 Hey, good afternoon everybody time Stuart here. This is smart business moves. I'm with loose Trotter Matt Ricketts and our guest today is Joe Walsh Everybody. Hey, how's everybody doing today? Good good About your new headset on I see your little ear. How's the sound are we? That's the one that always hears it I get a little bit, but not too bad. It's actually much cleaner There's still a little bit, but we're getting better. Okay. I'll have mine hooked up. Yeah, I'm supposed to come and hook mine up today. Okay so Wow, this is high-tech stuff here. How you been Joe? It's been a while you Back when COVID was a thing we were doing this on a on a weekly basis weren't we? Yeah I just looked the last time I was on was May. It was mid-May so Oh this yeah, just a couple months ago. That's all okay. Yeah, it's a couple months. I was on but yeah No, things are good. I was just telling everybody before we hopped on the call, but I am sick today so at the first time I've been sick in two years or it feels like two years and I think COVID kept us away from a lot of germs so Now I forgot what it's like. It's not fun. So I'll be sipping my tea here during the call I have no excuses, but I'll be drinking 32 ounces. Oh my gosh. Look at it. My my drink It looks like it's almost invisible. Yeah, it's cool. Look at it. Yeah I want one of those. Is it green? It's not it's clear. Hmm. But edges. Yeah, I don't know The green screen is really doing a good job though I Used to do like green coffee mugs and it just didn't work. So I had to change colors I actually loved it when you did the green coffee mug and then it would have your logo on your mug and that's awesome No, so what are we talking about today? Scheduling and This is the last Joe you're the anchor person here we've been doing scheduling and dispatching for the entire month and Sounded like awesome idea a month ago, but you know what? There's only so many ways you can talk about scheduling and dispatching and I think that we're all kind of glad that the month's almost over Well, I hope that I don't repeat too much of what you've said So you can stop me at any time if I start going off on a tangent you've already talked about that I think you've got a unique take on it versus, you know, everyone has their own thing But I mean one of the things that you really hit home is is consistency even overall being Scheduling efficient you really believe in consistency of not only just you know Same team, but that the clinic it's the same time, you know, there's a lot like what are what are the things that you're measuring? When you're dispatching and creating your schedules So the way that we define consistency is the staff member that's designed and the time of day So we don't like get it down to the hour but we do try and if somebody's used to being cleaned in the morning, we try and keep them in the morning and If they're in the afternoon, we try and keep them in the afternoon but the most important things they stay with the same person and We actually stumbled upon this Being the number one most important thing in scheduling by mistake. We kind of came at this Not we didn't we didn't go into it thinking oh keeping the staffing the same person is the most important parameter in scheduling so if I think it's probably worth backing up and Like talking about how we arrived at this new scheduling protocol that we have and so the way that we did that was when when COVID hit and we were reopening we closed for six weeks when we were reopening we Decided to switch to all solos because of social distancing guidelines now I was also hoping that switching to all solos was going to it was going to improve outcomes both in customer retention and employer attention and This wasn't a hope based on dreams. This was a hope based on data So the data that we had told us that in our companies Before COVID we were kind of half solos half teams and in our company We knew that the solo cleaners had double the the customer retention rate and more than double the employee retention rate so if you were solo at Green Clean Main you were Less than half is likely to leave in any given year and you kept your clients for twice as long as our teams did and Go ahead. How long did you how long did you do the solo model? How big a data set did you have? We the data set that we looked at to get those particular Like metrics was a one-year data set, but we have been doing it for years We've been doing it this this hybrid solo teams model for years But we had a sense that solos were way more stable and just in general They didn't leave their customers didn't complain the customers didn't leave like we just had this sense That was easier. So I said let's dig into it and look into that and So we looked at one year worth of data So you went from anecdotal to really diving into the numbers and and saw that that there was some huge trends there I'm not surprised, but is there anything particularly? You know that that stood out other than those metrics was it was it you know any costs associated with with With them. Did you did you generate not just in terms of? You know turnover of turn of customers, but were those customers likely to spend more with you like the customers You had was it more of your weekly customers? What was was it trend-wise? It wasn't we didn't we didn't actually look at that math So I can't say for sure I like I didn't analyze the data looking at that I can tell you that anecdotally it's it was that what the customers were buying from us was about the same but one of the other things that we noticed was that the costs were lower for the company because Solos were they solos drive less because they have fewer jobs in a day so that alone increases their efficiency and because they Got used to their cleanings and used to their houses They were able to move through it more quickly than a team would so Because they really get to know every part of the house So those two things combined meant that we could pay solos a lower We pay by percentage so we could pay them a lower percentage and they would actually make more money than people who are on team So we saw all these advantages and so you know I was thinking Maybe when I was thinking we switched to solos this is gonna like solve all our problems, you know But it wasn't that simple So, you know, but that's just a little bit of the back story So we kind of knew that and we kind of knew about the better outcomes. We knew about the cost savings I really don't think I can't think Matt of anything else that was different I think it was it was the cost savings with better outcomes. I mean to me That's kind of a no-brainer. Why wouldn't you do more of that? Well, you offer health benefits too and because they're being more productive with their time You need less employees to get the same