 Hey, good afternoon everybody Tom Stewart here. I have Liz Trotter and Matt Ricketts and our special guest today is Sarah Thompson And this is smart business moves. Hey everybody My goodness it's Wednesday. We're in August. This is leadership month and Sarah very much appreciate you making a Kind of a rare appearance. You are one of the rock stars You're one of the rock stars in the industry truly you are from a performance standpoint But you you kind of you kind of pick and choose your moments to speak to to the general public and and you know I'm excited and honored that You are spending a little time with us today. You have an important story that I think will be useful to a ton of people Thank you Yeah, that'd be a good place to start Sarah like, you know, how did your business start? What did what kind of got you into this? Yeah, I can I can talk about that So I Was a stay-at-home mom. I was homeschooling my daughter who was in Hannah who was in seventh grade at the time got a divorce And needed to make money so that the house cleaning tech that the house cleaner we had I just said hey, I see what you're doing. I think I can do it if you ever get busy Why don't you give me any extra jobs if somebody calls you just give me extra jobs and pass them on to me And she said no as she should have but I was terribly offended by this and so I said, okay, then I'm gonna Be your competition and I'm gonna start cleaning and I emailed all the people at the country club And I said my husband's jerk I need a job and That's how I got my first clients So yeah, so that's the story a lot of people have 2006 Okay, and then my yeah 2008 I went back and finished my degree at Iowa State And I needed somebody to take care of the houses while I had classes. So that's how I Had my first people clean homes and then realize I could do this as a real job So went from went from basically cleaning out yourself and tell tell us where you are today What's your business, you know model? What's your revenue run rate? Where are you at today? okay, so Right away or pretty quickly. I was solo because that's how I started and I followed Debbie Sardone stuff kind of to a tee at the very beginning So I've remained solo. We have two locations that are 35 minutes apart Um, we have 40 technicians in one location 20 in the other so 60 full-time equivalents and We're at three million Well, we will be at three million at the end of this year and our run rates a little higher than that probably 3.5 right now Oh, wow. Wow 3.5 that's impressive. So one location alone is Two million the other ones like 1.5 or like well We will end this year right at our 2 million. We're slightly above goal for Location and not at 1 million For the Ankeny location. Well, you know that that the numbers themselves are impressive I don't care where you are but What makes it really really impressive is where you are where are your branches located? So I started in Ames, Iowa. It's the University town Iowa State University and It's a population of 60,000 residents that includes the students So we've got about 30 some thousand students So really the population that I consider my my target would be about 30,000 residents in Ames and you've got 40 full-time cleaning Professional serving a total market. That's maybe 30,000 health. Yeah. Yeah We do about those how I'm sorry those households or is that population? Population So the households are probably half of that. Yeah, maybe a third of that 10 15,000 And I think the key there I mean we we clean about 6% of our revenue total art would be sororities So we do some of that but just about 6% and then It's too small as my understanding at the time we have no franchises that take up You know that that live in Ames So the closest franchise Molly maids or Mary maids has to drive from Ankeny or Des Moines so about 30 40 minutes into Ames So really we were able to dominate and there wasn't another professional cleaning service who kind of came out with brochures and you know Logoed and and looking professional and so You you look up dominated the dictionary and I'll have like pH clean there. I mean that yeah redefines what dominate means I'm gonna market that it's like 300 times bigger and still like that's just amazing. So I mean like put in perspective There's like 1.2 million people that I could probably service within You know 20 miles of my location you're doing that with 30,000 people that are like your your market obviously It's a fluent to college town. That's part of it But anything else that kind of sticks out as to what like why you're able to dominate at that level like I mean obviously competitive We have had we have had people kind of come and go but Yeah, I think I've always kind of gotten grief from Cleaning business friends for being a little office heavy, but I like to argue that being office heavy has allowed us to Kind of stay up on things really maintain our quality our customer service is really great So it's it's cleaning But it's also how are we treating our clients and making those relationships and having time to make those relationships I think structure is good if you're planning on growing to double your size Which seems to be like what your goal is do you know? I