 Good afternoon everybody Tom Stewart. Yeah, I'm a Liz Trotter. This is smart business moves Can you believe we made it through January almost Well, I mean I can believe that we made it through but It's been a tough month really in a lot of ways so How so All right, so this is the been the main thing that has been a struggle for me today on the 31st with the 31st being a Monday what I'm seeing with over 50 people Success groups and that they're all putting on their worksheet for today So how we do this is on Monday We do what we call a Monday check-in and on Monday check-in you tell us what you did last week And then you declare what you're going to do this coming week. Well Everybody put stuff on their list for what they're going to do in this coming week related to stuff from January like y'all This week today is the end of it. So what are you going to do the rest of the week? That needs to be related to your February Wigs your your goals for February Going back I like is that cheating a little bit. Is that kind of kind of mailing it in that doing the January thing? Yeah, yeah, well, but I don't think people recognize it when I said it people were like, oh, oh, yeah So I think that it's just one of those It's easy to just start working on stuff and then not really paying really close attention not being You know diligent about the dates and you have You had goals that you needed to meet by the end of January Because if you're putting them on your list of things that you're going to do this week, you didn't meet so Pretty good example now I'll be mindful and doing things with intense, you know, it's Absolutely the work that you guys are doing is Important because yeah, you get more work done days don't turn into weeks turn into months and You look up and you say well, where did my life go? You know Absolutely, what did I do? How many times have I had this conversation with somebody on Monday and they say Well, I was really busy last week Yeah, but that doesn't count Actually really busy last week and you didn't get the things done that you said you were going to get done That's kind of negative points That's not good. Like everybody can stay busy. I mean Tom, couldn't you stay busy 60 hours a week? No problem Oh, it's easy. It is easy and you can tell yourself you're working and I guess by some definitions No, you are working and a lot of times it's hard work and you are like putting in the hours and at the end of the week You're draining you work so hard That Motion and movement you don't like the same thing Yeah, but a lot of times they look like the same thing Until you look back and say, okay. Well, we burned a lot of calories But, you know, are we really in a better place? Are we really where we want to be? Say a lot of times you don't even have to look back you just look where you are today Are you further ahead? Because how many times do people look at where they are today and they're not further ahead? They're not only not further ahead from last week, but they're not further ahead from six months ago Or even a year ago, right? We see that all the time It's really easy to stay busy busy busy busy busy and not actually Have any forward momentum So, yeah, that's that's what I've been dealing with today of of the people that I quizzed on calls today and there were over or over 50 people on In Monday check-in today only two people out of all of them had stuff in their Monday check-in today Stuff that they were gonna do they came off of their February Leads and wigs How crazy is that? Two these are smart business owners What are these business owners? Well, actually, there's a few that are multimillion-dollar business owners. None of them had stuff There you go You know what they would love to have something to blame it on I'm gonna send it to them They are y'all look it would give you an excuse But it was none of the multimillion-dollar companies that are Are the ones that were doing it correctly? Well, there were only two first off and they were both in the mid-range That both companies were in like six hundred seven eight hundred thousand dollars range. Isn't that crazy? That's where they are at the moment But if you keep doing what you're describing Oh, no, no, they're wrong. Absolutely. Yeah Yeah, didn't eat good job showing your face in here. She's one of the people that was like Calling her out there You know We wanted to we're gonna take everything that we've talked about this month and tie tie it up in the context of Being profitable and there were certain KPIs that Certainly certainly have a big impact on being able to create the most value out of the timing treasure you put into your business, but What you're describing here arguably is just if not more important because it's really easy to kind of get sucked into the activity and lose sight of the result and You know, I've got my numbers. I got my reports and you know, I spent the last three days building the spreadsheet These videos creating all this. Yeah, absolutely and it's it's You know, it makes you feel good or can you make you feel like look at this and We all love paint on our own masterpiece, too. You know, that's another thing, you know, I shared with you conclusion that if we just built a black box that spit money out be a lot of people wouldn't want that they want to build their own Like yeah, that's cool and everything but you know, it'd be better if it's been out hundreds instead of That's not the way that we do We won't Yeah, but if it could like rain down on me A lot $100 bills instead of once I wanted to work the way I want it to work. Yeah I love that So one of the things that we actually talk about in this Monday check-in that is It's such a little subtle distinction But it really really matters is if you didn't get things done like the things that you said you were gonna get done last week Why didn't you get them done? Not and don't just I mean people always just want to have like a quick answer I was busy or you know, they have Always have like this quick excuse But when we think