number of of cleanings done Or more revenue generated per employee So that's another benefit that that probably you're seeing because you offer health benefits and some other Ancillary benefits, correct. Yeah, we have like short-term disability. We have an IRA So, yeah, we have we have you know company sponsored retirement plan things like that So we definitely have other other benefits So if you anyway for for reasons that I can't really give you a good answer for I could say It's probably was out of fear of the change. We never switched to all solos We kept half teams and half solos for a long time even though we were seeing these better outcomes with solos I we just couldn't bring ourselves to make the change fully And so we just never did it but COVID kind of forced our hand and I think I know the reason we didn't do it It was fear. We were afraid of like losing customers over it We were afraid that we'd have employees who wouldn't like the change and they were afraid of the disruption You've got a copy on your website talking about how we getting out of your house I don't know if you do but I know we did. Yeah, exactly Matt like oh We'll be in our house out of your house quickly because we work in teams It was just a big part of what we ourselves, you know, you don't say that anymore though, right? No, we don't At least I hope not if anybody sees it on my website. Let me know I'll make sure we do we still have some some clients that want to be with teams And we have a tag that we put on them a little a little made tag like in pink and if they want teams We know that and there's a few other ways we market But for the most part we've got all of our customers kind of bought into it as well It didn't take it didn't take as much time as I thought it would it was much easier than I thought so so fast forward to COVID times Anyway, we COVID happens. We realize, you know, okay, this is Really to follow Social distancing guidelines. We can't have more than one person in a car This is a great opportunity to go to the solo model So we did it and switching to solos that was kind of one part and you know I know that that's not really the focus of our call today But you know We did that and that was a lot easier that the simple act of switching it and getting everyone bought in was pretty easy Because we had COVID as an excuse like hey, it's social distancing and no one really cared like everyone's like I'm just glad you're coming is what our client's attitude was like. We're happy. So let's do it So But the outcomes like weren't that great. So we started Cleaning all solos and we were experiencing turnover again And we were getting customer complaints and I was I was just pulled my team to you I said what's going on here because this was supposed to solve all of our problems switching to solos was supposed to fix everything So, you know, why aren't we getting the same outcomes now that we were getting with the solo cohort of our company pre-covid? Like why are the outcomes so much worse all the sudden? so when we looked at What was going on we realized that our scheduling had gotten really inconsistent and The reason it was inconsistent was because the customers weren't necessarily coming back in the same way Like it's not like as if Mary had let's say you have an employee named Mary and she's got a two-week schedule That's full right and she works as a solo all of her customers didn't come back at the same time Our customers came back staggered and waves as they became comfortable And so we had to rebuild everybody's schedule by virtue of the fact that half of our customers Didn't come back or couldn't come back right away. So The schedule was kind of all over the place and there was very little So, you know, I talked to with my management team I actually met with I picked six of our highest performing Most ten-year people who worked for me and we just sat down and I basically laid it out in the table and said I can't afford to keep losing people like tell me what's going on and the schedule kept coming up as a theme like You know, you're you're sending us to different houses every time. We don't know any of these houses. They're all new houses to us Excuse me so we took a hard look at our schedule and Came up with this idea this protocol it did this came from talking to team members that The folks some of the folks that were on that group of six that I talked I was calling them the group of six and If you like follow international politics at all, you know, there is that the group of eight nations, you know So I started calling the group of six Because I didn't they weren't necessarily all like managers or anything It was just six people who had been with me for a long time with high performers in the positions Some of them are solo cleaners some of them were team leaders some of them were trainers, but They were all high performers and did really really well in their job So the folks who are solo cleaners before were actually the ones that opened my eyes to it and they said well, you know Joe before COVID I had the same customers for like three years. So I knew the houses I knew the customers I knew their routines and I was able to be really efficient And so what we found from all this is that We were really really worried about drive times and about optimizing the schedule based on drive times We're a hyper focused on that So we would actually move a customer to save five minutes in drive time And what we realized is that was a mistake like its familiarity is the number one most important Most important variable in scheduling so once we We came up with a new protocol. I said, let's try it and see if it works and it's been amazing It's transformed the company. I mean now we're getting the same results. We were from our solo cleaners before COVID so we have lower turnover. We have higher customer retention um An higher customer satisfaction overall and the efficiency is Is improved it's not quite as good as it was with solos before COVID I think part of the reason for that is that the solos we had pre-covid were really experienced employees and It was kind of a privilege to get to be a solo after they had been here for a long time So I think that's probably why they were overall so much more efficient But it's definitely more efficient than it was when we were a combination of teams and solos So fishing are you talking about the context of job time divided by clock time? I mean both. I mean the context of Productivity so each employee is more productive meaning that they are able to Complete their job in the same job in less time when they're actually at the job But we're also more efficient because there's less driving because a solo cleaner Does maybe three jobs a day or a team might do five And so there's less driving between homes And so that