 It is live hi, it's live. I am Liz Trotter here with smart business moves Or I'm on smart business moves and I have a couple guests with me today I have Pam Clyde from Britlyn cleaning and I have Samantha Snyder from Sound life maids I was just there literally Oh You know what this is probably the most tired I have been after a trip in a really long time You wore her out Sam yeah Sarah Sarah's fault not mine Although oh, who is our Facebook user that said hey ladies? I wonder if that might be to neat because she's not Where she normally is well whoever you are a Facebook user let us your know your name There is a way for the names to always show but I never know how how they work or you know How how to tell people what to do with it? Ah, Trisha. Trisha. How are you feeling? I don't know if you're sharing what's going on with you. I don't want to like Share anything. I'm just curious. How you're how you're doing. I Yes How that you see how the color keeps going in and out on my camera for some reader, but you're not you're not washed out You look good. That is bad for sure. Yeah Well, I'm glad you're living your best life over there. I missed you on Circle calls today Hope hope everything's going okay over there Sam. Yes. Well, Sarah wore me out As far as like running me through the ringer in all of her schedules That gals on it, right I I Think I'm equally worn out by our lack of nutrition yesterday. Oh Eight I don't know Sam how many how many calories do you think we ate at that? We stop for coffee y'all because we need to do Time before lunch. So on our way to lunch. We stopped to get coffee Hi, Callie. She think we ate Sam four or five thousand We bought six little thingies like special cupcakes and The move the pie things they're like two sugar cookies with frosting in the middle We just bought six little thingies or did we buy seven? She's saying little these are not little We bought six thingies and then we cut them into pieces. Yeah Enjoy the rest of them last night. It was very appreciative on our way to lunch. Yeah, it was amazing on our way to lunch I'm still I'm still recovering from all this craziness. Ah So she was like we're at lunch and she's like From all the sugar No, no, I don't normally eat sugar at all. I just don't do sugar. That's not a thing. It's not good for me Oh, wow I had a cheese stick for dinner. That's it. Just a cheese stick because I'm like, wow Yeah, I could have salad for lunch. I couldn't do dinner. Yeah I Was crazy, okay, so This week we are talking about automations and The reason why I brought you guys on is because you guys are big believers in automations the same way I am and so I just wanted to talk with people about some of the Thinking around automations when to have automations and what capacities like how do you decide what to do? You know all of the detail. What is automations to a lot of people talk about automations nowadays It's kind of like a like a catchphrase like, you know, three years ago. The big thing was culture Everybody was talking about Culture you got to have a good culture and now everybody's talking about you got to have automations You know, you just you got to have automations So I wanted to talk a little bit about that and I thought you guys would be obviously I thought you guys would be a great help for me For Pam You give just a quick intro Pam who you are and why I thought you would be great to have on here for automations Okay, cool. So so yeah, I'm Pam Clyde with Britlin cleaning out of Austin, Texas and Started my business 14 years ago and really didn't intend to grow it but by about 2012 or so I started trying to piddled around with hiring and stuff and then by about 2017-18 I really had started to make some traction and decided that I needed to look into automations And over the course of those few years, I would add a little at a time. So I Realized that you know online estimating and booking was important. So I found a platform. I liked for that. I Hi, I don't know if you want me to go into more detail about what I did or that's good for right now Okay, we'll do a quick intro with Sam and then we'll talk about the different, you know processes and where where we have come up with automations and what kind of things What things don't and Sam how about you why why who are you? What are you doing here? You know all that good stuff What am I doing here? I'm Samantha with some life maids and we're in the East Valley of Phoenix and We have been here since fall of 2018 My prior business was pro-care cleaning commercial and business commercial and residential in Washington State and we own that from 2007 to when we sold it in January 2016 and Yeah, we we can't live without automations Aftercoff sorry y'all Little creep up on you. Yeah, I gotta find my unmute button All right, so Sam the reason why I really wanted you on here is because You are really big into automations on the employee side Creating systems that your employees can do that they on that are hope we got another Facebook user I wonder why none of our Facebook user names are showing up today I wonder if it's because I'm running the meeting instead of Tom. Oh Hey Facebook user. Let us know who you are. I Can log into Facebook on my other screen, but I never know which one to log which group to log into to see The best. Oh, yeah, most amount of posts because it's in more mold it more than one group What what group do you guys go live in here today? primarily and May central group arc see clean profit builders group Your cleaning business or a cleaning business. I think that page We're all over the place. I see it. Okay So, yeah, some you can see comments and some you can't so it shows live, but I don't see the comments Well, that was weird We heard Sam say that twice. Oh, it's Salisha. Hey Salisha. Good to see you All right, so last week for the first cleaning business today for me the second person was Chris. Hey Chris. Ah All right, so let's see. We are We're going to start with the first cleaning business today for me the