 Liz. Good afternoon, Tom Stewart here. I'm with Liz Trutter and Martha Woodward is our guest today on Smart Business Modes. Hey, Martha. Hello. I pressed the button before you're ready. I was just trying to get in one last thing. I'm going to get that one last thing right there. Yeah. Yeah. You didn't quite make it. Can you see it live or is it a later thing? A later thing. Okay. Oh, well, you can tell us. No, no, I gotta know. How are we going to? We're not telling Tom. No way. No. I need your amazing race clue. That's what I was going to tell you. Okay. Yeah. That important stuff, you know. I don't, I don't even know. So I'll help you. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. All right. Carry on. What are you talking about though, Martha? Why don't you go ahead and use that as a chance? Explain to me. What's an amazing race? I'm confused. Are you being serious? Have you never watched Tom? I'm aware that there was a television series called The Amazing Race. I don't think I ever spent much time watching that. It's 35th season or something because they have several a year. But so the three of us will be in San Diego in about six weeks, I think. February 20. Yeah, the 24th through the 26th. And anyway, we'll be in San Diego for the quality driven conference. Made Citro will be there to say, where am I going to be in three weeks? No, six weeks. Okay. You scared me. I was testing you, Liz. You're paying attention. Good job. I'm there. I'm showing in 42 days, 13 hours and 56 minutes. That's right. You know, you're going to laugh at this, Martha. I know I'm going to let you finish up what you're going to say. You're explaining to everybody. But while we're at Laura's event this past weekend, yeah, somebody and I can't remember who it was. I want to say it was Sarah Mitchell said that she can't wait to get to the Humphrey and she's missing her time at the Humphrey Inn. I'm like, dude, you're going to be there in just a few weeks. She's like, I want to go now. It is a great place. It really is a great place. And you've not been there yet, right, Tom? I have not. I mean, I've been to San Diego, but I haven't been to the Humphrey. Right. Well, Tom, I thought you were there with me. Is that where we did the ArcC executive leadership thing a few years ago? No, you're right. That was so Cal, but it wasn't at the Humphrey Inn. That's what I was thinking of. I was mixed up. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, it's a it's a nice little kind of resort like hotel. I think what I love about it is that when we have the event, we kind of take over the grounds and it's, it's really, it's just very pretty. They, they have parrots out there and they have, you know, the pool area and the hot tub area is nice and they have fire pits and it's really great. It's so, there's so much nature. Like when you, when you, once you get inside your room, you go out the other side, it's just like a nature preserve. It's so beautiful. Like really, there's parrots there. I'm like, yeah, they're really, really are with a handler. And, and then the beach is just right across the street. And anyway, it'll be good. It'll be nice to see you guys there praying for good weather because I have quite a few things outside and that amazing race thing I was talking about. So I am a fan of the amazing race, probably a little too obsessed with it. I like it because it's all my favorite things. It's competition and it's fun. And it's, you know, yeah, it's, it's, it's fun. And you get to watch them travel to different places and you think, Oh, I want to go there. But anyway, yeah, our vendors will be involved this year. And it, and for those of you familiar with it, you know, you, we're going to have the detours and the roadblocks and a fun thing. And I posted it today is where the, you create a team of like two to four people and your team, if you get to the U-turn place first, your team can make, you put a picture up of the team that you want to make do like both challenges. It'll make more sense when you're there. But I'm going to explain it for the people that have never heard of it. Okay. So because you love it too much, you're in it and you're trying to create it right now. So you have detail. So here's what it is. So teams get together and they race to be the first one to the finish line. And throughout the race, there are a bunch of challenges and there are things that you have to do and there are things that will stop you along the way. And it's just a whole big, a series of fun things that you have to do to be the winner, to get to the end first. And so Martha has a bunch of stuff set up where like the vendors are going to be participating and I'm a vendor. So I'm super excited because I get to participate and that's it. It's just going to be kind of a very, very fun race. Yep. And that's our kickoff. Like before we ever start any educational sessions, that's our kickoff. We've never done that, but it's going to be fun. We'll get that kicked off. I've got some swag, amazing QDS, amazing race swag for it. And then we'll get started with the serious stuff. But I love that way. I love your idea of opening it up on this nice light note, getting everybody in an energetic and enthusiastic mode to go into the learning segment. I mean, everybody learns more when they're in this great place. So I'm loving it. Well, oxygenate your brain before you start. Yeah, nice. Oh, Sarah, fun, bringing her salesperson and a manager. Yay. All right. It's great. But anyway, that's not, I don't want to take the whole time here. We have business to discuss. Well, well, it's important KPIs to discuss. Right, right. Well, absolutely, we do have KPIs to discuss this month. But I mean, this is going to be a really