think you have a really good structure for aggressive growth. That's for that's for sure Is that kind of in the cards? What's what's next? Well, we open to ankeny six years ago because I anticipated hitting a ceiling and aims I just thought there's no way we can Grow much more and I think we had a year where we had a six percent growth or something which I considered really low and So open ankeny because it's a really fast-growing suburb right outside of the Des Moines metro area It's a super fast growing town and But aims does continue to grow I mean we've raised our rates as well But we've continued to grow and then you know, we added 10% commercial and And so that's helped our growth as well But as far as continuing that ankeny is really our focus is ankeny could be at two million Easily and possibly three because it can go into the metro So that's where we kind of want to focus without without rocking the boat And Yeah, but another thing is Sarah, how long has ankeny been open six years Yeah, I mean, I think that most people would consider that a really short amount of time too Yeah, and I think the success of that is really because I call aims our core It's like your home office because we have our marketing person there. We have our Our bookkeeping and payroll. So it's kind of it's really helped ankeny grow faster Yeah, did did ankeny start off like as a positive experience or were there moments when you maybe were thinking that well Gee the second branch thing maybe isn't such a great idea after all It's yeah, it was challenging as far as making money You know didn't make any money the first year kind of made up the difference the second year and by the third year It was we were making money and aims carried that Carried that as they they got their feet under them and It's been a struggle with consistency and maintaining consistency between two offices for us Because that's really important to us. We have the same same policy manuals the same training the same You know verbiage and all of that that that's been a struggle finding the right manager and growing there Because we know what we're doing in aims So finding the right manager that kind of falls under this whole leadership thing. So You know you say that so it sounds like maybe you experience what it's like not to find the right manager before actually story well, we like to I like to promote from within when possible. We started our second office with our scheduler from our first office put her in there and You know, we realized that that was a bigger jump than she was ready for um, and then That was a sudden she left suddenly after we went to las vegas conference together That was awesome And we hear that so often right take the manager to convention and then bam But um, and then we have somebody else in who was steady eddie and and safe But not growth minded at all. She wanted to keep everything kind of within her own you know control and I just needed to Wake myself up and make myself work harder and address that situation So when we let her go, um We we pulled in a bigger office team. So really again, we got a few more people in that office To work and they're working together as a team versus just loving one person kind of all of that It's been slightly painful. We haven't played of an office team there now that is wonderful and we actually have One of the one of the top people in that office starting out as a technician with us so I mean that's that's my favorite story because um, I think our office staff in the past has shown leadership and and mentored her and You know, we've allowed her to go from technician to She was technician to a trainer. She was then qa and then she was um a scheduler And we've just promoted her to a staff supervisor um Get a little practice with You know write-ups and how to deal with staff and things like that and she'll be a manager soon. So That's that is cool. I I love that that that's inspiring for a lot of people too. Yeah, so one of the things that you said was That when you had this other manager that just steady Eddie We just wanted to keep everything the same you said you had to like kick yourself in the tush and work a little harder and And do some stuff. What did you mean by work a little harder? well, what I meant is I had gotten fairly comfortable with the amount of hours that I spent in an office and My core office was busy enough So taking out that manager and getting you know hiring and finding the right person meant that I had to Sit myself down in that office in that desk and you know, I had support I didn't have to answer the phone and do a sales call But I just had to be there And I you know, I had to get over the hump of not wanting to be there And being a little too comfortable. So those that was all me Yeah, like most things are if you're the leader, it's all your fault So and ideally It is all your fault because that's the place you have control All right So much easier if it's my fault than somebody else's That is a hard concept to to get used to though. I mean once you figure it out, it's obvious But it's like you don't understand my situation is different. It's the Employees it's the customers. It's the economy. It's coven. It's always something