second person was Chris. Hey, Chris So, let's see. We are last week was our first week to be talking about automations And we had Libby on and Pam. I know you're very familiar with Libby. No, I am. Yeah You introduced me to her actually and I believe that you Introduced a lot of the group to Libby as well You want to just give a quick update on who Libby is and what type of automations we use her for You bet. Yeah, so Libby delucian has whoop recruit along with Paul fast how are and They do an amazing job for us as far as the hiring automations from the They run my ads they decide my budget and they are indeed Masters so they get my best the best bang for my buck there And I just let them know turn up the ads turn down the ads and they manage all of that for me and All we have to do basically they have the filtering process in place. All we have to do is show up at the interview So it's great. Yeah. Well, you have to pay the money Yes, and actually I really believe that I'm spending less money now that I'm using moot recruit I mean I'm spending money on moot recruit and I'm spending money on indeed, but I'm spending a lot less Yeah, they know how to get the best bang for your buck I mean, I don't know how they do it, but they know that stuff. They absolutely do We have not had as big of a hiring problem as I know a lot of companies have across the country Fingers crossed that isn't coming to us when you just didn't get slammed here in the in the near future But I actually feel like I am in a great place even if it does happen to us Having moot recruit as our as our automation. They are just continuously Marketing for new employees for us. We have fresh Fresh interviews every single week Chris says Trisha like you're so beautiful and smart My favorite I wish I knew who all these people were on here Somebody said Facebook user said hello again another one. Hello ladies through my favorite faces. That's Linda I really wish I knew why that Facebook user thing I'm cheating. I have Facebook open like Sam does probably on another screen Oh, I closed it because the echo could have been Probably from mine That's okay. Well, I was trying to look and see if I could figure out how everybody tell us who you are Yeah, like at a party but everybody has a mask on because of COVID right? It covers their entire face Right off the bat, right? She's like love who recruit to Linda. Hey twice. Okay, gotcha. That's great Thanks, you guys. That's helpful if you say your name. Oh, look genie knows how to use dream yard You see how she shows up. I agree with you on who recruit. Yeah who recruit is an amazing Product and now there are a lot of other Platforms out there that will also this so you have to find the one that is going to work with you So people won't like this and there will be people that won't like this, but I'm sorry It's the truth. What we're crude is not perfect for everyone. Sorry even though I love what we're crude You know, I love you Libby, you know, I love you Paul, but it's not perfect for everyone So some people will need something different. I don't know who I don't know why But there are a lot of other companies out here that are doing the same thing hire who is another one very popular also if you are in a Location where we recruit is already working with someone. They will not take on someone else. So you need yes, exactly I'm sad I'm like, hello other side of the valley and Another great company one Shabarro if you don't know one he is an amazing business owner as well I love one and so definitely be checking out all of these companies to find the one that works best for you Blue skies also Four choices and five years ago we had no choices All know the cleaning business. So that's a that's a plus and they all do a little little bit different than each other to you guys Yes, absolutely Totally really, I mean they all use automations. That's the only thing they have in common Right. So that's how important that is. I mean, I'm not saying they don't have some parts of the process that are similar But they are very different Yeah, great people of blue skies, absolutely, right and you guys all know that we bring Sean on all the time He's a great sharer So everybody all of these businesses do have one thing in common Automations but in different ways and they automate different parts of the process where they see The the need and what's important. So bottom line is you are looking for Automations most of the time in your business. Can someone throw in the chat the names of who recruit alternatives? Sure, I Don't know if who can who can check can one of you guys Are we able to I don't even see how we can I know I'm not sure yeah right here right here. I think I can Interesting yeah, I don't even see where I would oh, you know what say I'm go up and look at comments. I think I'm in I'm sorry Okay, I guess we yeah, I don't know. Maybe only Liz can see that I might be the only one that can do it too. I'm not sure Got it as the house probably. Yeah, I so hire who pipe hiring you already got blue skies Right all great companies. We have used all of them. I believe Yeah, I believe we've used all of them and they all do different things. So you also my gosh, and the company is gonna hate that I'm saying this as well, but Many times you have to change up what you're doing because things and change as as the conditions change as the situation Changes, then you might want to be looking at something different. You might have different needs as your business grows, etc So Yeah, so that air CS Association for residential cleaning companies, is that air CSIO? Yeah, it is I see the little logo They they're also recommending Piper Piper and higher who yeah, thank you. All right, so I think we hit that enough times there That is a very very important Automation What what's the next automation cam? I'm gonna talk with you that you looked for after you you've got who recruit Yeah, so I needed a way to Get online estimating done because with me being the only person to answer the phone