worthwhile event for a lot of people. It's really going to help move people's businesses forward in a really big way. So, I mean, I think it fits with smart business moves. Sorry, y'all. It is a smart business move. So, in having fun while you're doing it, you know, I mean, there's more to business and just making a profit, right? Tom, I think you have your costumes. You need a costume for 80s night. And then you need a costume for the luau. I didn't even know about this. How am I out that much out of the loop? I need an 80s costume and a luau costume. Mm-hmm. I have an 80s costume hanging in my closet. It's vintage. So, I'm good there. You're doing it. I think I've seen you wear your 80s costume. Yeah. I don't know if it's how well it fits. Tom, I'm sure you have some MC hammer pants, right? I love to those. Oh, my gosh. I know. They're so uncomfortable. I got to find some of those. Can't touch this. Yes. Oh, my gosh. I love these pants. All right. I did not. I missed out on this. And, Martha, in my world, costumes are not optional. If there is... Well, I... Yes. I'm in it. That's right. That's right. I have several who are excited about the costumes. And then I'm sure there's several that are like, mm-mm. No. And Deneet is part of my costume team. So, if you want to find some links and send them to me, that would be appreciated. There you go, Deneet. Yeah. I'll die out. And she has experience dressing Tom or adorning him. Adorning him. Oh, shit. Oh. Yeah. It's cool. Yes. Those pants. That's awesome. Yeah. Rachelle gave me some 80s pants. I forgot about that. It's amazing. Oh, there you go. I don't know what those look like, but... They look like they'll fit the bill. Okay. Yeah. All right. So, I'm super excited about this. I can tell a lot of other people are really excited about it. Marlowe. I can't wait to see you, Dawn. I'm super excited to see you, too. It's going to be exciting. All right. So, we're going to talk business, right? I know you guys both want to get to business. I keep pulling you back to the fun stuff. But I did have to laugh because Tom, did you really say there was more to business than profit? I was wondering. I was wondering if that was going to go unnoticed. Yeah. No, it didn't. Yeah. Yeah. I really want to hear more about that. I'm not believing it. I don't think. We need to learn every day as we go about doing the things that we do. And, you know, I'm not going to take us off on a tangent. But actually, I've got an article that's going to be coming out in cleaning business today. Tomorrow, I believe, is when it's going to go live that actually talks about all the different motivators that we have as cleaning business owners. And, yeah, making a profit is one of them, but certainly not the only one. And, you know, I've been I've been expanding my understanding and appreciation for how fun is important and a lot of other things. So you'll have to tune in for that one. Nice. Oh my goodness. Actually, I am getting a message here at the wrong time. All right. I know there's a lot of pants floating around out there. Yeah. You know, I'm going to be in Key West just before your event, Martha, and I'm catching a flight out of Key West going straight to San Diego. So you poor guy. It's going to be tough. Go from one bad location to another. Yeah. My daughter recently moved to San Diego. So I'll get to see her too. So it's going to be pretty cool. Yeah, that's nice. Yeah. My kids are flying down, but from Seattle, so they're, they don't live there, but it's a good chance for them to come and see us. So enjoy San Diego. Yes, for sure. So quality KPIs, right? Yeah. All right. Let's talk. Let's talk. Tell us all about what are the. What are the important quality KPIs, Martha? But before we get started though, we have a really important question here. Alan wants to know about cleaning business today. Have, have, have I failed so, I mean, I'm sorry, I have failed you. We talk about cleaning business today. Just about every day. It's an online trade publication about the residential cleaning industry. I'll drop the link right here. It's really awesome. If you don't get the newsletter that comes out a couple times a month. Just pick your email first name, last name, and we'll hook you up. And every time new articles come out, you know, we'll update you on it and answers all your questions about everything that you'd ever want to know about the residential cleaning industry. Not quite, but there's a lot of good stuff there. Sorry. Okay. I'm good now. That's all right. That was all right. Okay. The ones that I watched and I'll be interested to hear the ones that you guys watch and then like the audience, but there's four main ones that I really pay attention to. One is, okay. Well, first let me back up. We send surveys after every service. And it's just a one question. How did we do and, you know, they rate them and everything. And the employees who were on that job are attached to that survey. So that's where these, these metrics are coming from is those surveys that come back to us. And I watch four things. The overall company score. I need to know that. All right. And all of these numbers I'm talking about, I need to know what our average, what our normal is so that I know when we're deviating. So the average company score, then the average response rate for the company are percent of excellence. So, you know, over a given time period, what percentage of those scores that come back are excellent and like what's our normal for that. And then lastly, our percentage of failing scores. So on a scale of five, I would consider a failing score of three or below. I actually used a scale of four. So it was two and one. So that was a failing score. And Tom made central also