Yeah Yeah, now everything is everything is my fault and so if there's a there's a problem It's usually because I haven't addressed it or I haven't Required somebody else to address it So that's I've got that lesson So one of the things you really got out front Like to work through All of this, I mean, um, you know, you know aims didn't have any government orders Shutdowns and really coven took a while to longer to hit Iowa not really as hard at some points Can you were there any like leadership lessons you learned during coven that uh, we'll carry through moving forward Yeah, um I I again, I was in that office almost every day While that was happening And I felt communication was really really important So I'm sure other people did this as well But I was if I wasn't having a meeting initially we're having meetings with the team. I was making videos like here's what we know Here's what we think will happen. Here's our protocol right now um And then just sending blasting that video out from me um And just really talking honestly and as ultimately as we could so we talked ahead of time about layoffs We talked ahead of time about how we would structure that When we would try to bring people back. We talked about our ppp loan um We just laid it all out there and I think that was really important We brought everyone back. We laid off about 14 people 14 staff member technicians And we had everybody back by I think six weeks Um, oh, that's great. Yeah. So we never we never closed really awesome And then like in communication we we were communicating to them as well You know, they they were still part of our family. We weren't forgetting about them And we just Did that as much as possible I'm kind of curious back to your Uh second office Ankeny, is that the name of the town? When you came to the realization that you were going to have to stop being as comfortable as you were You know, what were the actual steps you took? Did you you started recruiting for another manager and Did you just find you know, how hard was it to find the right person? Did you Find the wrong person a time or two before finding the right person We're still the process though. Yeah, we're still we're still working on that um, so I really have I really love the process that we have now for hiring any office staff we do um, so I I do that hiring myself um And I just got in there and yes, I was I was taking applications and doing You know, I asked people to write write me something because they're going to do sales They write me something that I phone interview them and then I bring them in for a group interview not just with me But with everyone in the office and then I bring them back for a second interview with everyone in the office um And I hadn't done that previously But I really do like that group consensus um You know, I'll make the ultimate decision, but they have to work together. So I like I like Hiring in that manner for those types of positions um And I had somebody in there for a year took her to a conference in San Diego. No wait. Yes. No, maybe in Charles No Where'd we go? It was a Q. Yeah Brought her and she did leave but it wasn't as soon after that um, and then found another person Who we thought would be a pretty good fit and She didn't make it more than six months um, and that's so no, it's not smooth but What I love about our team is that We can pull people in and out and we can fill we can backfill that like so nobody's missing a beat They're just we're rearranging tasks Yeah That person in that head You've got some steady eddies too that have done with you for a long time But you're always evaluating talent and and you know deepening your bench if somebody comes along. So Yeah, your your team is participating in the process of hiring their boss in essence, right? Yep So how does that go when they hire that person? I imagine they figure out before you do that. It's not going to work Do they I mean how does that whole process go? Um, you know when somebody's new I'm checking in with the team and They're hesitating and giving feedback, but when I asked for feedback they tactfully give me Pretty pretty good feedback um Yeah, in one case that We had a really really great manager She just it just wasn't her it wasn't her passion Um, and then the last manager we had she just couldn't quite get the the hang of all of the activity um So our staff was able to give me good feedback. That's not why the manager's exibit but it's What was helpful in in knowing if is it us? Is it the is it the person? They they know the drill so they can kind of tell if somebody's Just not getting it Versus, you know, if it's something that we're doing wrong or we've got it Do you ever have anybody on your staff that like ask the question? How come you're not giving me the job or do they? I would expect that you're being somebody from the outside that Hardly doesn't know what's going on as long as they do Yeah, well, we did have that kind of happen With the with the gal that we have and now that was a technician Moving into you know trainer schedules scheduler She would have we would have considered her and she knew it and she kind of wanted a job but she was taking maternity leave and She was going to be on for