in terms of not excused Not the excuse for why you didn't get it done But what's the reason let's dig and let's find out what the reason is that you didn't get it done so that we can create we can create systems to overcome Your typical bottlenecks the things that oh, wow We're having some technical difficulties here But you know those distinctions there is a difference between a reason and an excuse right and We it's funny that we a lot of times Default to the excuse cuz quick it's easy and most of the time People will let you off the hook with an excuse. They'll let you it's so weird They'll let you off the hook with an excuse more than they will for a reason because of the We're getting feedback Are you I was on my end. You weren't getting it. No, so I'm good over here. All right good What's the difference between a reason and excuse? Well, it depends on who you talk to um my definition the definition that I use is The reason a reason is something that you're accepting responsibility for like I I'm Responsible for this thing in this way. It didn't get done because of me an excuse is something outside yourself so it didn't get done because so the example that I like to use that I think is helpful is Let it go you'll feel better. I'm still dealing with this COVID cough All right, that was like November November Thanksgiving. Yeah Yeah, hasn't gone away yet so the one I like to use is You show up late somewhere a reason is Hey, I'm sorry. I'm late. I Misjudged the amount of time that it would take to get here. I screwed up. I'm the one and An excuse is ah, I'm sorry. I'm late. There was an accident There was an accident on the road or You know, there's a lot more traffic. It's Christmas and the traffic was bad or Wow You know, I thought it the rush hour started way early tonight I I normally I can travel at this time with no problem, but boy traffic was bad. So I'm not saying that's a hundred percent, right? I Get it though. You know a reason you're owning it You're basically saying it was a bit of my control and I just didn't behave in the Best way If it's an excuse, it's some external fault wasn't my fault Yeah, and Tom, you and I have talked about this a lot. We always want it to be a reason we want it to be our Responsibility our mistake our fault. That's a good thing because that's where the power is Which is back to keep rise again We're fine with bad numbers Bad numbers that are backed by data We have a lot of power there good numbers without So Okay, thanks, thanks Heather for the honey tip, you know, I'll check that out My eyes are watering trying to hold in these gauze My ears So back to the and that ties right back in to the KPIs and You know Good Solid solid data is so much better than good Good thoughts, you know good good information that is not not accurate or Even more important that your subconscious doesn't believe to be accurate. That is critical We don't talk a lot about that But we sort of skirt around it a lot When we're talking about things like so I'm setting a goal if I set a goal and I'm just like hey I'm gonna be a five million dollar company next year Your subconscious knows what you've been doing like like that's not That's awesome that you want to be a five million dollar company, but guess what that's never happening I'm not even trying But if you have some data and say hey, this is what we've been doing This is where we've been and I want to go here because of this and this reasoning Then your whole mind can help you work towards your goal Don't know why I'm rambling about this This all this all plays because it this you can tie this back into KPIs as well There was a speaker that we heard Tucson we were an event. It was an Archie event. His name is Jeff. He writes a lot for magazine Really silly CRI a little evil. Why is that now? Give me a second. He's really if you if nothing else follow this guy on LinkedIn now because he's a bullet. He writes a ton for eight magazine. He's got good stuff and He writes about the psychological effects of telling people your goals like you tell somebody Hey, I'm gonna be running the Boston Marathon next year and Your friends are congratulating you saying that really awesome The adrenaline starts flowing and you basically start celebrating and having that euphoric feeling that you've actually Done something Jeff Hayden Yeah, that's right. It was Jeff Hayden And The whole point is sometimes you when you just tell somebody something and you talk about it your mind Starts thinking that you actually did it and you don't bother to get out of bed in the morning and you know run And you know watch your diet and do all the things that you need to do to get ready for the marathon You don't have to because you're enjoying the feeling that you've done all of that just by telling people and Simulating it in your head In KPIs are kind of like that too. It's good, you know, make us back to you know I got the numbers together. I don't built spreadsheets. I can tell you, you know what my payroll to revenue is what my ploy turnover rate is and I can You're not really Using KPIs to do anything. This is like, you know, I use the term air guitar it It's fun and somewhere in your head you think that you're actually doing it, but You are You're not actually making anything happen. You're not you're not using those numbers as a tool. You're just looking at them Flat like a photograph. All right, you're not recognizing that this is something to help you Move forward. All right, so we've talked about this today and In one of our I don't remember which circle we were in but I love this little idea that Whenever you are looking at When anytime you find yourself Looking at something some some type of data some type of information You're trying to figure out what happened and what went wrong and dissect it You know, you do all of the things that that's only half of what you need to be doing There's there's two two pieces. One is look back find out what went wrong find out why find Get all that dissect and do all the stuff that you