uses a four, right up to a four. Oh, no, actually zero to four. It's actually five possible responses, but you don't get any points for a failing grade. Actually, so Ellen, congratulations in business five months. I think we should probably since he's brand new, we should probably put Martha's link up there right now so that he can see where Martha's talking about. We're getting her quality driven. This is Martha's company quality driven software. And Martha, are you still taking reservations for your event? We are. We have about 15 slots left. And we have always kept it small because, well, I want to. And I think that's what makes it. I can do it. I can do it. I honestly feel like that makes it a little bit different. And I also encourage people from other service industries to attend. And that is not only good for them, but it's good for us in the maid service because that all started when I attended a primarily lawn care oriented conference. And I was there at this conference and I was listening to all these lawn care owners and I thought, man, these guys are really good at like, for instance, route density. They were so good at route density and some other things, but they were really bad at like company culture stuff. And so anyway, they have improved. So at least the people I'm around. And that was what made me think, you know, I like learning from people in other industries. So that's the beauty of the quality driven conference is that quality driven works with a lot of different service industries. Now, I will say we have by, you know, by far the biggest percentage comes from maid service, but we do have people from like window cleaning pressure washing and lawn care attend as well. And so when these topics come up, their leadership topics and they aren't like necessarily. In fact, a lot of times I'll try to pierce somebody from say lawn industry with somebody from the maid service industry. So they can do a couple of different perspectives and you can pick and choose. I absolutely love that you bring these other perspectives. I remember, do you remember the Arksy event where they had like, oh gosh, Tom, what's your name? We talk about her all the time. The poker champ, Annie. Were you there, Martha? And they had it. Yes, yes. Yeah, it took me a minute to, you know, put the name together. But yes, that was really great. Right. Like there are some of us that absolutely loved her. We were like, oh my gosh, they are true leadership strategies. It doesn't have anything to do with what industry you're in. I mean, there are strategies that you have to be paying attention to. I got so much out of that conference. Yeah. I use those strategies to this day. And I think that that's what you do at the quality driven conference that it really sets it apart. It is a completely new perspective. You just have to know that that's what it is so that you can appreciate it for what it is. Right. Right. And you have to listen to somebody and they're not giving you a cookie cutter answer. And, you know, you have to be at the level where you can listen to somebody and go, oh, I can apply that to my business by doing, because I remember that presentation Liz. I remember the room. I remember where I was sitting. Ew. You know, I want to say I was sitting at the table with you. Yeah, we really, I mean, it was great. It was great. And, and if you haven't gone to learn from other industries and like purposely sought out material, whether it's YouTube videos or books or whatever, you'd be surprised because we do kind of listen to each other. You know, we just listen to each other in this industry and that's awesome. But somebody else and say the long carry industry might approach KPIs in a totally different way. And you may go, oh my gosh, that makes so much sense for me. You know, and but you've never heard anybody say that before. So yeah, I love it. And yes, Tom, when we put on the conference, we get to say, okay, we're going to do it this way and hope people follow. So yeah, I love that you're doing it more and more too. Because I remember when Annie Duke was on, it was the, the most negatively reviewed thing that presentation at the convention. Yeah. And you remember how we talked about that? Yeah, it was kind of, it was kind of disappointing really because somehow we were missing the point. Right. We didn't, we didn't, we didn't make the connection. And I believe that that quality driven does make the connection. I think your event really just nails it. So I'm super excited for everybody to be able to see this and grow in such a bigger way. You're right. Our industry, we're just like this little tiny bubble that we never go out of. And there's so much opportunity for us. Yeah. All right. All right. I'm looking forward to it. All right. Four KPIs you mentioned. I wrote them all down and then talk to us a little bit. Oh, the link for the convention. And he says, yeah. All right. We'll get that out for you too. Tom, Tom, we'll get that out. I think it's posted there. I see it. Yeah, I just posted it. Yeah. Thank you, Tom. He's, he's quicker than, than me there. Okay. All right. So talk to. Oh, I can watch it. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Nice. Good job, Alan. Looking forward to see where you go. I've been in business five months and you've already got the Wow. Yeah. Already got that great leadership mindset. That's going to be amazing to watch where you go. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah. I mean that right there is a real positive Alan that you're, you're already starting looking at the bigger picture instead of not to knock anyone, but what kind of vacuum. You know, you're, you need to know those things, but the fact that you are broadening your horizons early on is going to be great. Well, and I don't think it's knocking anybody really, Martha, because we hear what we hear when we're ready to hear it. Yeah. And we can't use it until we are. So some, you know, when we get there, we get there. So I love that. Yeah. All right. So four KPIs. Talk to us more about those, Martha. Okay. Well, um, all right, I'll repeat them. Missing case you didn't hear that the four KPIs that I watch that I need to know about where we should go. Where we should be is the overall quality score. Then the overall company response rate and then the percent of excellence, you know, we have a normal range where we should be and then the percent of failing scores. So those are the four quality metrics that I want to know. Um, I have a question. Sorry. Yeah. I know I always have to pull everybody off track a little bit. Uh, story of my life right here. All right. So, um, in our strategic success groups this year. So we've always tracked the same basic five KPIs. And this year we wanted to add, or I wanted to add a quality metric to track. So six KPIs instead of five Tom knows I really hate expanding. No, I hate more than five. I'm going to go with six. You can have, you can have seven if you want less. That's okay. No, I won't. No, I won't. Not ones that we're tracking every single week regardless. All right. So my question to you, Martha is we added a quality metric this year. If I'm only adding one, I, the one I chose initially was that average quality company score. Thank you, Robin. Robin. No. He would love more too. Um, but I'm, I'm wondering if you think that the response rate might be a better number if I'm only going to track one, you know, here's the problem. I have a hard time looking at a overall score and not pairing it with the response rate. I know. Me too. I mean, it, it doesn't mean anything to me if our response rate isn't at a certain level. So yes. Seven. Seven. Um, so, because, and here's how that started is, um, when I first started doing pay for performance and I was you know, paying people differently based on their quality score and I had a minimum threshold you had to meet to get this higher pay at the beginning, I was not smart enough to set it up with some conditions. And so what I did was, uh, and this was years and years ago, but let's just say that I said, you have to have a 3.65 out of four to qualify. Well, so people were qualifying, you know, and they were, according to my policy that meant that I needed to pay them at this rate because they qualified with that quality score. But when you went and looked like maybe 10% of their clients answered. So out of 20 if they're solo, right? It's like, yeah. Yeah. So like maybe two people out of 20 answered. And so you're like, okay, I'm going to give them extra money, but I don't know what the 18 thought about them. And so that hurt. I couldn't do it. You know, I was like, yeah, absolutely. I rolled their mother. Yeah. I rolled that out and I was like, oh, wait, wait, wait. I thought of something. And, um, and I mean, I truly did do that. And, and this is the way I just communicate to people. I sat down with them and I said, all right, there's a little problem with this new program. I just rolled out and I explained, you know, listen, maybe you qualified with two out of 20. But can you see how that might be a problem? Cause I didn't hear from 18 people, you know. And so anyway, a long time ago that just ran for a payroll or two. And I'm like, okay, stop. And so, yes, I, I do believe that the overall score is important. However, the overall score doesn't mean anything. If you don't have a decent response rate. So, um, you know, I know you're going to hate this, but define decent. Well, for me, decent, I felt like I had to hear from a lead for from over half of the people. So for me, decent was 60% or higher. Okay. Now we actually got to where we, um, average 70 to 75%. But I required 60%. Okay. And that's for every cleaning, every job? Yes, Tom, because it takes less than 30 seconds. And we really trained our people, you know, cause I do get this question all the time. How do I get my response rate up? And, um, nobody ever wants to hear my answer, but the answer is you got to work it. You know, you really, you have to work it. And so when we first started doing this, and I think what really helped me is that I felt very strongly that this data would improve our company. It would improve our culture. And it would improve the service that the clients received. So it made it not as hard of a pill to swallow to push this down people's throats and we did. And so what we do, Tom is, um, yeah, we tell them upfront when we have a lead, um, we tell people upfront. And I keep saying we, I should announce that you, neither one of you know this and I'll, I'll talk about it offline or whatever. But, uh, as of December 23rd, I do not own that company anymore. So I keep saying we. So yeah, yeah. Most people don't. Um, but I'm still going to say we, because it's that company. You mean your house cleaning business? Mm-hmm. You did. I told you, you can play stupid if you want, but I already know. Well, I didn't believe you though. Oh, well, there is that. So anyway, I'll talk like, but I'm talking like it's present, but I don't want to lie to you guys. And I need to tell you. So, um, but Martha, I'm you saying, I mean, you're not talking about, when you're talking about all of this, you're going to talk about Dustin divas. You're talking about we, like cleaning business owners and actually not just cleaning business owners. What I'm hearing is it is the service business owners. We that use the system. Yeah. There's a ton of weeds out there that are using quality driven to do exactly what