and Respond to call a customer correspondence and things I had to automate that and so I tried a couple of different companies And I ended up settling on response a bit And they were very helpful at helping me set up all of that and you can just tweak it However, you want based on how you charge whether it's for footage or by the hour or whatever you do There's just all kinds of options there. And so that's who I am currently still using as a matter of fact response of it Nice. What's your scheduling platform cam? I was on jobber, but I'm about to switch over to made central haven't done that yet totally But but yeah jobber and responsive it worked beautifully together. That's what I was going to say Yeah, you know that jobber works really really well with responsive it I know that there is a scheduling tool inside of made central So most people don't continue to use responsive it I hate that we have to sometimes sort of compete with each other similar to right Overcruiting higher who and Piper but there are lots of great options and you just have to find the one that is going to work best for you Kurt Kurt captain. He owns responsive it. Is that right? Does he still? Yeah, yeah, yes. He very much does. Yeah And you know, I'm amazing He is I Think that there are just like there's enough business to go around for all of us that we can collaborate I see that the owners of these other support companies do collaborate and they have friendly relationships I think most of them and they try to really add value in the industry to not just their users But the industry as a whole and I don't think that That they really I think that they fully grasp and understand that as our businesses change That so does our needs and I don't think it's a huge deal when we have to transition Software or whatever because here's what's going on for example, I use made central for most things and So I currently use response bid for my online booking But we'll be transitioning to the made central platform for that also in the near future But there are many many businesses that maybe don't they're not a good candidate for made central and I'll continue to refer response bid for that and You know, even though I'm moving that part of my business. I'll probably refer to another people So I think that we all play well in the same sandbox Yeah, yeah, I feel you too. It's hard because Everybody is sort of competing for the same, you know customers and clients and dollars But I do I do agree with you Sam that this industry is really good at working together And finally what will work best for the individual in in whatever situation that we're in So is there anybody else? Launch 27 used to have a booking part of their Platform does anybody know if they still do I don't know But I know a lot of people also now use booking koala Yeah, that's what I was trying to think of yesterday Liz. That's who I think my local competitor Queen of maids I want to say I think he started that booking koala. I want to say Is it his does he own it you mean as I mean this was five six years ago that I was looking at it I think so I haven't looked recently, but did you mean that he started using booking koala or no? I thought he created it. Okay. That's what I was asking if my memory serves me right now. Maybe wrong. It's been a while I'm old Somebody's asking what do you mean about booking part? Um, so we have an operation software, right? We're using made central for many many parts of the business but for the part where the people go to our website they click get a quote and That's the part I'm discussing right now Currently my back end of my website producing those quotes is responsible But however made central does have that functionality and it's just the last piece of material central We haven't actually switched on and we will be doing that soon Okay, so it looks like booking koala was created by Philip Boska. Oh Okay, not even heard that name. That's interesting. Don't know who you are a Facebook user, but great info Let me know who you are Marcus shield said that Marcus. Okay, awesome Marcus would know he's local Yeah Doesn't do that anymore. He said all right really Oh They changed right they and business has changed what they do all the time. Sure. Yeah based on What what they need and the needs of the industry, etc so what I think what we're hearing here is lots of options and Places yes, I had custom software built in order to do that excellent Oh, yeah, remember when we did that a million years ago Liz a bunch of us got together in Your and then it was right before I think it was right before launch 27 came out I want to say I forgot all about that Sam It was just one of those things we paid for and then shelled because something better came out like the next month That's how that happens though. Um, you know, I I didn't remember it and To me what that says is it was still a good use of my money. It didn't hurt me I I'm not sitting over here thinking all lamenting the money that I spent to build this and that's something else No, because when you know, it's such a huge time saver like the the tire kickers that are just kind of checking out Out price or whatever that probably aren't gonna buy from us because we're not the cheapest Yeah, it helps to eliminate them and then it weeds out the serious people the people that really got that word of mouth, you know Those are the ones that are ready to book and it's almost like, you know It doesn't matter what you charge. They're ready to book because yeah, so it helps us find those people Yeah, absolutely. So another piece that I think People need to be thinking about especially if you're a smaller business and you're thinking, oh, I can't afford to buy all of these different programs that Yeah, by what you need and by what you can't create yourself Right because most of the time in business You're going to have a situation until you get to a certain size where you've got you've either got time Or you've got money, right? And it kind of goes back and forth, you