want But don't forget that the second half is about the future What's the future gonna look like now? What's the plan? How are you doing things differently? How does that information that you just got? Impact where you're going and if it doesn't then you just wasted your time There was literally no reason for you to do that What do we got here? Oh the motivation And this is this is a decent little block. It's an easy read to Um You know, like I said, he's one of my one of my more favorite Bloggers there. He's all over ink magazine but This is a good book if you're having a hard time taking What you know and what you intend to do if you play a lot of Eric guitar And you feel like it there's a lot of motion, but maybe not as much movement as we should be There's there's some good stuff here Yeah Something else that might be helpful Kind of along this vein You've heard the term what gets measure gets done. Yep, and that can be true if You use what you're measuring to do stuff You know that always it's not always true. It's very easy to measure your KPIs and not get anything done with it This is I guess a list that was put together by a guy at Craig Kramer's the CEO toolkit you're you're familiar with that That was Craig The original one Craig passed away several years ago, and I guess somebody else bought that book and read We'll share we'll share that as well because I love the CEO toolkit if you're into Really quick ways to drive results in your business But what Craig would say is okay. You got your KPIs you got your numbers But how are you going to use them to get the business out crunch you're looking for and one of the first things if he Would suggest is you need to set overall goals with your key people Because you know the presumption is I mean if you're a sole proprietor or you know If you're the owner you've got a few cleaning technicians I guess you've already done that you might just be your key person, but assuming that you've got a Support team and people make important decisions You can argue depending upon you know the nature of the metric that that everybody in the organization you know every cleaning professional should should know as well, but When you figure out, you know what where your numbers are you set some goals and say okay These are the metrics that we want to drive in a positive direction and you share it with your key people You communicate the goal gold repetitively and build trust Track the actual against the goal and give feedback frequently One thing that I don't see in here that I think Well, you might not be done. Do you have another little bull? Oh, there's there's several All right Well one more bullet that I think is up a little bit higher should be up higher. This is something we talked about with Joe Walsh This in this past month and you and I have talked about this quite a bit is when we're talking about Setting an overall goal with your key people people It doesn't the key word there is with right not not tell your people what the goals are and that is a Again back to distinction right that is a distinction that really matters Setting it a goal with your key people is different than giving the goal to your people You you all get different outcomes am I doing that one is engaging one is not so that piece I really like to hammer on just a little bit And you know what? in a lot of cases I don't want to say it doesn't matter all what the goal is because probably a lot of Goals are going to be putting you in a much better position than where you are now and Picking a goal that everybody can agree on and executing it is often much better than Just saying no it has to be this goal and you're the only person that that sees any value and then it never happens Oh, I agree 100% I agree Yeah, and and I agree to that if you're the kind of person that is stopped We see this a lot where people are like, I don't know what my goal should be. I just don't know. I have no idea We we help people start with start with a revenue goal start there If you don't know and if you don't know how much we'll just give you a number and let's just start there And let's see what we get let's start measuring some stuff and figure out what what makes sense You'll be able to figure it out quickly once you start for some people the starting is hard Right, and I don't know if that's directly related to what you were talking about Tom as far as the setting the goal thing and maybe getting a little bit of that that That little What's the bump? Dramaland. Yeah, oxytocin. I'm singing that oxytocin. Yeah Whenever it is the chemical I rub your body to make you feel better. Yeah, we want more of that right so For some people they fear fear stops them They just they talk about it talk about it talk about it talk about it And it doesn't make them feel good to talk about it. It makes them feel fearful They want to get the right goal do it the right way So there's lots of lots of things that get our sticky for people That make it hard for people though to meet goals, but there are or even to set goals But there definitely are some best practices and one is Have setting a goal a goal Yeah, you know, what's the saying? I'm gonna I'm not gonna get this exactly right, but you know Good a good idea Done is better than the perfect idea Never realized. Yeah There's a dozen different ways to say that but just anything There's a broad set of Options and the consideration side if you just pick one and do it and you're gonna be better off than Spitting the next one month ringing your hands over, you know, what what is our goal gonna be and it's Focus you can get once you set it and start working it now. It becomes clear Now it really becomes clear what oh, okay. Now I see it Actually, you know Assuming that the goal isn't contingent upon doing something that falls into the area that I call a Non-reversible decision most decisions that we really wrestle over a reversal. It's trying if it doesn't work We won't do that anymore and we'll do something else if the decision is we're gonna go