to this software and within minutes They can figure out what they need to do in it where I've used project management software where it's like You need like a tutorial for like two hours to figure out Um, you know how to use this thing So simple as simple as good. It also integrates with all kinds of stuff if if you aren't using it so I know we're getting towards the end here. I can stop sharing and robin robin has a question for us. He Is asking about the uh the vans You know, how are they going to be used? Are they mobile supply offices where you meet the teams at their homes once a week? There'll be a there'll be a meet uh once a week at like a local gas station or like uh, like we call quick trip here or whatever um, but then You know, they'll be in the same area as All their employees. So You know, if you if you if you're familiar with made central the colors are kind of like the same colors we overlay on a map, right? so You know, when you're using made central you you're using like the zones They they represent the zones we're in so that blue van will always be a schedule in the blue zone So if somebody does need something during the day So you're you're wrapping the vans in different colors. No, the vans will all be one brand color But that's you know, the um, they've asked about that and we actually had a design for that but We we felt that like the pink and green of our brand is so recognizable That it didn't make sense to move away from that for a You know for something that's like that's an internal external from a branding standpoint you want to be consistent Yeah, like if you see that pink and green locally together You know that sauce If you're if you've been in the market for cleaning you've seen it before So we wanted to stick with that but we talked about it. There's some cool vans coming out that are consumer vans from their evs from volkswagen and they're bringing back the van again and like different cool color blue yellow orange green maybe and uh You know wouldn't even need to wrap and just put your logo right on them and they those vehicles would stand out but We decided against it. Well, you could always just you could always just change the color of your mirrors So the blue team has blue mirrors That's not bad That wouldn't hurt anything There's something that can be done that would make it more, you know more pod friendly. I'm sure is you okay? It's my phone, Tom. It's not what did you get? Did we get the call 9-1-1? I'm magnetic Are you are you driving down to portland to rescue some people? I'm kidding No, I'm going north going north thankfully Let him Robin wants to know if you considered outside storage for supplies I have and we may still you know when we we're we're dividing our company into east and west um But the reason I I'm probably going to just try and find an office where I can hook up I want to have a secondary hypochlorous acid machine in a In another location if you aren't familiar I use onsite generation Some other folks that are probably on this call use it. I know Tom does I got the idea from him um And we've gotten our Robin Robin Murphy actually was uh the Cutting edge on that technology. She introduced the vendor we use to to me. Yeah, I'm I'm really happy with it. It's been very effective very cost effective and I think it's a great. It's a great product that comes right out of the machine Anyway, I'd like to have a second machine, but I'd like to move it out Away from this office right have it in a secondary location I'm not just doing that to like pay extra rent like it'll be You know, it'll be a little bit of a hit to like, you know, we bought this great new office but I'll probably staff a little bit too. Believe it or not. We bought this office and we're kind of like Shoot, we should have rented because we've grown so much in the last like we did not anticipate doubling and then doubling you know, like it's You know, there's there's growing pains to growing this fast where you're You're you're thinking two-dimensionally still about like office space and things like that and you're You know, I would have not have bought this office now if I would have known what I know now I love this office. It's been great for us, but it's uh But that's where you get but you're in a position where you could either Lease it out or you can probably even sell it and make money on it if you wanted to I got a competitor across the street. She's joked with me and before she's like if you're moving I'm buying so There you go. It'd be all set up for she'd be all set. So Um, no, I think I'd keep it and we would just do the secondary office and do something flexible with that. So it's uh There's a lot of options, right? Um take Robbins on the van thing. Do you take the supplies to the techs closer to their homes? Yeah, the the pods are basically like designed around where they live if we can, you know So, yeah, it's all about reducing drive time. It's about it's about We believe that per week for every 10 employees assigned to a pod We will save $800 in drive time of office trips for every for every 10 employees per week So the pods the vehicles the system it should pay for itself And even if it doesn't then I've got six more rolling billboards going around getting 100 000 impressions each per day eyeball seeing our brand in a big Pink van with, you know, one of our techs, you know, bigger than life on it in our uniforms and you know In the economics of having each one of those techs drive to your office once a week Where you're paying them for that time and that's time that could be generating revenue Versus a supervisor who could also be inspecting and kind of doing a one-on-one coaching session I mean, it's a it's a more efficient use of your Your labor I think a better return on your human capital We'll know a lot more. I mean, this is experimental. We'll know a lot more in a year I'll be happy to share some of the statistics What I'm saying is what we believe because we haven't fully tested it yet and I think You know experiments can be expensive and you can get them wrong. I think we're right here um, I've seen this in kind of Some of the other labor models I've been looking at where they kind of divide their labor into these teams of of you know, geographic teams and um There's a big company here in town that's like in the hvac plumbing space This is You know something I might have Seen that they do you know I didn't come up with this on my own like it's you know, like you said it's like What what is it? Uh, you know, you've got great quotes around copying ideas It's like, you know, it's it's not it's plagiarism when you're in college is best practice when you're in business Yeah, and so we'll we'll see how it goes robin. I don't know all the answers yet. I'm hopeful that this is something that You know a reduces employee turnover because they're driving to the office less Costless less money of of time and equipment runs. Tom said one time a week. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's hopeful Most of them come two three times a week, right? So even if they only go to their pod meeting once a week They can they can call their pod leader and that pod leader is going to be within a couple miles of them instead of You know, if they're on the wrong part of town that could be a you know, 40 mile round trip drive that We're paying for if they lost a vacuum or something like that So there's there's a lot of economic benefits to it. I'm happy to share in vegas if you're there robin So wow, we are at the top of the hour. So We're going to go ahead. We're going to call this a wrap for it today. I'm dropping the Link to the issa show in chat one last time It's not too late to register if you haven't signed up do so come on out see matt lis myself and A few hundred other people for the residential cleaning industry that I would like to hear hang out and learn from each other We're not going to be here next week because we're going to be in las vegas so You won't find us live streaming next week And the wednesday after we're not going to do it because that's Thanksgiving eve and we're going to be doing family stuff then But we'll be back the following wednesday I gotta bring a calendar out for that because I can't do that in my head. I guess that'll be the 29th of November, so we're taking a couple weeks off. We'll be back november 29 Um matt, thank you. Thank you so much man. It was uh good having you back. It's been a minute and um, this is good stuff hopefully we can take this and uh Apply it to our businesses on scale Hopefully hopefully I can too Okay, so uh, we're gonna call it a wrap. Y'all take care. We'll see you in a few weeks. Bye. Bye