a full 12 months So we had to decide can we function without her and she wasn't You know, we didn't quite know if she'd come back Um, so we had to make a decision To put somebody in that place, but when that person didn't work out after six months Yeah, she was she was all ready to raise her hand and say let's go In fact three the three people in that office I raised everybody up one position and they were all like we wanted where we could do it Let's go Sarah one of the things that you were when when you were talking about The the different positions it you made it sound like they always leave I didn't hear you talk about having to relieve anybody of their duties. Is that by design or no No, I the one the the one I was complacent with For too long we asked her to leave Oh, okay The other two left on their own one it was a life change and And she wasn't into it. That's fine. And the other just knew She just knew We all knew Yeah Sometimes it's easier to leave when you know you can't do the job. Yeah That's part of leadership too sometimes like you have enough coaching with them They know the writing's on the wall And it's not the right fit. So is that is that an ongoing process you're coaching them You're you're sharing feedback and They're they're fully aware. They're not meeting your standards. Is that kind of how you Yeah, yeah, and it's you know, we're always changing and evolving and so Our our Daniel some of you know, Daniel He's now our aims. He was our aims manager and now we decided to put them over aims and ankeny And and so we're always kind of shifting the structure and making sure people know who's your boss Who do you talk to? I had somebody ask me how how am I doing? How am I doing? Are you are you going to come in and check on me and And I said well, you should talk to talk to Daniel talk to your boss because he will tell you how you're doing um, and so we do try to make sure people know Who to go to who to ask questions to and who to get feedback from and then how to get feedback So I told her okay. Why don't you tell me? And you know, what's going right? What's what are you struggling with? Um, and what's just what what do you think you're doing? Okay? So trying to give them language for accepting themselves You know Yes, Liz we could probably speak a little bit from firsthand experience about how hard it is to stand up, you know, satellite offices Especially getting getting leadership. You mentioned Daniel. He Works in your your aims office, which is kind of like your home office Um, do you think there's some advantage in developing your your leadership team your your office staff? Your your you spend more time. I I assume and and your aims office I do I spend I spend every Monday there The entire the entire day or about 10 to 4 um, for sure, that's like that's like for sure time. Um But yeah, so We want to bring people to um conferences I want to bring somebody at every conference now. I'm buying or just planning on um bringing two people Because I want them to stay invested. I want them to to learn something and get excited and have an ownership mentality and I think Everyone I have there has an ownership mentality in the office Okay, I really love this about you sarah So I think that most business owners if they had the experience of taking a manager twice To convention and that manager leaving their thinking would be I'm never doing that again Actually, I know at least two business owners that are like, I'm never doing that again never taking anyone and I never want to talk to them about money ever again because they had this feeling like That that was that was where the problems hit and I know that is not your Your mindset at all your mindset is very much about Hey, you're running this company. You need to know the numbers. You need to know how everything's working Can you talk to us a little bit about your reporting and how you Keep the people engaged by doing that? Yeah, so we really focus on Like very being very transparent. So we'll focus on every week, you know, what were our sales? Other numbers as well like how many staff do we have what's our retention rate? Um How many how many quotes did we do we we do a weekly staff meeting with the entire office now? We're zooming both offices together On monday on monday How did I know that that might be what's happening from 10 to 4? Yup um And and we just lay it out there and everybody is working towards the same goal. So we set a bonus Revenue bonus Revenue goal and then if they're over that for the week they get a bonus amount So that's really we've been doing that for seven years. That's a really kept everybody focused on growth and then what we talk about is how do we you know, how many people call them sick and and Making sure that they see the correlation between People quitting people calling on sick quality scores and our revenue going up or down And that goal is always moving. So we adjust it up if it's if we're hitting it every time we adjust it up But that's the newly key to Get everyone on the same page Yeah, you know that could tie into a question that that robin has for us He's talking about goals and what type of incentives do you provide for your managers? um My man the the whole