out and buy a new office location or buy a competitor or you know spend a lot of money on something or Completely change our business model in a way that if it doesn't work, it's gonna be very and you know Difficult to I do or if it doesn't work, we're not gonna have enough money to make payroll on Friday Then you really want to wrestle with those a little bit. You don't want to be just, you know, we'll try you know That's different, but that's rare That's not what you know, most of the decisions that we wrestle with our reversal of decisions there Let's not wring our hand over You know over that much just try and if we like the results we'll keep doing it if we don't we'll stop and do something different But we're taking action No Success is about action KPIs is really about action. I guess that's the part that that that you know, at least in part what we Want to drive home. It's not about you know being on Made service jeopardy and being able to answer, you know, the questions, you know, what is you know, what is productivity? It's about using those numbers to take action before I flip off of this screen Building trust. Let's talk about that just for a minute. Let's how how can we use the communication and Using setting goals repetitively. How does all that fit into context of building trust? Well, there's a lot of different ways that it can help to build trust trust is built by You know, there's tons of different ways to build trust and also to lose trust and to damage trust but when people say things and then They their words are backed up by their actions that builds trust So it doesn't like if I say I Want to do this thing, but then I don't ever do it Don't even take action toward it. I just keep talking about how I want to do it. I want to do it I'll use an example of I want to lose 20 pounds, right? I want to lose 20 pounds. I won't lose 20 pounds I'm gonna lose 20 pounds. I'm I'm absolutely I'm going on a diet. I'm gonna start working out I'm gonna lose 20 pounds and I still weigh 155 pounds Nobody Nobody even hears me anymore and I don't hear me anymore All right, nobody trusts me about this thing around losing weight and I don't even trust me I'm just saying it because Yeah, this it would be awesome if somebody would come and cut 20 pounds off me But if that doesn't happen, guess what? I'm not losing 20 pounds. This is who I am so when it comes to building trust A big chunk of that is talking about it, but also again taking the action So when I think about it, I like to think of it Like the thing whatever it is the goal is like a hammer Right, and so we've got the hammer and it's sitting on sitting on my desk It's like, oh my gosh, we're totally gonna build that Building over there. Look, I've got a hammer I've got my kpi's. I can totally meet my goal Until you freaking pick up the hammer Nothing's happening You can look at the hammer. You can be so excited about all the tools. Look at the fancy toolbox. I got it all I'm everything and I'm I'm gonna hammer on Pun intended. I'm gonna hammer on made central about this for a second tom So made central has a ton of reports and has awesome data. It does have a ton of stuff But it's not enough. That's just not enough that you have it I could have like I said hammer sitting on my desk Things aren't being built until I pick up the hammer and I figure out how to work it same thing with The kpi's are kpi's are necessary. You're not you know, you're not Managing your business. You're not going to be getting results. You're not going to get the outcomes you're looking for Without the data I have to argue one point Real quick, don't lose your don't lose your point. I won't lose it. I won't let you lose it But I have to make this argument Because a lot of people that are here hear you say that hear me say that hear anybody say that They think this Oh, that's not true. You know, I've got 22% profit and I've never looked at a kpi. I just had that conversation with someone So as long as you say this you also got a hit up on the lucky thing I mean it can happen, you know I my Financial planning strategy might be buying lottery tickets and It works for a very small percentage of the people for a while Most of the people who hit the lottery wind up losing it before, you know, but You don't want to be you want to be successful because you're lucky You want to be successful because you're making it happen and the only way that you can do that You call it from a deterministic standpoint from a way that you know, you're going to be getting the outcomes That you want to get that is through having the data that is through the kpi's it's Like property trading companies they tell the world, you know, this is what we're going to do next quarter This is what we're going to do next year and every once in a while they miss but more times than not they they actually Generate the revenue that they say they're going to generate make the profit that they say they're going to make or they do more Because they use the data to drive it in that direction. They call it predictable outcomes You're not leaving it to chance when you are able to run your business in a way where you're getting predictable outcomes There's a whole lot involved in that but that's really that's really what you're talking about and Just because you have the numbers doesn't guarantee that you're going to get predictable outcomes But it is safe to say that You're not going to be able to consistently get predictable outcomes without the numbers It can work for a while and then some unprecedented event happens a pandemic and inflation goes up and salaries go up and things kind of get upside down You have to change what you're doing in order to uh in order to continue to get the outcomes without the numbers You're you're really flying blind and there's one more piece of this too that we hit on earlier is even if you are Hitting the numbers even if you are making money even if things are going well, you don't feel good Because you know what you don't feel good with just a black