increases your efficiency too because you're spending more of your day cleaning and less of your day Driving and the other thing we've done is we've made it so you depending on your On your tenure with the company you don't have to check in every day So that means that there are a lot of people who just drive straight to their first job For the of the day and punch in do their cleanings and then punch out of our last job and drive homes That saves a ton of driving time to and from the office which makes them more efficient overall What do you notice? So go ahead Tom. So a newer person Shows up at your office every day before going to their first job. Yes Okay, are they driving their car or a company car company car? Okay for how long Joe do they do that? Six months they have to come every day and if they're in good standing at the end of six months then they can graduate to Only coming in in the morning So for six months they have to come in the morning and then come back in the afternoon And then after six months they can Just come in the morning and then they can just go home after their last job And then at a year they can they go to a three day a week check-in schedule So they only have to check in say monday wednesday friday That Costs you more than what it would if they were like just leaving home going to their first job Sooner in the in the employment process, doesn't it? You mean if I The reason we haven't it does but the reason we haven't done it is it's a trust thing I guess and we wanted to start out with with it this way to really learn We've never done this this thing We only have to check in a few times a week and then once you get to Two years you only have to check in once a week and we may have modified this a little bit during covid It might be like a year and a half is once a week or something now, but yeah We have a good chunk of our staff only comes in once a week Yeah, it does cost more, but I think it's I can tell you it's a trust thing You know, I want to I we still feel like we really want to know people before we start having them only come in once a week And so having to come into the office is just an opportunity to get that face time and And get them acclimated to the company, you know to kind of get them To kind of get them into the culture of the company and make sure that they understand that they're working for us They're not working for themselves Because one problem we have had with solos who check in once a week In the past we have done it in the past a while ago And they would start to get this attitude like they work for themselves Which got to be a little difficult to manage. It's not that it's impossible But it's something to be aware of You know, they started to treat us like we were Getting in between them and their clients like we were somehow an inconvenience Let me ask you this so staff count wise I know main is really competitive for tourism and for other For other things as far as hiring goes. Is that still a pretty big limit where you're at? Is that coming back at all? It's it's the only thing that's holding us back matt My wait list for new customers is over a hundred people long now This is our priority wait list. So these are people who we've given estimates They've said yes, you know, they got their pricing. They understand everything they do They want the service and now they're waiting and so it's over a hundred. So I could hire We just figured this out a couple weeks ago We could hire seven full-time people tomorrow and just to get through the people that have already said yes Every day that we have to just basically say we can't help you. It's the biggest thing holding us back. Yeah Yeah, we're at about 21 to 22 customers per employee with with solos because our solos are Doing more houses kind of like what you're doing. So yeah, I mean, I would definitely I'd hire six people tomorrow if I could It sounds like it sounds like the labor market is still constrained there due to tourism and due to other things going on with covet so But but you're doing more with less than it sounds like so you're probably still Generating a good amount of revenue. But do you what's your your staff count prior to covet to now? Are you 50% where you were staff wise 75% or about two thirds matt? It's like we were hovering around the 35 mark before covet word. We're at 25 26 right now I will say that we've just we just this couple weeks ago figured out this little hack with indeed that So we And this is kind of neat for callers who are looking to recruit So indeed we'll let you post your job in any town Where you operate? So I don't know if indeed intended it to work this way But like basically because we're a service business, right? So we dispatch people We're located in portland main, but we dispatch people to all the surrounding towns We've now posted our job in like 11 other towns that we serve besides. Yeah So we have 12 jobs on indeed So we're this random little town called windom, which is like on the outskirts of our service area Got more than double the amount of applicants of any other town that we posted in and we've gotten Hires from there and super fine them but for some reason it's showing up better when you posted in windom I It's super funny though because tom puts his offices where the labor is So you're just advertising perhaps where the labor pool is maybe the labor pool is not in portland But it's in these places I've had conversations with tom about this about well, should you put your office close to where the clients are? Or should we or where you're going to hire people? What's harder to get clients or or or or employees and tom your opinion has always been it's put it where the employees are Find the employees and then you'll find the customers. So maybe that's where That's where it starts and when we're looking for for a location for a new office one of the things that I look for first is where the temporary labor office is located because they're pretty good at figuring it out and If you can put your office somewhere pretty close to where the temp labor offices are You're going to have a better job recruiting labor Yeah, I'm big on close to transportation hubs too being close to Um, so there's actually with where my office is there's a temp labor office and a metro link a train station and like so That those are both draws It used to draw a lot when we used to have more cars and drivers But with solos, that's not as big of a draw the public transportation obviously I had really good luck too in really small towns because they just don't have the jobs there and so It's more It's more this little town windom There isn't anything there really and I just wonder if it's because there's no other jobs posted there like so You're the only job there Right. So but the thing is these people