staff participates in this revenue goal and everybody can see the numbers And everybody can see the amounts that they're getting So I just do it by a percentage. So say if I have 15 percent Save the profits at 15 percent. And that's how much above goal. I'm going to give away. I guess as that bonus The manager might get 5% so I'm splitting it up manager sales um scheduler Qa even the bookkeeper gets a certain percent And so we just use up that those percentages and everybody sees what they're getting um That's how I do it and then and then we I personally don't tie every Like all the all the money to making the sale. It's more about that holistic revenue because that includes staffing quality Everything drives that So when you say holistic revenue, you're talking about the bottom line the the profit um Well, what I mean is I don't just do really big sales goals I have everybody looking at that revenue collectively As the as the number to look at I look at the profit And I adjust the amount I give away for the bonus depending on our profit So if we if we went through it in a 10 percent profit um I would I would decrease the amount that we were doing across the board to 10 percent But but the goal that you're you're setting which kind of everybody's shooting for is the top line revenue. Yes yep and you kind of Interrelations between each other and that's important because So yeah, might are kind of siloed off between everyone has their their thing But I like how yours are all interconnected because everybody's goals do Touch one another like if you're if you're hiring manager is not giving you enough people to to do the jobs, right? You can't hit many goals. So You know it hurts everybody. So then they're You know, even that even if they are siloed though, it still makes It still makes everybody work together to kind of hit those. That's great Sarah you said that you will modify the goals Like if the profit goes down, you'll modify the goals Do they know how that's happening why and where that connection comes in? So they understand that whoa, this is why our profits In in the toilet here. Yeah. Yeah, so They can't watch everything. So I just figured that's my job to watch the profit number But we're gonna talk about it if it goes from 15 to 5 percent We're gonna yeah, of course Having a big meeting we're talking about what's happening And and so yeah, that just goes with our communication And being a really open I'm very open about the costs of things. I'm open about our you know, what does our pricing need to be if if we've raised our hiring baseline then what do we need to price out at a minimum and um, you know, how much healthcare costs we just talk about it all so so Do you think that that plays into the The the idea that everybody works together and everybody knows this stuff. They're all working together. So they don't see Sarah the big boss getting all the money and we're just working like dogs And we're being taking advantage of do you feel like that ties in there? Yeah, I think so. I think just being very accessible I mean, I'm I'm only in the office a day a week, but somebody can slack me You know, I'm I'm I'm always available to the office staff. So communication um, I'm not I might be traveling somewhere, but I'm I'm available to them um Yeah, I think so that because we're we're all You know, we talk about You'd have to ask them, but my my feeling is that we're we're just going towards the same goal And everybody knows it and everybody cares about each other We're talking um about money, but we're also talking about, you know, our core values and and things like that and I'm pretty I'm pretty laid back So I don't think that they I don't think that I set myself up here And there's a big chasm you know Robbie Murphy shared a thought about taking people to I guess training opportunities and so forth, you know, you got You know, you worry about training them and they leave. I guess that's not as bad as not training them and they stay, huh? Right, right. I mean alternatively what do you do? You have somebody who's Not going to be excited about their job or not going to be excited about You trusting them enough and having faith in them enough to bring them to something I I have no problem taking people I don't like it when they quit But that's just part of what I feel like we need to be doing and then other people in the office can see us take somebody And that person may quit but they know that this is what we do and and we you know, we will train and promote from within We will give people these opportunities We send people to leadership classes Locally, so they see that and and if I do something good for somebody and they take it somewhere else, that's okay right But occasionally you do go to the outside when you have to and your internal staff understands that Yeah, we we do open it up for and we want to be sensitive to that So most positions we open up to our entire staff And we'll we'll say, you know, here's a position. It's opening Uh, if if you're interested here's how to apply and then we submit it and then we do an indeed ad as well So we will we will definitely talk to any staff person interested Okay And so you did talk about your core values I have