box that's spitting out money You want to have a you want to feel like you're in control of it that you are part of Why the reason why you're making money is because of you not because you know these external forces again And we're going back to that responsibility thing In the fear in the fear of you don't know what's inside of the black box, you know just because it Spitting out money now how much more money is in it? Is there you know, will it be spitting out money tomorrow? Yeah, and how do we know so you're always nervous always on edge don't ever have a feeling of Confidence that you're the one that's driving it that you can make it happen that you can have more money in a year two years three years I love that you said how much money is actually in the box. I never thought about I'm like, but Tom, it's a magic box It's gonna spit out money forever all you just Never never know when that last dollar maybe comes out Yeah, I make these things. Have you ever seen those boxes that I make Tom with the money in them? You make box boxes that spit out money? I will actually I should So I make them as gifts and a lot of times and I take like tissue boxes just like a regular square tissue box And I cover it and I make it all pretty and then I put I take dollar bills or fives tens 20s whatever bunch of dollars and a 20 and maybe a candy bar and I I tape them all together I tape a dollar and then a candy bar and then a five and then a you know Maybe who knows take this whole stuff together And you know, it's really funny because people will pull it out in the beginning. They're like really excited. They're pulling out slowly Uh, and then they start pulling it out fast and then they start going slow again They're like, oh, what am I gonna get to the end? But they know the end is coming. I don't want to stop and they don't want to stop Yeah, and it's kind of like that. You don't you know, the end is coming but When and uh, it's scary, right? It feels nerve wracking So I never actually thought of your black box like that, but now I will Oh that last dollar so if you don't I'm sorry. Go ahead. I was going to pull up the ball real quick Our first game was brought. Yeah, I'll grab it while you're doing this. Okay If you don't tell anyone what you've measured as you go along very little will get done So it's the whole communication Mission thing again, I guess that was part of building trust if you get your team together and say, okay This is our goal for you know the month the quarter of the year whatever and That's the last time you say anything until the end of the quarter the likelihood is You know, nothing's gonna happen. Nobody's even going to be thinking about it. It's like, well He only mentioned it once so I don't even think he was serious There's not a lot of trust that this is really what we're going all in on so You need to tell everybody you need to tell them frequently Kind of have the right measuring device or system You know, we talked to you know, this was actually used inside of foundations, but the the point is You need good data and having the right work measurement tools and you know, you mentioned made central I mean that is really like one of our superpowers is capturing all the times and all the data related every job and every technician and It gives you all the data you need to to make the smart business when it's inside of your business You measure the wrong thing then sure enough the wrong thing will get done That's kind of like Practice makes perfect and if you practice the wrong things you'll get really good at doing things the wrong way Wrong way, perfect line. Yeah, you like this one less Yes, I do You know, I love that And I don't have a problem with people measuring a lot of things just not all at the same time right focus on what you need to be focusing on on the Focus on the the areas of most concern At one time and then when you get those fixed dialed in you got them going where there's supposed to go Great add in another one release one something I don't like the idea of working on 25 kpi's all at the same time That is not a kpi at that point. That's a metric In your success groups, you have like a critical five That you really drill on it or is it six now? It's six. We've added quality Um For this year. So, you know, we we work on Revenue, you know, how much money are you bringing in revenue? How many team members we call them cleaning professionals? Do you guys hear those cats? How many cleaning professionals do you have working for you? How many clients do you have? What's your net profit? What's your quality and what's your payroll percent to revenue because your number one biggest expense is that Payroll and a lot of times so we have a really successful business owner and our in one of our groups in our one of our mastery groups this year and Was arguing with me about tracking client count. He's like, I don't I just don't even see the value in that I don't see why I need to track client count. I'm tracking revenue. That's good enough And I got to tell you today when he came into monday check-in And said, okay, Liz. I get it. You're right I do need to be tracking clients and he he listed out, you know, five different reasons why I was like Yeah Yeah, because it You know, not everything seems like it matters But those things really do matter because they are critical Those numbers if they go wonky things are not going well in your business You need to get those things fixed fast other things can be going wrong in your business that aren't going to impact you as quickly as these things so And that's why I struggled with quality Yeah, I didn't have quality in there for years and I had people asking to have it. I was like, I don't know back and forth with quality But Six seven six like one is revenue Professionals the number of clients your net profit Your quality like I said and payroll percent revenue Okay, so when you say clients you're talking about Clients with a recurring schedule Yep, and we need to track recurring in our Most of the time