that we got from that little town They don't actually live in that little town. They live in other towns that we recruit from But for some reason they saw our windom ad and they didn't see our portland ad You know or any of our other our other ads. So You know, I suspect it's something more along the lines of what liz is saying It's just about the picture you're posting in that now. No, nobody's posting in windom. Why would you post there? Everybody knows that Yeah, it was a hack everyone that's listening go to your indeed ad hit at it Duplicate it and then change the location to a town windom To win put it in windom We'll all be we'll all be competing with joe for labor Um, I don't know if they'll commute to st. Louis from Maine. That's a bit of a drive I I I one day it from rochester new york one time when I was when I was RVing but from main to to st Louis in a day That's a drive Where's the drive? I accept the challenge though. I would try it because I just love I love long distance Like just to give it the grind man. Did you get a record during kovat a cannonball run? Did you go for record? Yeah, I'll do a cannonball run. I love it We have a question from linda here, but I also am curious Who is our facebook user that is now switching to solos? You say you're really happy and just curious. Who are you? We don't see your name here It tells who you are and joe. Can you see linda's question? I can for a solo to stay in a home for the same one a time as a team of two I worry if a house took two hours then the single also takes two So a solo cleaner in my experience is going to take not quite twice as long So if you had a If a house took two hours for a team of two I would expect a solo for it to take three and a half hours maybe three hours and 45 minutes It of course depends on the person and when they first start They're going to be slower But as they get used to the rhythm of the house and how the people use it they'll speed up That's been our experience Yeah And it does take longer. So it's an adjustment for your customers as well Yes Did you know so So with the transition, I mean I guess doing it during coveted was was you know a good opportunity less opportunity for pushback from a customer standpoint because of you know obvious reasons Do you have and I mean did you get any pushback at all and did you get any pushback from your employees? A little bit from Yeah, we had like two employees who were really hesitant um And You know, you just we just pushed through it. We just you got it We took a little bit of extra time with those people to explain The reasoning and why it was happening and ultimately they understood But you know, I think ultimately we ended up losing We ended up losing two employees Um out of it, but they're not people that I was particularly worried about losing So, you know, it wasn't really a big loss in terms of that all of the like All right, so I have a method if I'm if I'm ever going to make a really big change in the company I always get together a group of high performing employees first and get them on board with it and Share with them what the thought is and what we're thinking we're going to do And give them the opportunity to provide feedback. So that was kind of the group of six You know, we kind of talked to those folks and we really were touching base with them right from the beginning When you have your high performers bought in, you know, makes a lot easier to once they see once everybody else sees those people doing it Then it's just they'll just kind of you know, it's much easier There tends to be fewer questions and less friction I wrote a couple notes while you were talking joe Um, and and one of them is obviously the group of six and the clean professional input That's that is really important when you're making any kind of a big But also in in this situation because it's so huge for the whole company But another thing that I don't think a lot of people think of when they're talking thinking of scheduling Dispatching is how important the culture is of the company and your culture is very very very employee friendly Like if I didn't know you were in portland, man I would think you were living over here on the west coast, right? Employee friendly thing because that's always been a big like a key thing for you And I think a lot of people jump too fast into You know, you're coming into the office every single day and now You're coming in once a week and we really don't want to see you We don't want to talk to you. We switch you over to slack. You're not in meetings anymore So it's like fire frying pan into the fire But I like what what you've done is you've sort of transitioned and on top of that you have a culture of Reward so you earn the thing that you're getting and then you Earn you earn the privilege of not checking in every day basically that's sort of how we've set it up and like yeah, I It is really important Liz and I What I'm gonna tell you what actually happens People we tell them you could only you know, you only need to check in once a day. They come anyway So it's like why are you here? Well, because I just like felt like stopping in, you know, that's sort of What happens anyway, but I think that's good, you know, I'm not gonna I mean, I think that's like a healthy It's a healthy culture So if they come in of their own choosing are they technically on the clock when they get at the office or They are but it hasn't been a problem. So I just kind of let it go I was a little worried about that at first but Because honestly for us to meet our efficiency numbers we need to they need to not be coming in as often But in my mind you have to balance that with the feeling that people can get which is oh, you don't want to see me And you know, you don't want that either So well, it's not that I don't want to see you. I just don't want to pay to see Thank you. No, I I understand but so the only reason it's an issue tom is if they are going into overtime And then it becomes an issue Right, then we'd have to have a conversation so far. It hasn't been an issue So we check over time really closely and so long as people folks aren't going into overtime I don't get that worried about it. Um, it it affects their Their effective hourly rate because you know, they're putting in more hours. So now their pay per hour is going to go down um But so long as i'm not supplementing their wage to meet minimum wage and uh, I am not They're not going into overtime. I don't have a problem with it and so far it hasn't been an issue Talk a little bit more joe about A data. So I know you are a big data head. Uh, same as tom always looking for Getting the data and then how to use it and it sounds like I mean, I love that you collected all this data for a year Before you actually made the change. It sounds like you might