it up on a screen if we want to bring it up. I actually a couple a couple of things that You shared but are these like are these like business cards that go in their wallets or or is this posters or how is this described? um So it's part of our training manual. It's part of our onboarding. Um, it's also part of it's it would be a poster It's also part of our review. So every six months they're being reviewed With a rubric that includes, you know, are they delivering client happiness first? Are they committed to growth and success and we've kind of defined those out? So It should be pretty core Um, you know, they're sitting down with a manager and and talking about, you know, has their communication been professional um Things like that and we also tie that into Any write-ups that we do we use our core values as When you spoke to somebody that way, that's not professional communication I ask because This would be perfect in a wall if you ever go to ritz-carleton you ask one of the employees and just ask them about it Be like, hey, can you show me your core values card? Let's take it out and show it to you. They've got to carry it around with yours looks like it would be perfectly designed Yeah to be and it's and those are all easy to remember Are you familiar with that kind of ritz-carleton example? Have I ever told you that before? I think so. I think you've heard of it and I I don't remember their core values I've done it a couple of times when I've been at the ritz for different events And I'm sitting there talking to the to the valet and I'll be like, hey man, tell me about the core values And I go cool. Let me show you this and they'll pull out there. They'll pull out there I think um, I know this is an idea that gets beat to death But I think if you do build your business around repeatable values that you can hire and fire for It's it's important. I think You know making it as accessible as possible is something that we could all be better Better about like I love that ritz-carleton example I've you know, I actually have mine on the back of their name badges So we print out their plastic name badges and then on the back side We we actually have the four core values printed printed there So not to talk about me that just came to mind years looks like yours looks like it would be perfect for that And then I also have your summer experience and giveaway contest I want to talk about the ways that you kind of engage your technicians because this is pretty wild This is like this is a big wild idea. Can you tell us about this? Yeah, um, well picture how everyone was freaking out about hiring in April and and may especially April And we had staff, you know hiring was an issue. It still is an issue But my goal was to hold our staff as long as possible through the summer And I'm intrigued by this idea of giving away giving away something at a certain Point in time. So we just tried this for the summer. It was three months and we have our drawing Um Next week we'll do it live at a meeting it in aims and then live broadcast it live in the ankeny office So we're giving away 13 prizes one technician will will win a trip for two to either the beach or Nashville or Colorado Two people will win the the more regional trip and then and then three people will win a kind of a night out or Car detailing and so down from there. We give away 13 prizes We'll do one drawing from the office staff um, and really it was Everybody got like a golden ticket. I called it when they had perfect attendance for the week Is that like willy wonka? Yeah So and then if they've had perfect attendance for the entire month they got an additional five tickets So really their odds of winning the ones that they were at work Were increased and of course they have to be employed by us to win. They have to be employed by us to Use this prize. So I would love for once you have the data on this If it'd be okay to share with I know we we talk on the side a lot If it'd be okay if I share with people the the how this impacted things like, you know, basically Retention would probably be the number one thing that you're looking to have improved Over a very hard retention period, right? We know that people were having tremendous turnover and things like that So, um, I would love to see your final numbers once you kind of run through the summer. So this is You know, this is a bold move. I mean, this was expensive to to put this on go a dollar amount on what you're investing in this Um, it it's going to depend a little bit on which direction because I've given a lot of choice here also um I'm estimating seven thousand. Okay. All right. I would have thought more of it. Okay, cool. We'll see Right, right, right. I mean, I guess the trip isn't crazy. Now it is. Yeah, sarah. What is the Golden ticket, how does that work? What what does that do? Yeah, so they get They have to have perfect attendance for the week And then if they have perfect attendance for the week the scheduler tracks all that and gives them a golden ticket They put their new on it and then they put it in this big lock box And then we have this gold drum, you know, we're putting everything in we'll do that thing and and draw it out. Um That's the golden ticket