you're talking about. So it's really a very big way. Those weeds don't always work at quite like they should, in my opinion. But I'm hearing that you're talking about the Royal. We all love the companies using it. That's right. Okay. Good. All right. That's what I'm hearing too. You know, what I believe in is when a client or a lead calls you up and you're talking to them, you know, you do your own sales pitch and all that, but I believe in saying one of the ways that we're different is that we're going to survey you after every visit. Now, I long time ago was on those calls. I haven't done sales calls in forever, but you would hear a, you know, and believe me, I'm one of those people, you know, I'm like, oh my gosh. But then I paid that. Can I pay extra and you not send me that survey? No, no. No, they can actually opt out. But when they would sigh like that, I just kind of chuckle and say, okay, let me tell you why you're going to love it. And you are going to love it because it's going to take you 30 seconds at most. You have a super easy way to communicate to us. We're going to watch those scores. And, you know, and then we'll go and say, have you ever had a service that starts out great? And then it goes down him. Well, that's not going to happen with us because we're going to watch those scores. We're going to watch for the subtle changes. And then we're going to do something about it. If it starts to drop. So anyway, there's a lot of ways that you can get buy in because you have to get buying all the way around. Your clients, your employees and your management staff. Well, you know, this has been my thinking for years. When I first started telling people that I was surveying after every clean. I don't think I could find even one person that thought that was a smart idea. Yeah. I took so much grief for that. People were like, that is a terrible. So I'm thrilled to hear that everybody is on board with this idea and how to actually make it work because I think it's harder now. Like everybody gave me grief back then, but really it was way easier back then because people weren't fatigued by reviews and now they are. So I love that you're you're still seeing the value of it today in today's environment and making it work. That was what I was thinking. You've been doing this for a while. How long have you been? Gosh. So before quality driven was born. We were using customer thermometer and. And so you probably use that for a couple of years before, but it didn't have any of the reports I needed. So that's, you know, hence quality driven. But yeah, I even with customer thermometer, I mean, we were painstakingly taking those scores, putting it in an Excel spreadsheet. And it would take back then it took probably three hours, maybe four hours a week, but kind of my whole company depended on getting these scores. And it was, you know, even if I had to go back to those days, I can't imagine not having the data, you know, I just can't imagine not having the data and. You know, you're preaching the choir. Yeah. Especially we are so on board with you have to have data. Running your company without data is a fool's game. And I'm sorry if you don't like that, but I'm sticking by it. I'm sticking by it. Well, it makes it, you know, I just feel like it makes all your decisions so much easier because it's not a feeling like I feel like forgetting more complaints than they should or I feel like the clients don't like this person as well. You know, they don't like the job that they do as well. Well, you don't have to feel it. You can see it. I feel this is what the data says. The data helps remove barriers to growth. Yeah. I mean, obviously you can run a business without the data, but you're going to have a lot of challenges and your growth is going to be compromised because of it. Yeah. I have a funny story. A lawn care friend of mine. He. He was using quality driven and he said he had a. Crew leader come in and say, Hey, you need to give me a raise. I'm the best crew lead you've got and I need a raise. And he told me how he just turned his computer around and he had a little boy report up that showed, you know, everybody's scores and percentages and he goes, actually you're not. You know, the lowest score and you know, you owe me money. He said, you know, and he was like, come back to me when your score is this and it was pretty funny. I love that. That's a great story. I was too. And you can see, I mean, those, those guys typically there's no touchy feely about it. He was like, uh, no. And then turns it around. Here's here's the really gold in it too is you can't argue with the data. Yep. Right. If without the data, he's going to argue all day long. He's going to tell everybody how he's the best. He's going to tell his family. He's going to tell everybody. Yeah. But the data tells the story. Yeah. I don't really carry it. You have to say, look, turn the monitor. Exactly. And, you know, I think that way back when, when I started. Surveying and I started surveying because a lot of other smart people were doing this, you Liz and Laura Smith and, uh, the Henley's, you know, there were a lot of people that were doing this and I adopted it. And, um, but you know what made me attached to it is because I hate feeling resentful about things. And I remember feeling resentful because I knew that employee A didn't do as good of a job as employee B. However, they were getting like the same number of paid days and the same, um, relative pay. And I remember thinking, I just hate this. Like, you know, if I had to write that check to employee A who I just had the feeling they weren't, you know, because you've got the calls and you got the things. So you've got those indicators that things aren't awesome, but