don't usually end up in a situation where you're like, wow, I got lots of time I've got lots of money Until you get to a certain size of your business where they're like, okay, I've got time and I've got money Which is, you know Go ahead Sam. I love what you said about like it doesn't feel like we wasted anything and we didn't know because we were pushing the business forward and You know in my last business I found that I consistently was not making decisions and not executing because I was afraid that I would Not pick the best thing and then later I'd have to fix it But actually what I've learned after all these years is that I am going to fix it And I'm always going to be fixing it and I'm always going to be changing and upgrading and that is how it's always Going to be so you're you're actually holding yourself back by not executing and making the decision that fits you best at that time Oh my gosh, I love that point. Yeah Yeah, I agree. Yeah, that that should be standard business operating practices is that you're You're getting better and growing your business and you're changing and and upgrading as you as you grow You're you're not using the same things at at a four million dollar company as you were at a two hundred thousand dollar company that Makes sense and it's also Also can have something to do with your personal things that you like or that you're good at too And I would say more that you're good at right so you're really good at it Maybe it makes sense to hold on to some of that stuff But the stuff that you're not good at even if you like it if someone else can do it better You need to you if you can you need to offload that get someone else to do it even if you like it Oh, yeah, you know what fun lives I love like waking up in the mornings and seeing how many estimates came through and sometimes somebody old it'll go pending like people are ready to book or When I have openings they can you know select their own opening and and it's really cool That's kind of exciting for me or over the weekend I mean any time of the day or night that somebody's curious. They're ready to buy or at least shop They can go out there and get an estimate Yeah, so we a lot of times we're talking about like passive income, right? Everybody's talks about income We all know what passive income is but you know what? Automations create possible passive other things passive leads. We're not doing anything. They're just coming at us Right people. I know right now that are using automations in some form or another for what we or for recruiting Who is that like is that She didn't want to disrupt it it's casual Gabby you can walk by Yeah, you didn't get to meet Gabby yesterday Because I think you've met her on zoom before oh, okay All right, so what were you talking about y'all? You know right? I'm crawling in the background Funny Automation as far as getting your estimate passive income passive That it's With when we're look using one of these platforms. We're having passive leads come in lead To do anything and they're just coming at us Most of the people that I'm working with right now are in a situation where they have more leads coming at them Then they can handle right there. They're like leads leads leads. I only need employees So that recruiting gotta have that recruiting on right get that recruiting going Harder stronger faster and consistently so that you can take those leads because what's worse than paying for leads Paying for leads you can't use cuz you don't have capacity. That is the worst Okay, so I wanted to talk about one more thing real quick We started to talk about it and I got us off track You might be in a situation where you can't afford all of these great things. You're like, yeah, I I love pipe higher I saw them. I love Juan Chaparro. He's amazing. I feel like he's my guy and I want to use him but I Really can't afford it right now. I don't have any gross profit Or I don't have the truth is a lot of people don't Know it's absolutely true. So of course, we're gonna talk about knowing your numbers a little bit right and how to automate some of that stuff as well But yeah, yeah when when you can't you don't have the money you don't have the money to invest You don't have options for that. Although. I know that right now a lot more people have money to invest because of the Government situation, you know kind of throwing a little bit of money at us Great time if you do have money to invest This is the time to do it if you have money that you're sitting on your likes don't know what to do with it automations Automations would be my first thing to point at fastest way to begin scaling your business is by automating some of the the text stuff All right, but back to what I was saying if you can't if you can't afford it and you're starting to do it yourself Here are some simple things that you want to think about make it so that it is simple Don't don't make it so complicated that nobody can follow along and you have to you have like 50 million spreadsheets that all have to be sorted in a different way to get this action Simplify so what are some of the tools that people can use to? Do it themselves you guys that are more inexpensive. Yeah, what's that Sam? Okay? so we were talking about the automations with regard to employees and training and stuff so we wanted to train you'll for like a year a Solid year like that. We wanted to execute and I just didn't feel comfortable budgeting that additional expense and You know, so we took all of our videos that we had made Which you can just do with your iPhone You don't have to pay you know somebody with a big camera And I've done some it makes my husband mad because he's a professional producer But I'm like I need this done and I don't want to argue with you about the editing So I just did it and now it's online So, you know, you can make training videos for example and put them straight on to YouTube from your phone You don't need anything expensive. And so before we could afford training Training we just had