We need to track the number of recurring because we need to be watching that That money that's going to be coming in on a regular basis. I do know a couple of companies that Don't track recurring Because it's not the majority of their business that they're, you know, the majority 70 percent of their business is singles Yeah, just the single one-time cleaning and that's a different It's a completely different model Totally a viable model But it's a different model and they're looking at different things. So they do have to track in a different way They still have to track how many jobs they're doing They do need to track that and Anyone in your success group that Uh We don't okay We don't we had somebody that was doing that but they really changed their model around and decided that they wanted to work more on On getting recurring recurring jobs. And so they they switched that model around It's just a harder model This is kind of interesting It's it's really more about what you do with the information who you tell and how you tell it to them then Um Actually, you know the details in terms of how you're measuring it. Let's get back to If you're spending hours and hours and hours building your spreadsheet It's yours and you really you know once you build it you're satisfied that you know your kpi is then your You're missing the real opportunity Just picture that lovely hammer sitting on your desk Doing nothing People don't care What measure you use they want to know Is how are we doing? Who are we talking to that? I thought did this really well? Uh last month Sarah Sarah and iowa She I love the way she does this She has a different measure for her office and she does for her cleaning professionals in her office They measure dollars Out in the field they measure homes So the the cleaning professionals pay attention to how many homes we're cleaning because that's what they're thinking about Right a lot of cleaning to a day and they're able to think in terms of homes, but in the office They're they're talking dollars all day every day I love that she has that because it it does matter. I for exactly this reason It doesn't matter what measure you're using How how are we doing and the people in the field? Know that by houses not by dollars. Well, Liz. I've heard you say many a time that everybody needs a number There's so many times I I 100 percent believe that everyone needs a number that Matters to them that they see that they are part in And contributing to the company and how they're how how they personally Are contributing and they are important to the company and um I had a person Share analogy with me a long time ago of you know What would it be like if you were at the bowling alley and there was a sheet in front of the pins And you were rolling the ball down the lane and it would go underneath the sheet and you could hear You know things rattling around and pins, you know crashing, but you couldn't see them how I'm gratifying that would be that would not be fun, right? I mean you want to know your score and A lot of times people are liking their jobs and they hear the pins rattling around, but there's a sheet there They don't have any idea how they're doing Well, and sometimes even I think it's even um A better illustration to say that they they get to see the scoreboard They get to see where the score is. Yay. You got seven pins All right, cool. I'm glad I got seven pins, but I still don't feel in shot. I don't feel in control I don't know where I hit it. Well, how do I get more pins? I think you got your second ball You don't know where to roll it because you don't know which three pins are still standing So it's funny a lot of times I love that you brought this example up time because I think that this is a mistake that we use We tell people That you know what the what the score is, but we don't have any conversation We don't want to tell them any of the bad stuff, right? So that would be the same thing of the sheet being up there and yes You got eight pins, but I need to know if I keep creating a seven ten split That's important information for me. I need to know that But a lot of times business owners don't want to share That the bad news, right? They just want to tell you oh my gosh great job. You got eight pins down Not so great when you have a seven ten sitting there That's an important part of this not wanting to share the bad news and a lot of that is so much of that is head trash Bad news News that can be valued and appreciated If We get back to the whole trust thing if if the trust is there I agree. Yeah So, you know, if you can't get there then you spend all day building a spreadsheet or Looking, you know, you don't have enough money in the bank and try to figure out, you know How you're going to make payroll and you're looking for a better deal on window cleaner to try to save a dollar. I mean Yeah Example this is again, we we didn't talk about groups. So why are we talking so much about groups? I don't know. But there's another one. Okay. So I was in a lot of groups today And there was a lot of frustration because everybody was doing this thing. That's why we're talking about it But um, one of the things that we do in the monday check-in Is that people have to Evaluate they have to evaluate themselves. They rate their they rate a few things about themselves One they rate the condition of their KPIs You know, what condition are they in are they looking good or they're not looking good Then they have to rate their execution On a scale of one to five. They have to rate their execution from Last week the things that they said they would do toward their goals, etc And one of the hardest things That there is for meat. This is a hard Place that I have to get people over this hurdle Is they want to rate themselves really high When they were really busy But they didn't do the right things All right, and I you know, I I can't tell people how to rate themselves but It is a mark Sorry to me It's frustrating to rate yourself Right, so it can sometimes it can feel