not even have made it if kovat hadn't hit But are there other ways that you use data with scheduling and dispatching anything else that you can share with us? well I think in terms of actual scheduling and dispatching I'm not aware of other data points I can follow So one thing I'd love to be able to follow is how consistent the schedule is So, you know at the moment, there's no way to really track that I've been nudging tom about that and you know the main attention team about that but you know In terms of scheduling and dispatching we don't The only way I know if people are Following the scheduling protocol that we have put forth is to spot check the schedule. So that's the only way I'll know that um You can also tell I can also tell by um I just you have to leadership by walking around, you know I have to kind of just ask some of the frontline employees like how's your schedule been, you know Like are you is are things consistent for you? You know all that kind of stuff and so long as all that's That is checking out. Um, I know we're doing okay, but there aren't That I can think of any other specific direct scheduling data points Of course, I'm paying attention to employee turnover and customer loss Um, which is an indirect effect of scheduling the you know effectiveness so so We need to develop and we've talked about some formulas to do this to measure This familiarity metric. Are you getting the same cleaners back to the same homes on a regular basis? and That's on the that's on the roadmap. We're getting there. I mean, you know It's something that and it's not just familiarity. So we do factor geography into it When we're scheduling But we so the way that we've outlined it is our scheduling protocol is very clear familiarity is the number one priority The second thing is geography, but here is the outline. Here's the parameters for geography So, you know, we set goalposts around geography So we're not looking for the most geographic efficient geographically efficient route strictly We're looking for familiarity first And then keep the geography within these parameters So what we say is that if you are in portland or the surrounding towns, your drive time has to be under 10 minutes So as long as the drive time between jobs is under 10 minutes It's good enough. Don't go and move a job just because it's four minutes closer You know, like that just it's not worth it, right? You'll you'll you'll send the same person to the same home unless you have to send them all the way out to wind them or something In which case you may have to make a change. We're not sending them to wind them Um, and then, you know, uh, if you're outside of the surrounding town So you're you're in wind them, for example, then you can have drive times up to 15 minutes Um, so you just need to keep it under 15 minutes and that's good enough, you know, because because The people who are in the schedule would be like distracted by shiny objects, you know, it's like Oh, there's this other job over here because made central as this awesome like, um, schedule and efficiency map And the customer that it's the customer efficiency map that i'm thinking of and you pull up the customer efficiency map and it's like Wow, we have this other customer that's two minutes away from this customer Why don't we just move them and do them on the same day? And it's like no leave them alone those people have been cleaning those jobs for Two years, like we're not moving them like just leave them where they are because everybody else is, you know As long as the schedule meets the geographic goalposts, that's that's all you need to do And then and then the the third thing believe it or not and these are in order I'm very explicit about that with my management team. The third priority is customer preference. Yes, it's third on the list and the reason is that It's it's relatively easy to sell a customer on why they should be on a particular day a And b so we used to ask them what day do you want to be like what time of day? Do you prefer right? We don't do that anymore? We say, okay You're in Falmouth. These are the days we have available in Falmouth, you know We have a Tuesday and a Thursday spot available in Falmouth So we present it like that to them upfront and the way that I I had this was a shift in thinking from my staff By the way, my management team wasn't used to thinking this way We're used to really really moving mountains for scheduling for the customers But the way I said it to them was this I said, you know If you have a hairdresser that you really like That you need to get in with the hairdresser doesn't ask you what day is good for you Like you call a hairdresser and they put you on their schedule when they can fit you in You know, I mean it has to be a time that can work for both of you but So think of it as like We are scheduling our customers in a time that works within our system and the customers Have to accept that that's just kind of how we work and if that was a mind shift I'm glad you're saying this joe because I'm actually having thinking to myself I'm going to have to make a big mind shift for my staff because we have always done What your order is one two three ours has always been two one three ours has always been geography first then familiarity and then customer preference But now I completely see I It sounds so obvious While you're talking that it should be that way. I'm like, oh my goodness. What the heck why Why didn't I ever figure this out myself? So I'm 100 percent. I'm going to be on them switching that order But it I can see it's going to be a little bit of a heavy lift Because it's always been very first thing is we have Tuesday and Thursday You know, which one would you prefer? And then after that we're going to get you on the same team all the time And that's why we could only do you on Tuesday and Thursday And we don't really care too much about what the customer wants because we know They don't really know what they want once we give it to them then they're going to be like, oh Okay, this is what I want. This is great. Yeah Yes, but I'm really going to have to make a shift. So I really appreciate you telling me that Yeah, it's been yeah It's been a game changer for us. So it's been really now. There's a couple of other really important caveats I should I should talk about while I'm talking about how we schedule And so One other thing that we do is so yet it's really important to communicate When you're assigning a cleaning to someone that it's not their permanent assignment So in made central we created a tag called the not permanent assignment or not a permanent assignment and so when our field supervisors are reassigning the reassigning a cleaning they Click that tag So the team member knows this isn't my permanent job because one of the major