everything and a Google Drive Word document and it was like, you know kitchen video one video two video three and here's the links and and so forth And then we also had this actually Grab this I just saw it around the corner to see what she's looking at So I'm just grabbing this here this guy, you know, this is a paper version It's a pain in the butt to keep track of things on paper But again, it can certainly be done and although this isn't quote Automated in some ways it is because the trainee can see the segment and click on the video and see the segment And then they can discuss that with their trainer. So, I mean, it's the beginning of an automation And even if you have a software that does something you can't actually use it until you have that foundation first You have to have the you know the materials Yeah, it doesn't cost anything to use Google Drive. No Google Drive is a great tool You know foundation sold me on automation to took a while. Yeah, it's not easy, right? And some of the stuff is difficult, but once once you understand the value of automations You'll you'll just be looking for more things to automate more more ways to automate things All right, so there are two more really awesome tools to use if you're trying to automate things one is oh shoot now I forgot the name of it Y'all the little It's like a to-do tool Oh Trello. Yeah, thank you I use the free Trello Trello, yeah, you can use Trello to automate you can do a lot of different types of automations to Trello and Then also Zapier right you can use a lot of things so you can zap things so that they automatically will move These are very very inexpensive tools. I think you have to pay a little something for Zapier But Trello has not much reaction. No, it's very very inexpensive I thought I heard this morning some of these say that Slack has some automations in it, which I didn't realize I'm guessing it's like Trello. Maybe like it's little automations Yeah, I don't know. I'm gonna have to look into it though. Thank you for that Sam I don't know. It's just something I heard as somebody suggest this morning You know what I love about Slack is I don't like to disturb the cleaners while they're cleaning But I might think of something I need to get a message out to them So I'll just schedule it to go out at four o'clock or whatever most people are through At the end of the day or if it's at night after hours I can schedule it to go out at 7 30 in the morning or whatever before they start They didn't know that that's cool. I have a paid version, but that's one of the things I love about Slack And the payback of Slack is not very expensive. No, it's not at all. No, so how much I Have to look I'm guessing people are wondering like 12 bucks a month kind of thing or like 60 I think it's for user if I remember right nominal I Don't I'd have to look it up. Right, but go to slack SL ac k comm Or look at it that way and I'm sure they'll have some options start out with the free version though That's what I did But if you want to keep history and have some of these extra things like they'll they'll give you a teaser, right? You get for 14 days you get this, you know the full benefits and then they saw you on that of course, but Yeah, it's a it's a huge time-saver and I love it You can also do like video or voice messages Transfer pictures Your texts can use it for pictures. You can use it. Anyway, just all kinds of stuff. Oh, there we go Somebody said eight to ten dollars per user per month. Awesome. All right, so If you are a smaller company, you're just trying to get the money This is gonna sound like a lot of money to you Every single person that's using it is ten dollars if I have like eight employees That's eighty dollars a month. I know that that sounds like a lot of money And so I would say, okay, maybe this isn't the place that you start you can look for some of the three options First don't don't get scared off when you hear numbers that are like, I can't make that work I don't we still use the free version. We don't need the paid one It would certainly be nice, but I can take that five minutes and and manually do the post a lot of times There is a Portion that can be automated or that you can use and you can still use with the free version You can upgrade later when you can afford it and I'm saying this because I Can't tell you how many times I'm running through somebody's P&L trying to help them figure out where Where some of their expense issues are and they've got this little thing for eight dollars a month this little thing for $30 a month list little thing for 2995 this thing for 4997 and we add that all up and I'm like you say you don't have any money, but you have over 400 this just happened. Maybe you have over four hundred dollars in unnecessary expenses She was like we don't even use that anymore We haven't used that in six. We've been cutting every month. We cut something else. I think we're almost out of things to cut Nice Sam nice and they're little so I'm like oh zoom. What is that 15 and I mean I even cut my My thing that I said I would never cut which has been a reviews automation, but we weren't using it Reviews I wanted to talk about that one Well, we were using nice job and there's nothing wrong with that. I recommend nice job I think it's great, but because it doesn't sync with the made central scorecards then it wasn't truly automated anyway and Certainly I can do that and I would get more but we weren't using it So I'll turn it back on when we begin focusing on it. Yeah Well, we are going to have an episode that's all about reviews and Something else I think coming up Was it quality? I'm not sure But we've got we do have some more coming up with that an entire episode where we're going to talk about different versions of that Let's stay back in that early chain, right? So in the early chain where we've we've got to recruit some people and then we are looking to Bring on some new customers is like two different Channels here right the employee channel and the the client