like you can't win Like I I was so busy last week. You don't understand. I was so busy I I'm giving myself a five Absolutely, you can give yourself a five But you know what your self-conscious is thinking? I don't really need to Work toward my goals as long as I'm busy. I'm doing well That's not a message message. You want to tell yourself, right? You want to tell yourself that I get the high score when I do the right things at the right time Clearly when you're setting your goals, you typically set your goals based on what's most important and A lot of times our behavior is driven by what we're most comfortable with and Sometimes they don't match We all have a strong suit, you know, we you know, we enjoy sales or we enjoy building marketing campaigns Or we enjoy And I feel the line and there's other parts of our business that we really don't feel comfortable with and really don't enjoy and You know, sometimes those are the important things that we need to be spending our time on but if we don't I guess commit to it and hold ourselves accountable. It doesn't happen We actually had somebody I love this is the first time that this has happened with this woman She rated herself She hadn't gotten the stuff done And she rated herself a two in the past She had always rated herself like a four or maybe even a five and not getting the stuff done because she was busy And so she rated herself a two and I was like, whoa, what the heck? Why are you giving yourself a two? What's going on there? And she's like, yeah I was busy but I do the right stuff. I see it and this is my favorite part I said why and she's like I finally figured out I just I don't want to do it And so I just I don't like it. I don't want to do it. I'm like, oh my gosh and breakthrough That's a breakthrough once you recognize that you can get around it Right, but lying to yourself and giving yourself that five is not helping you and we're we're moving from excuses to reasons Yes Yes Yeah, and and she did. Yes. Awesome. And and so Now what's the smart move for her now? Yeah, she gave that job to somebody else Yes Yes, why is it not on your plate for three weeks? That's You do stuff that's better that you will do You're that you're you know, if you're the if you're the CEO of the business, you know have to do Everything in the business you just have to build a team that can do the important things of the business And if you don't want to do it Fine build a team with people that want to do the things and do the things well that you don't want to do And sometimes you have to do the stuff that you don't want to do until You create the system that or you create the team that can get it done But until you recognize That you don't want to do it. You're not going to do it that you don't do it. Well, you keep making excuses for yourself You're going to be stopped. Well, it's a different mind side at that point because you know what the end game is I'm going to be doing this forever, but I'm going to do this till I can get to the point where I don't have to do it because it's important You well and find others who can do what we aren't good at. Yes, absolutely Absolutely, that is a great reminder. All right As you were saying Practice makes permanent Not necessarily perfect If you don't recognize the reward results, they will get repeated Regular recognition will make perfect That's what craig says. Yeah craig's runs some pretty impressive companies Oh my gosh, such a good question You see this question. We have the filthy bucket. I don't know Who are you that who do you who are you that owns the filthy bucket? Do you know who that is? No, I'd love to know your name How do you build the team and profits at the same time? That is a great question. We are talking about profit today, tom. We have some Suggestions ideas. I think this is more about philosophy than Then anything did it not post Tom? I thought I posted it Maybe it did Yeah, it did it's in chat And oh, I put it in chat. That's why all right. Here's the new I guess this is the new version Jeff our Jim Cranfield bought the an auction property Mine looks like this, but the the pages are all worn I listened to mine, but I love it I think I ended up buying the hard coffee too because it has a lot of actionable things You want to you want to get the hard coffee? It's got all kinds of graphs and charts and Things that you you know you want to see Oh, you can go it has a link so you can go to the website and look at it too But you use this stuff you can use it more. I found it more useful to have the hot coffee. I like both So how do you build a team of profits at the same time? That's a good question. Yeah, it is a good question The reason why this is a actually a great question Whitney is because this is where people get stuck They're like, yes, I know that but I I can't do it all I'm at this I'm at this place So what you got for us, huh? One of the things that we uh, we talk about in foundations is this concept called the value of despair and When you're a small company Like if you're a solo cleaner clean by yourself You're going to make money Because you're basically your expenses are kind of modest and you're cleaning, you know a couple homes a day maybe So at the end of the week you've got money in your hands in your bank account that you didn't have before And you can go ahead and you can hire maybe a relative or a friend or something to work with you and pay them some wage and Arguably you're making more money But at some point it's like, you know, I'm going to build this into a larger business I'm going to build an organization where I'm working on my business rather than in my business And then you start incurring expenses and you know next thing, you know, I need an office I need some vehicles all I need to get insurance now. I need somebody to answer the phone It's nice having somebody to answer the phone and do your scheduling or do your payroll or do All the stuff you don't want to do, but you know what they're not cleaning a single home they're nothing but