complaints that we would get from folks is Like imagine you're a you're a cleaning team member and you're looking at your schedule for the day and you're like Oh, I'm going from you know Soco to wind them that's driving all the way across the service area. It's 40 minutes or so, right? Why are they why am I doing that? And then you know that story starts about all the office like they don't know what they're doing What are they doing? You know so Now when they look at their schedule if they're driving from soco to wind them they'll go Oh, I'm driving soco to wind them. There's a tag not a permanent assignment Oh, okay. So this must be reassigned and then there's a note in the note section of that job and made central that says You know so-and-so called out today had to assign this to you. Sorry for the long drive you know like Just that little extra step. It's like quieted down all of the complaining about scheduling and You know, so that was another critical thing too That's disciplined about Yeah, you have to be disciplined about communicating So the only way I have to know if my field supervisors are doing that is to just spot check the schedule So once a week, I'll go in and look at the notes and see who's been moved and make sure that the Tag is checked and that the notes are in there. The other way to do it is in made central There's a function called the dispatch board and you can go into the dispatch board and I can just Have it pull up all of the cleanings this week that have the tag Not a permanent assignment and I can just check and make sure that there's comments in there That's really handy I'm thinking though if you ever sign a home to a team that's not the default team Would you want to automatically create that job flag? Yes, that'd be great Just so they know this isn't permanent like I moved it off their permanent team. I love it. I already have it named for us We're gonna call it a temp job And and you need another tag if you send anybody to wind them for whatever reason, I guess just Kind of smooth it over Is there anybody from man on the call? I don't I feel bad picking on wind them free ports also really far away So we could talk well Yeah, we're gonna get a nasty tweet from somebody who lives in wind them I know tyler is up there too, and I don't know if he's on the call But he I know he was planning on being on So we'll see if he hears anything. Well, I know tyler is there Yeah, did you he loves you gel? He's like I loved him He's Feeling the love in main I love it um I'm just gonna look real quick and see if there's any other notes about how we schedule that I would want to share While you're looking for that, uh robin has a question He wants to know have you always been an employee friendly company or did covet prompt you to make that change? We've always been employee focused It's been from the beginning. I in fact, I was I'd say too employee focused Um For a long time, you know, so it's it's always been something that has been important to me And I would say that uh robin to your question He has always been more employee focused than employee friendly Little little distinction there. Um, he put the focus there, but for the betterment of the company Uh, where sometimes employee friendly is just about You know being a happy place and those those companies tend to not have as much of a business focus So I'm curious about facebook user. Who are you? Is that sarah? Maybe I know sometimes Sarah is or we shall maybe curious Yeah, if you're in a facebook group, there's a little message that pops up It tells you you have to do something special in order to get your name in there And it's been a while. I can't remember exactly what it says Anywho You know it is interesting though because we always drive on the you know We reduce the drive time efficiency is all about that number because it's very easy to hang a dollar amount on it and You know the whole familiarity and you know customer satisfaction and cleaning professional satisfaction You know, you know measuring that's not as easy and that's kind of a squishy thing But but you've done that and you mean when you're putting it in the context of lifetime value of those two important assets It's worth spending a few more You know Dollars on looking out of a windshield. You're still going to be more profitable If if you can take care of your your other stakeholders Yeah, that's a great point time because we've talked about it But the lifetime value of an employee is not something We've always spent a lot of time calculating But we have employees that generate 80 to 100 thousand dollars per year. That's right if they last 10 years of your company It's beyond that million dollars of revenue that they generate because the culture that they bring that longevity That that stability beyond the the financial numbers There there has to be some metric we should all be be really thinking about putting in place For the lifetime value across from all the different You know the financial pieces the stability, but that's uh, there's something to be said for having You know, when you look up on the board of my office You know over half the employees are two years plus and you know Two-thirds of the employees are all you know a year plus But um, I bet it's not I bet it's even higher with you guys. I know it's certainly high with liz But I know it's probably very high with you. Do you do you have like most of your employees? You know other than the bottom third we all struggle with that But is it uh year plus two years plus five years plus? Do you have a number? Or were you asking me? Yeah. Yeah, joe. Do you have a lot of long-term employees right now? I do. Yeah. I mean, I don't have an exact number as terms of our average tenure off the top of my head I know our employee turnover rate is Below 80% annually, but I can't the way that that looks though is you've got a cohort That's like six months or less where all the turnover happens once they get to six months to a year They tend to stay so my longest-term employee right now Is probably 10 years and there's a big chunk of people that are in the Like three to six year range Um, and then I have a whole other chunk of people that are in the kind of two to three year range Um, but the folks but the folks that came back after covet. They haven't left no one's left since they came back from covet voluntarily anyway, I've had a lot of cool people go but um You know once we got through that initial like post covet period We've had great success and people are staying and I we we've kind of cracked that code with Again, it's about those better outcomes. We were getting with solos before the pandemic We figured out that it's about stability, right? So the other thing that came along with this I should tell you is um getting your unplanned absence rate