you didn't have any data. So this data makes it to where it's like, yep, okay, I'm going to pay that person more and I'm going to feel good about it because they earned it. And I can sign off on that and have no resentment. And the person who didn't earn it, it'd be like, hmm, well, you know, it's available to you. You can down choose to go after it or not. And such a huge portion of what makes employees happy is that they feel that things are fair. And it's so funny that we, we get all wrapped up in our, our shoelaces. We try to make things fair by doing it the same. Yeah. And that's not fair. No quality driven creates a fairness. It builds in a fairness that everybody can see. Oh yeah. I get less money because I'm not as good. They may not like it, but it's fair. So, you know, it doesn't make them angry. Yeah. I love the fairness aspect. And every once in a while you get surprised. And what you think is happening really isn't happening. And that person that maybe you were assuming wasn't doing as good a job, the data tells you something different. And that's really cool too. Yeah, it is. I mean, and I've absolutely had that. Yeah. I mean, you know, I'm like, it, because I think, you know, sometimes you, maybe their personality fit with you. Doesn't jive. I was really hoping you were a bad employee, but. You can't help but get some of those subconscious thoughts. Yeah. You think they're doing a great job, but the data says, yeah, not so much. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I love the fairness that it built in. I do too. Yeah. I never thought about that though. I don't remember every year you talk about how you, you didn't like how you felt. So. Hmm. Like. Yeah. Like is that full? When it really came to light was. So, you know. I believe in, and I live in the state that you can award PTO differently per employee as well. And so when it really came to light for me was more around PTO, almost more than like pay. I had two employees that hit their one year anniversary very close to each other. And one was this rock star, like the, the clients loved her. She was a great, you know, a team member pitching in, helping people never had an attitude issue, you know, all of those things. Yeah. And then this was back in the day where I probably kept people longer than I should. I had this, what I'll call a C employee who was always a little bit of trouble, you know, Yeah. Had just enough complaints or just enough attitude or just, you know, there was always just pushing the line and they hit their year. Not terrible. Exactly. But, but man just was riding that line. And I didn't have a good line back then, but if I had a line, they were riding it or they might have been under it. But anyway, so they hit their one year anniversary and what really hit me was back then my policy was one year anniversary, you got five paid days off. And so they both took their five day paid days off fairly quickly after their one year anniversary. And that was back when we hand wrote a check and I wrote the check to the first person who was the rock star employee. I was like, Oh, I'm so glad she got that time off. She really deserved it. You know, those thoughts running through my head. The second person, I was just like grit in my teeth going, this makes me so mad to write this check out. And that's when it hit me. I'm like, No, this isn't fair to the rock star employee. It's not fair to me. You know, there needs to be a person. It's also not fair to them because they kind of get the idea that they're on par with the rock star person and they're not. Right. Yeah. So it's not fair to anybody. Yeah. I love the baked in feature. Yeah. So, so anyway, there's it's, it just makes things easier and no emotion tied around it. You know, like it said, I hate feeling resentful. And like, if I created a policy that I'm like, this makes me so mad, then there's something wrong with that policy. Yeah. So tell us a little bit more like Martha about, so I mean, I feel like everybody, if you do not have a clear understanding, if you're on smart business moves right now, you don't have a clear understanding of why quality driven does things the way that they do. Please let us know. I feel like we, like Martha's given a really good explanation of that. What I really like to know now, Martha, is when you're looking at, you gave us a good benchmark for our, our 60% for response rate. Do you have benchmarks or some of these other numbers that might be helpful for people? Yeah. So we were on a four scale. And the benchmarks were for what was normal for us and acceptable, you know, like what I was comfortable with. So my benchmarks, I'll be your benchmarks, but so overall score now, I will tell you back when I was very first surveying and we were putting in an Excel spreadsheet. Yeah. I'm going to tell you on a four point scale, my, my minimum that I needed them to hit to get, I mean, I laugh about this now to get higher pay was a 3.3. I think it was like, yeah. I mean, because we have people. Yeah. Yeah. We have people in a 2.8 average. Now our response rate was also much lower. So maybe we were hearing from the complainers, but still it was, it wasn't good. And I mean, I knew that because back when I answered the phone, if I saw, we're supposed to let when you say 3.3, we're supposed to laugh. That's kind of like your quality, a quality geek inside Joe. I am laughing. So to give you guys, to give you guys a little bit of comparison for those of you that don't know what that means. If you transferred it over to a hundred percent score, that would be an 82.5. So it would be like a B minus. Yeah. You get to go to the next grade, but you're not necessarily on the other one. I want to say one more thing real