channel But that those early those early things that you can automate Then what is the next thing? Let's just go down the Employee little path there. So anybody on here, maybe Linda or Danita's on here Anybody else from foundations? Can you guys tell me what the name of the you know what I'm talking about the process flow map the foundations process flow that shows all of the different Tom would smack me for not knowing this time at the employee life cycle No, but thank you for bringing up the employee life cycle. Oh, yes Boy life cycle for those of you that don't know we're doing an employee life cycle workshop where we will we will Workshop your employee life cycle from day one through at least Two-year life cycle. So what do you do on day one and you're gonna create that? What do you do on day? Oh, so we're gonna leave with it being done. Is that what you're saying? We're not gonna talk about it and learn. We're actually gonna know when it's a workshop. So you're gonna do I need to buy a new laptop Sucks one's gonna drop the Wi-Fi I'm so cheap So, um, you might want to consider doing that for and that is April it's right after the maid central Oh, no, that's not it linda That's that's what we were thinking too. It's right after the maid central user experience for anybody that's going to that It's your event. You got dates Yeah, it's at castle keepers Don't don't ask me our question sam I'm looking at I just want to know because I'm signed up for the march maid central and Now I'm like, oh, do I need to do the april one? If I get twice my husband might kill me They really wanted to be their march. I want to be in the first one Sorry, the I got a turn on 2.0 Yeah, yes. Yes, you do you haven't done it already Absolutely for those of you that aren't on 2.0 yet. You need to get on there because the booking tool is It's what you've been waiting for Yeah, I said it Yeah, all right back to Alice, I think your dates are probably like I'm sorry. I think it I can't remember if the castle keeper thing is the 19th and 20th Which is a Tuesday Wednesday? Is that and then is yours the 21st and 22nd? Yep Okay, Tom moved his back a day so that we could Do it because we're doing it at the same location So okay, cool. I've already signed up for april. So that works for me. Yeah, perfect Maybe I'll be able to go to both And for those of you that are in strategic success circles Go ahead and if you had signed up for march and you didn't realize we were going to do this in april You can go ahead and change that you did here blue skies. You can change that to april. No problem. No penalty And remember that if you're in one of the mastery groups, I'm not sure maybe express as well It's free to you So sign up for that if you're gonna be there one more reason to sign up Yes Uh, let's get you on. Yes 2.0. Sam. I don't know who's saying that but yes, let's get Yes Message me you could help me with 2.0 and then I could go in april And yeah, that's probably the best choice But yes, shon, we were talking about you if your ears were ringing over there We were talking about what an amazing sharer you are. I know we don't know why anybody's I think it's because I'm running But shon knows how to get his name to show up and so does jason And so does oh, what was her name? There was one more person that really genie Right edit name. Yeah says edit name. It does. All right. Well If you can edit your name then edit your name, I think yours is different sam because you are on here Anyway, so yes, we're talking about recruiting and there are lots of options and we were talking about We're talking about getting leads and there are lots of options for getting leads out there to automate getting leads And then the oh, there was one thing that I wanted to tell everybody today. I loved this that it was great piece of information this came from This is the guy Campion Mike campion and you guys may know about Mike I just I don't know that's why you'll hear something that's like kind of disturbing about something Disturbing about him that I'm like trying to get over. That's sure. I I'm not just believing it, right? You know how you hear random You're like, I'm not believing that because how much value has Mike campion brought to the service industry So much so much and here's one of the things that he teaches that I love If you are what the what? Yeah, see I'm lost That's what I'm not sure anymore. I just like got hit with it when I saw this Okay, let's back on track here Okay Does everybody know who Mike is Yeah, he's an author Mike campion. I don't know. I mean, I'm just putting it in google. I don't even know He's got a facebook page for the claiming business Yeah, um, he's a big um, he has a big company and he does a lot of business coaching in our space But he does service businesses. Yeah, bro. Yeah, bro. My plan business. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, okay Yeah, and he he's a business coach. He's a big business coach in our industry. Yeah, he's not an author But I'm saying he kind of apparently there's another one who is but kind of because he does um create a lot of He has a lot of intellectual property that he has written So maybe he's not a published author, but he does I would say he does author a lot of content But one of the things that he says that I love I'm going to get this out Is that if you're looking to hire a manager, right? He says before you hire a manager The very first thing that you need to do is make sure that all of your systems are automated You will save more money by automating all of your sister systems. He has one book called. I'm a freaking genius Oh, does he really? Who is Who is it at salicia? Oh my god, I didn't know that C is salicia c e e. Oh, sorry. Okay C is her facebook name Oh, okay. Salicia Gotcha It's both though. Anyway, that's cool. Salicia. You have to tell me about that tomorrow At forum. I want to hear about it. Remind me so anyway, uh One of the things that he says is the very first thing you do if you're looking to hire a manager