under control I think I've talked about that before on smart business moves, but that's another metric we track very closely It's one of our top kpis that we look at um So we had done a lot of work pre pandemic on the unplanned absence rate And one of the things that caused me to lose sleep when the pandemic first happened is I knew that it was going to spike for a while because we'd have to be more permissive with um, you know absences because of covet I knew we were going to have a higher unplanned absence rate and we did But we've gotten it back under control. So pre covet With when we were hybrid part solos part teams Whenever someone called out, it was almost never someone in a solo role The solo roles almost never called out. They didn't leave neither did their customers, right? So it's just so stable. They just kind of ran themselves The callouts would be on the team. So when someone called out, we'd reassign those cleanings to other teams So the solos were very insulated from the chaos of the rest of the company But it didn't occur to us that the reason they were staying is because they were insulated from that chaos Like we thought there was something magical about being a solo. We didn't really understand like the specifics of why they were staying, you know um So yeah, but our unplanned absence rate is down to below 4 a week we have weeks now Where uh, we had we've had two weeks in the past six We've had no callouts at all like no one's called out and most of the time It's one a week maybe two and that's like 20 25 feel the staff and and You know the math that you use for that is is not very forgiving I mean if somebody doesn't give two weeks notice that's like 10 days Of of unplanned absences all of them pop, right? That's right because my management team also knows that one of my goals is if somebody's going to leave We want to know about it. We do not want quits without notice. So we're we're i'm very Uh clear on my, you know, my field supervisors need to be really in touch with their team So that they know I think so-and-so's kind of got one foot out the door Then we can intervene because maybe we don't mind that they're leaving But maybe we want to save them, you know, and so yeah, it is and I I know that's not a traditional way to measure At tom and I've had a couple of consultants tell me like why do you measure it that way? You're like not giving yourself enough credit. Well, I just think To me if someone's quitting without notice it is some kind of measure of engagement Like no, but when you're yeah, but when you've got like four percent on a weekly basis with you know A measurement process like that you're doing a lot better than even four percent by most people Yeah, we would be if if we took out the quits without notice it would be Even lower. I think it would be under two percent. I bet so if you weren't if you weren't sending people to wind them Just think how low it would be I know right right, but it's it's really about the schedule And what's so crazy about this is I've been being told this by my staff for years I just didn't hear it Good enough like I just wasn't processing what they were telling me in my mind It was impossible to keep the schedule consistent So they would complain about that and I would just say well, it just kind of is the way it is You know, I love you guys. Please don't quit, but the schedule is not changing. You know, that was always my Okay, I have to make two points because I know I have to leave here in just a minute um, the first is Joe don't for everybody that's on this call Don't underestimate though how important the culture is Because one of the problems that a lot of companies do have when they switch over to solos That hasn't been talked about a lot right now because everybody's kind of desperate but This idea that your custom your employees will steal your customers or that they'll get so connected That and you made the point earlier that if you don't bring them into the office enough Sometimes the employees see you is getting between them and their customers So that is a real concern you hit on it really quickly I just wanted to bring it up again Because the culture is a really really important piece there to keep that from happening one point The second point is the reason why I love this whole thing and I just I'm all excited and fired up Is because tom how often have you mentioned over the last six months? Longer I mean years, but hardcore on smart business moves. How important it is to try and squeeze All of the value we can Out of our people that that is That that's what we have to do in a nice way Right, but is the nice way this is giving them what they want and still being able to get more from them Right. I mean Maximize you return on human capital. I think I've mentioned that like 137 times That's But see the thing is if they're not calling out and they're actually showing up when they're scheduled to work It makes everybody's life easier Not just theirs, but they're they're co-workers and management everybody's life in the company's easier You're getting a lot more out of that employee. So now with a low unplanned absence rate We can now keep the schedule consistent. It's not just that we went to solos We thought that switching to solos would make it easier to make the schedule consistent No, if people are still calling out, it's just as difficult to juggle the schedule around So when they're not calling out, then you can keep things a lot more consistent It's a positive feedback loop. Then people are happier in their jobs Then you get better outcomes. Your customers are happy. You don't lose customers The way you save money on that from business perspective is we can now run a much bigger company Revenue wise with much with far fewer administrative People so we have a much more we have a much smaller management team and as the owner I only have two direct reports now I have a field operations manager and a business manager and that's it and like my life is infinitely simpler But it's because we've stabilized and I think that's like for me. That's the big takeaway Is this scheduling thing is all part of an effort to stabilize the operations of the company on a day to day basis I do yep that word stabilized to stability We've always used consistency and that's always what we tell everybody is that the number one thing More than quality more than anything is consistency. I like this idea There's a there's a subtle difference between stability and consistency that and I'm kind of Loving right now Yeah And it's interesting because if you think about it from like a large business perspective like publicly traded companies, you know It's all about predictable outcomes and being able to predict from one quarter to a next Everything that's going to be happening and that's what