a pure operating expense and What will happen in most cases what used to be something that you had money left over at the end of the week You're actually putting money into it And you might have less money in the bank at the end of the week than what you did at the beginning of the week because you're building your business And I guess from an accounting standpoint they call that like working capital or capital investment and sometimes You wind up losing money for a while getting to the other side of the value of despair where you're big enough to pay for the crew the the support staff that you need to to Perform, you know those activities so How do you do that? I guess a lot of it depends upon How much working capital you have if you know if you have any and do you want to you know How much of that you want to invest in your business as you're you're growing it to carry it through that period of time where You know you've got these people on your payroll or cleaning homes But you're going to need them to to get to the larger business If you don't have a lot of working capital, you got to do it more carefully And it's a little more slowly, but you know, you've got typically, you know You've got somebody else in your organization that's cleaning homes for you that that has some some other skills Where they can contribute in a way other than just generating revenue from cleaning homes And maybe you have them come into the office an hour earlier in the day or hang around for a half hour in the afternoon Or take one day a week where they can help with the activities that they have the skills to do Um, so they're not like doing that five days a week They're still generating revenue for you, but for a slice of time You know, they're doing that work that falls into the category of building your team and as the business gets bigger You can give them more hours doing that work. I mean, that's another way to kind of do it What they call bootstrapping where you're not really losing any money You're leaving a little bit of profit on you know giving up some profit For some limited amount of time as you're using those people to help you build the business to be bigger down the road And also another little piece that you can add on there is um You've got to be lean right and in those times you have to be running lean you have to be Paying attention again. We're going back to those numbers, right? You have to be paying attention to your expenses and When you're going through the valley of despair all the pennies count It'll come You'll be paying paying attention to every job you're doing to make sure that price is right And if not, you know making the price adjustment you need to A lot of times If we took You know, we spent all of our time looking at the expense side if we took more of that time and spent it on the revenue side There's a lot of money to be found there a lot of times too Yeah, it's a good point tom. I think that that is always comes second Those people are afraid of raising prices For and it's comfortable looking for a better deal on window cleaner than it is talking to a cleaning professional about their productivity Or talking to a client about needing to pay you more for the service you are offering Shopping for shopping for a better deal on vacuum cleaners a window cleaner and is is is just safer. That's comfortable I Come what do you got there? Oops Need to purchase some kind of business platform On my new laptop What do you guys recommend to keep track of customer sales and so on and so forth? So We didn't tear her up for those of you that are normally on this show You're thinking oh They must have asked her to say that we didn't She just really wants to know we're gonna pull it up here for you Linda. This is definitely what we recommend In the long run as you grow your business made central Is I would say just where you want to be It has the most robust functionality and reporting and management tools to scale a cleaning business um If you're relatively new in the game and if You know money is tight and your time is tight. I mean there's some simpler, you know solutions out here Uh zen made jobber Uh, you know launch 27 if you're looking for a tool that's more focused at You know sales more so than the management and they're all viable solutions um, you know if you've got the inclination and time to invest in You know implementing software that's going to to grow your business over the long run made something's worth a look Which one transitions easiest Tom? I would I would recommend that one Bottom line is as your business grows. You're going to find yourself Really frustrated if you are not using made central It's just too much functionality. They're gonna feel like you know, you're gonna get fomo Around not having it. So what which one do you think transitions easiest Tom? Do you know? He hates does not like that. I'm putting him on the spot about this fine and actually I Have some information that I received today that would really let me answer that question for you A lot more accurately than what I can without that information off the top of my head I would say zen made probably is Has the most data that you can export and import into made central So if you're not ready to make central yet, look at zen made All right, give it a shot. All right, we do work way past time and I do have a quick announcement tomorrow is my very first installment of Wwld dot live What would lose you dot live? We're going to be doing any live zoom if you want to have some of your employee or customer questions answered Join us tomorrow same time as smart business moves Two o'clock pacific five o'clock eastern hope to see you there. We've got a few questions already on the docket. So That's it And we'll be back Wednesday five o'clock eastern smart business moves. We're going to be automations in the month Wearing so we're going to have fun. We're going to have fun with that So take care. Uh, we'll see you tomorrow at w wld and uh, Wednesday's smart business moves. Bye. Bye y'all