and I know That as you're growing you start getting so tired And you're working so many hours and you just start feeling so burnt out and you're you're thinking I need to hire somebody in my office. I gotta have somebody I've got to have office help and office assistant and office manager I've got to have somebody helping me his he gives a four step process that I love first step Automate automate everything you can and as inexpensively as you can while you're growing right automate Look at all of the different processes and automate every single one that you can The second thing this is amazing Is vendors look at your vendors How can your vendors potentially help you now in our space the cleaning space an example I can think of is You might talk to one of the vendors that we're just talking about like blue skies, right? We have Sean on here and we might say hey Sean You know i'm loving blue skies, but i'm having this problem with an example might be onboarding Can you also help me with some onboarding? Is there any way I can get some assistance? To do that. It's not part of what they normally do, but you never know They might be able to help you out. So look to your vendors and see especially and actually Sean is a great example for this Because he is so helpful minded Anybody that knows Sean knows that he is constantly giving He'll tell you all of the questions that they use in their interview process He'll tell you everything that he does. He doesn't hold anything back So that obviously the kind of person that's going to help you. So second step is ask your vendors Can they help you in any area help you with some more automations? The third thing is hire a va Instead of hiring relationships are so important when vendors agree. Yeah, absolutely. And you're the king of this Sean So the third thing is hire a va He says in the beginning you're just needing help And so you're feeling like I need to hire a full-time person in my office And I equate this to the customer that says my house is trash I need help. I need to hire somebody weekly And then you guys know sometimes we we can recognize that this is not a weekly customer And even if they go weekly it won't be long before they go bi-weekly And then they're gonna go to monthly because they really do not need weekly They're just so overwhelmed that they feel like they need weekly, right? So it's the same thing you need help in your office You feel like I need a full-time person in my office doing all the things Well, Mike says maybe not maybe you don't maybe you can get away for a while until you're ready for that Next step is to hire a va or someone else to help you temporarily or part-time Right and then the fourth step is actually hire that person to be in your office. So we jump from I know right we jump from I need help to I'm gonna hire a full-time person Mike says no four steps So for those of you that don't know who Mike is check him out And Yeah, that was that was all I wanted to say with all that lives That's exactly what I did and it worked really smoothly It made sense to me when I first started thinking about next steps and it it did it It was very helpful allowed me to save money and time Incrementally along the way until I was ready to hire those those physical people And then like you said, I still have those automations in place But we've just grown so much bigger that now we needed real people to do more things for the business and another thought is I think you can make a list and write down all the things you do And then write down the things you're comfortable with a VA doing versus somebody on site and I mean if you can If you're at that place where you can't actually afford somebody in the office full-time or maybe even close to full-time You can have a VA do a certain percentage of it pretty efficiently and then Have somebody that's a field employee Also, maybe they spend two hours in the afternoon to wrap up the day And they do certain things that have to be done or a few hours in the morning That those things that have to be on site person and I think that can make a huge difference Sometimes the inefficiency of the full-time Employee in the office actually can cloud our vision as to what we actually need And I think there is a lot Less stuff that has to be done By someone in your office Then is traditionally thought of and that Pam you're actually a really great example of this too Right just not having an office and finding a way to use people that are not coming to the office not Going to the office and having success doing that Uh, I heard from somebody the other day that yeah, you can't do that That won't work and they were telling someone who had was doing it It was working I was like, huh, you're telling somebody that is doing it that it won't work I guess it's not one I follow but okay um So yes, I I love that use use a VA when you can Another another piece of that is I'm gonna I'm gonna use a saying that tom uses all the time About reversible decisions Right. Oh, yeah, if if it's a reversible decision try check it out. See if you can see if it does work for you uh, one of my favorite VAs you guys all know maria dorian and um Oh, what's what's the name of her task away? Yeah, thank you task way uh task way va So she can help you to automate a ton of the things that you're doing as well in lots of different areas So try she is really competent in multiple softwares and Has owned a cleaning business owned a va business worked at multiple softwares. She really is a great resource Oh, yeah She she's working again. I know she's worked at She worked at made central. She has va's that are trained there. She's working currently. I believe was then made, right Is that right? I think I mean I think projects probably but yeah, I think so I'm pretty sure she's working was then made right now. She's also opening another cleaning business. She's a serial entrepreneur so maria is just a busy busy gal, but she is a strong believer in automations and finding a way to To make things work. So