makes your stock go up And you know that is is really what you're doing in a inside of a small business. You're getting predictable outcomes. You're making the the nonconforming issues go away And I just I want to answer uh denitz Question, which is are all your people full-time? They are everyone's full-time. We don't do part-time The only part-time we'll do is if a long-time employee Wants to switch to part-time because maybe they're going back to school or they have a family issue We will allow that but we don't hire part-time people so And I and actually I want to circle back something Matt alluded to earlier. We are doing about Now we're doing about three quarters of the revenue we were doing pre-covid But we're we're netting the same amount of money. So our net profit is the same. That's what I wanted to hear That's yeah So we're our our net profit our margin is higher So the percentage that we're pulling down to the bottom line is higher the actual dollar amount is the same Isn't that amazing? Yeah, I mean we all focus on this crazy metric of grow grow grow and that's important to a certain point Because growth is growth is going to solve some problems But it oftentimes leaves us with like like profit margins that are a little bit neglected and it sounds like you you basically like went to gardening and tending to that this last year too I mean we talked a lot about other things, but uh people's profit margins excite me when they when they put some effort into that And they can turn a business that they were making a hundred thousand dollars out of and they can double that by good management That that's exciting to me because you didn't have to add any resources You didn't have to do anything else and that extra hundred thousand dollars can be used for all these exciting programs Like you offer your staff. I mean it's that's fantastic. Joe. Yep. Yeah Yeah, it's pretty exciting and like I said I It's it's focusing on things. I don't think it talked a lot about a lot in this industry You know, I don't hear people talking about unplanned absence rate. I don't hear people talking about biliz biliz I don't hear people talking about scheduling consistency as like a top thing that we pay attention to Um unplanned absence rate is also something I don't but I think you know in my experiences are really important metrics So I hope that's helpful for oh, yeah It's great. It's huge and you know translates into getting your You know cost to get sold down your your payroll to revenue You're you're you're getting more gross profit off of every job and because you've got a stable organization It doesn't take as many people in the back room Just to kind of make it through day to day. It just runs itself almost And those people in the back room are happier and more productive and they can focus on their actual job and not putting out fires all day I'm not saying that fires don't happen. They do but you it's not like You need someone to just do that all day something else that I I thought of as we're talking is The structure of the company changed post covid as well like that and there's subtle changes It's not just to switch to solos But I also used to do it I'm curious if other people on the call how they structure Their business in terms of who does the scheduling So I used to have kind of a separate person that did scheduling and she also did some administrative functions And then I had the kind of managers that would manage the teams, right? So post covid Pre-covid I was in the process of changing that so when we reopened I was ready to make the change anyway. COVID didn't didn't precipitate this. But what we did was So we divided the company up into like kind of sections and each Each section's direct supervisor also schedules those people So that the direct supervisor has total control over their staff's schedule And that was kind of a subtle but really really important change Because there was a disc because scheduling is so important. There was a disconnect between What the employees were experiencing on a day-to-day basis and Like if they wanted to complain about that to someone they could complain to the scheduling person But the scheduling person wasn't really their supervisor. So there was this kind of disconnect and Since we've moved the scheduling function to the supervisors That's also fixed a lot of things and the supervisors are very motivated to schedule Properly because they want their staff to be happy. So that's another change that we made that kind of came along with all of this Yeah, what is it? It's kind of like the what the pottery barn? Theory you break it you own it So you're putting the schedule together and if you make a mistake, you know, you have to fix it You try harder not to break it harder, right exactly You're gonna and you're gonna be more faithful to the protocol that we all agreed to Because you know the outcomes are better for your staff, you know, so there's that direct Thing is is helpful and it's you know, it's a work in progress I mean we had to kind of shift things around again In terms of you know, now that the field supervisors are doing the scheduling There's other things they might not have time to do. So we've had to kind of shift around Things but it's settled out in a way that I think works much much better for everybody Well, we're clicking up towards the top of the hour. We've got about another minute um Any last thoughts it's uh, you'd like to share with us Joe? um Not that I could think of you've done you've done awesome under adverse conditions, you know, you're playing hurt and everything Yeah, right. Thank you. I'm I'm I'm almost out of tea. So that must mean our hour is almost up I guess if anybody on the call has any other questions, I'd you know, I'd be happy to answer Have we touched upon everything you wanted to touch upon uh, tom and matt? I'm good. I You have a lot of really important topics. Joe. It was awesome. This is this is useful stuff. This is good as always I mean, you're you're a rock star So it's good. Appreciate your help on this. It's been too long. It's been too long Okay, well, we're uh about done for the week. We will be back monday Uh, we're into a new month next week. We're into the month of august august theme is leadership. So, you know, if You enjoyed uh, scheduling and spatching for the last month. You're gonna have to wait a while because you know, it's uh, probably gonna be Um a few months down the road before we touch on this topic again But alonzo adams is going to be with this monday and you know, he always brings it as well. So we're gonna have a good time talking Uh leadership with alonzo Joe, thank you again, ma'am much appreciate it. Thanks for having me We will uh, see you guys monday five o'clock eastern. Bye. Bye. All right. Bye everybody. Good seeing you