quick. For some companies that might be perfectly fine. That might be what you're going for. Right. Like I would think that McDonald's would be looking for. Okay. I'm just looking for getting through there. But at that time, Martha did not have a vision for her company of being a B minus quality company. So. Yeah. I mean, I knew, I knew there was a problem. I just didn't know how to fix it at that point in time. And, and part of putting these incentives and things in place were part of how to fix it. And then, you know, it's not all about incentives. You've got to have minimum standards too. That's a whole nother conversation. Yeah. But it's, it is, you have to know where you're at. You know, it's kind of like your, your bank account. I mean, you got to know those numbers to know. Yeah. When things are out of line. And, and so. Yeah. So when I look at. Like when I come in and look at the dashboard. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's actually the first thing that I look at is our response rate. Okay. That is the first thing I look at because here's why I've done it a long time. And so I know, I know what's normal for us to be at. So if it's below that, and you know, I'm saying by several percentage points, one, are we sending the surveys? What's happening? You know, is there anything going on there? Yeah. And two, if we're sending the surveys, I kind of have a sinking feeling that, oh my gosh, something's going on. Because what tends to happen is if you have a regular practice of sending out these surveys and getting them returned and you know what your average is, even if your average is 35%, but if all of a sudden your 35% average is now 25%, and you're sending the surveys like you should, then what you need to do next is go, where's the, where's the hole? Like what I do next is now I'm not looking at company-wide response rate. I'm going to go and pull up all the employees, and I'm going to look at their response rate. And so this has happened to me in real life a few times. And when I pull up their, you know, all employees and the response rate, because remember, I'm requiring them to hit minimums. Right. I can look and I can go, oh, there we go. You know, and it might be an individual, it might be a team, but I can see who's pulling down that response rate. Right. And then what I do is I say, all right, you need to go and pull up all of the no, no responses on that team or that individual. And you need to call those people and say, hi Mrs. Jones, this is Martha from Dusty Divas, just doing a courtesy check, see how things are going, blah, blah, blah, blah. And many times you'll get, well, I didn't want to answer. I wanted to see how it went. I didn't want to get anybody in trouble. Exactly. You know, I was going to see how it goes. You're not going to find out, are they? They're really nice. Right. And you know, it is, it's a, I don't want to get any trouble. And I would hear this, you'd hear, well, I was just going to see how it goes. And if it didn't get any better, I'm going to, you know, I was just going to find somebody else. Yeah. So that response rate to me is probably the most crucial. But it can't be vital until you know what it is. It's pretty solid. It's pretty dependable. You know, it's not like fluctuating all over the place from week to week. And when you start requiring, and I remember when I started requiring a minimum response rate for my employees to hit certain incentives, I do remember, and I will warn you that you get the, I can't get them to answer my cert, you know, the surveys and I have no control over that. And I'm like, yeah, I had to, you know, and, and they do because the thing is, if they wow those customers, those customers want to help them. Yeah. And so, but if they just are very lukewarm with the customer, customer, it's not going to be quite as inclined to help them out. So that alone makes a difference. We would make follow up calls and we basically train the clients. Hey, you're going to get a call if you didn't answer. And now Tom, to your answer, sometimes we'd have people say, you know, just give them an excellent unless you hear from me. And so we do, you know, if they say that then, but we record that, you know, and, but yeah, that's, and that can work because there are some people like I'm, I'm that type of person that if I'm not happy, you will know about it. Let it go. I'm not going to say, well, I'm not going to have excuses. I'm going to tell you. So I'm the kind of person that you can absolutely assume that it's a four or five or whatever your top score is. And if it's not, I will let you know. And I like exactly what you need to do to get that higher score. So I don't really see a problem with letting people do that. Yeah, I agree. I agree. And only occasionally did we ever have a problem where like somebody would cancel service and they'd say, well, the quality's been going downhill. And we'd be like, um, you told us not to ask you how it was going. We trusted you. Yeah. That was a rarity. It wasn't the norm. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Robin has a question here. He wants to know how we measure quality of individuals that work in teams. Well, for quality driven. And it's the same and made central, I'm sure. So that quality score that, when the client answers with say, a three that quality score is attached to the client. And it's attached to each individual on the job. So if there were three people on the job, employee A employee B employee C each got a three. So, um, and that way, like tomorrow, if employee A and C work together, but B's not on there and they get a failing score, you know, B isn't going to get dinged with that failing score because they weren't on the job. So it is, you're pulling it from the CRM. The, it comes, that information comes into quality driven from the CRM. And I'm going to tell you how that works, Alan. I mean, not Alan Robin. I'm going to tell you how that works in your favor to have that information coming to you that way. If it comes to the team, let's say you have a team of two and that score attaches to both people and like, like Martha was saying, both people get a three. If that team stays working together every single time, then they're always going to have the same score. And if the score is not what they like, they need to work together as a team to make that score because they always work together. So it doesn't help you if they're a team to identify which person is the problem. That's not going to get you where you want to go. So we tend to want to drill down a little bit deeper. But if you have teams that work together all the time, it's not going to get you where you want to go. I just showed you that example. And if you have teams where the people move around, then their score will change. And now you know where the quality is for each individual person as you're moving them around. So no matter how your system works, your scheduling system works, this way of measuring the quality for the whole team is actually in your best benefit. Yeah. Now, occasionally, occasionally we had like, say you're getting some failing scores on a team. And you start getting some, he said, she said, well, you know, it's because they're not doing this or it's because they're not doing this. I have been known to split up that team. Now we're talking teams of two, so it's not hard to do. But I've been known to split up that team for two weeks and test it up the houses and go, all right, let's see where this problem lies. And guess what? The data comes back and shows me, and this is when they're supposedly trying a little harder, you know, because they know they're being evaluated like this. The data comes back, at least when I've run these experiments, fairly decisively, you know, so where you could say, well, okay. Yeah. Aging testing works even with quality, y'all. Yeah, it does. Well, Tom, I see that we are getting close to the hour. You know, I could talk about this literally for days. Well, you got two minutes. I know. So what, Martha, we only have two minutes. What last ideas do you think are really, really important for people to have? You know, we haven't really talked about percent of excellence, but I mean, I think it's a given and you know that, know this, but it's worth saying that if you want your clients to refer you, if you want them to talk about you, if you want them to stay with you, you need to worry about that percent of excellence. Again, way back when, when we first started looking at this, we actually, our overall quality score wasn't bad. I don't remember what it was, but our percent of excellence was around 80%. And I did not like that. And so we had one year we did a good to great, like, focus. And, you know, every week we updated how we were doing year to date and of course it doesn't move a lot week to week. But anyway, we did move it that year from like 80% to 86 or 7%. I mean, we moved it a ton. And you know what? That was years ago. We never ran that focus again. And it has stayed between 88 and 92, you know, that's our range. But it's that old saying, you know, what you focus on, you're going to change. And so I do see that also measure what matters, right? Yeah. You, you came up with that tagline, Liz. Did I? Yes, you did a lot ago. I didn't remember that. Yes, you did. Right? Yeah, that's good. Yeah. So we're dropping the link to quality driven software. If you want to know about more about the software that Martha's using to do all of this measurement. That's the tool and she'd be glad to hear from you and tell you more about that. The conference, which is going to be 42 days, 12 hours and 58 minutes from now. February 24th through 26. Yeah. And if you can't remember that, just remember it's Liz's mom's birthday. That'll make it easier. There you go. We all have that on our calendar. Of course. Yeah. All right. Sounds good. Just a real quick last plug here. If you are, and I'm not plugging just Martha's program because, oh, Martha's on the show today. I'm plugging Martha's program. Because if you're not running a quality program where you're measuring quality, if you don't have it as part of your software or some other way, this is, you can't afford not to. You have to be doing this or you're just going to continue to struggle, struggle, struggle. And you're not going to know why the data tells the story. All right. It's a no brainer. If you are doing quality surveys and taking that data and matching it up with customers and matching it up with your cleaning technicians, you need to do it. The return you'll get off of that is, I'm going to say you'll measure. Well, that's kind of contradictory. It is measurable. It's material. It's material. You just have to save one client. Yeah. Or save one good employee. It pays for the year. Yeah. Okay. So we're in overtime now, but we are going to be back Wednesday, five o'clock Eastern. Guess who our guest is going to be. I can't guess. I don't remember. But you'd probably be wrong. If you didn't know it's going to be Sean day. We're going to be talking about recruiting. Love Sean. Never get sick of him. Yeah. That's awesome. Thank you so much. Don't answer that. Martha, you're awesome. Very good. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Awesome. Very, very much appreciate, you know, you being with us today. Very nice. I'll talk to you before I'll see you in San Diego. Yeah. See you in San Diego. Forty days. Bye. Get your costume. Yeah. Bye.