there's there's to go with mike's third step. There's one There are quite a few different va's that are really good depending on what you're looking for chris cheshua What's the name of this anybody know the name of his off clap your bad? Um, are you talking about the one jill's office? Jill's office that's different one. Okay. No, no, there's no collars. There's several different out there A lot of people have pink collars. I wish I could remember the name of chrises Uh, I love chris. Yes, and know the local. Thank you. Okay, spoke user And then there's also like answering services like I used to use ruby reception Well, first I have to give a quick a quick push to um chris because chris runs his va situation much differently than maria does or yeah ruby's reception is another good example So if you have tried a va service and you're thought this just doesn't work for me I'm going to say try another one, right? So if you yeah because they all run very very differently And we've had chris on the show a few different times. He is very process driven And so the way he does things is very very specific For certain certain wins in your company All right, so I just had to give that little bit of a a push. What's the name of the company? Innova I am what's his what's his last name schwaab chris schwaab, yeah So I thought about another automation for me. Um, I use bamboo hr and Good job somebody did mention that and and so when I was again before I had any office helper Lindsay to help me hiring or with hiring and employee management I could not keep track of people's birthdays and anniversaries for the company or you know, whatever And the paperwork was a nightmare to get get them to sign because I don't have an office So we did everything virtually And so bamboo hr allowed me to keep up with all of that Get their car insurance on file and let me know when it's time to renew that I could put in training modules. There's just all kinds of things So that's another platform that I chose to use so you could right training modules into bamboo You can it's not an elaborate as some of the others But there is a section for training modules to go in like a link to a youtube channel or that's private or whatever you have All right, awesome And also go ahead sam along those same lines, um, gusto has some automations for onboarding and recently quickbooks added Um the It wasn't always in there where you can send the employee the link to add to do all their tax papers and their direct deposit And that used to not be available until recently. Right. I love that. Turn that on. Yeah Okay, I did not know about that either. So that is for if you're running all of your payroll through quickbooks payroll What i'm hearing. Yep, exactly All right, so I know that we do have an hr Company coming on this month as well That will be giving us some ins and outs about the different Different ways that they use automations and how you can use it One thing I want to say real quick before we head out of here. We've only got a few more minutes is automations are a win If you're thinking I don't care. I don't know. I don't know how Stop stop with that thinking What you need to think is I need to automate more things How am I going to do it not? I can't I don't know Let go of all of that and start thinking this. How can I automate something? Just start somewhere. What is the thing that is A linchpin in your company the thing that is going to make the big difference or what's a big bottleneck? Right, what is the thing that is holding you back and being able to get to that next place? Automate that even if you don't automate it using a company At least begin using some automations on your own But I'll tell you the vast majority of the time You are going to have a large return on your investment by using Automations or these companies would not be in business Right just a reminder How they stay in business is because They earn you money So even if you feel like I can't afford it. Remember, it's a short term Typically a short term investment to begin reaping those benefits. So look for ways pick the one That's most important to you and invest there. All right. Do you guys have any final words here? Oh If you're good at um, if you're good at tech stuff, there's also click-up You could build some of your own automations out I was just at the spot where I didn't have time to learn click-up and master all of that So, um, that's why I sought out these platforms that had already mastered that for me Yes, it cost me more money than going the other route But I was at a spot where I had more money than I had time. Yeah and and my my final Push is for actually for nice job If you are a young solopreneur and you are working alone or you just have a few people and you want to get to the next level Where you have some money to invest in some of those automations get nice job when you're leaving the job Send the client your review link even if you don't have nice job Send them your google review link the biggest thing that's going to grow your business very inexpensively in the beginning Is building your google reviews. That's the number one thing to do laura smith said that years ago Then when the client calls they're already sold they saw your reviews Or even leave them a postcard with a qr code directly to your google or yelp Reviews that's another way you can do it real inexpensively now you guys, you know qr codes are hot people. They are They are not Uh, yeah, Courtney wisely is absolutely a click-up whiz. All right y'all We are top of the hour and we have got to shut it down Thank you everybody for visiting tom is in orlando. So everybody say hi tom and orlando Hey, tom this too here jealous I'll see everybody Next monday Tomorrow for those of you that were wondering what happened to what would liz do Yesterday on tuesday we had to move it to thursday So what would liz do is going to be on tomorrow, but then back to our normal tuesday schedule next week All right, y'all talk to you a bit soon. Bye. Bye. Bye