I don't understand what the golden ticket does The golden it's an entry into the into the raffle. It's like a raffle ticket. Yeah, how is it how is it different than the other ones? It's just got a really nice name and it's golden Okay, gotcha All right, so it doesn't uh, it's not like worth five tickets or no anything like that. Okay gotcha They get entries for different things though into this so so attendance was one anything else No, no they Um, you're gonna settle they have to be they they can't be in the the danger zone for write-ups Okay Um, so those those people won't be able to get call on Um, and then the winner the grand prize winner has to be full time So that's the one caveat any any other part-time people can win any Any other prize except that big grand prize will go to a full-time technician Okay, all right. Very excited So that's I mean and I they've worked through a long hard summer and they've had mass songs like for a year and a half and so We didn't have to retention even even if it's just for morale for the summer. Yeah Yeah Did you see I I saw a couple of questions over here. Yeah Sarah Mitchell would like to know about your admin office staff arrangement in each location Sure. Um, the I'll just say the home office has bookkeeper marketing and Daniel the manager Who kind of covers both? And then each office has sales Scheduling and qa That's kind of the core office particular to that to each location Uh, let's see. I think we also have um Robin has a question on here too You'd like to know about the hiring process. Uh, do you promote your hiring manager from within? No, I mean I would if I had the right person, but Daniel the Um Daniel's our hiring manager. So he's kind of like staff and hiring and processes for the company Yeah, he's doing all kinds of stuff. So he's like your project manager when you're implementing something He's very he's very detail oriented very Like process driven Where was he up before what was his background when you found him like outside of our industry for sure, right? so he was at Panera for Hmm seven or ten years Okay, and hadn't worked his way up there So you basically stole from their bench. They developed him. He was ready to so That's you know, it's always good. We should be looking for other companies to develop some talent for us, right? Yeah, and in fact and I hired him when I didn't have a spot for him I was I I thought I Interviewed for sales position and I said, you know, Daniel's not a sales guy and he'll watch this and agree, but um I wanted to hire him. So I said, how about I hire you as project manager? I don't know what that means and then We'll figure it out I knew one of my um, I knew my Ingham's office manager at the time was getting married and plan on moving not sure when I just knew that I didn't want to lose him so But we all have projects in our businesses that need to get done. We need to implement new software. We need to you know do due processes and and You know change things and so he's really good at the change management side So that that's important though, especially at your size the finding a fit there was great Sarah, I think that's really an important skill that you know CEOs of cleaning businesses need to To be aware of you know, I call that being opportunistic You're interviewing for a certain position But if you stumble across somebody that's got talent that can fit into your vision, I mean You have to know the economics and can you afford to do that and then you know build into it? But when it works It can work out really well and this is an example. So don't just get blinders on It's like well, no, I'm going to let that person go because they're not a salesperson state Yeah, and we've also shifted people. We've had kim who's been in our company for 10 years And I just decided this year that she's going to get a trip to nashville for her 10 year anniversary So I guess I've started that I've established that now But Kim was our salesperson and grew into a part-time position into three quarter time into Ended up being full-time sales and aims and she she was done with it after seven years. She's like no um And she actually wanted to leave and I said, okay Yes, you can leave but what do you want to do? And she wanted to do marketing which she had gone to school for and I said, well, why don't you Find someone like why don't you ask your boss if you could do marketing? and so So she hadn't thought of that and I'm like that's you know, you have too much knowledge to leave um So I gave I gave over the marketing that I had been doing and kim does that now and then backup sales But we got creative with that Because it was important to keep a good person if they wanted to do something different I wanted to give them a chance to do it It's awesome so Sarah Mitchell again wants to know did you start your locations with an admin or did you start them as satellite locations? So I'm assuming did you you know start them without having a local Local leader Yeah, we did about six months where we so we're 35 miles from From the two offices So we did six months where we sent Somebody to clean just schedule one or two technicians to clean and I don't I think we maybe had 20 clients at the most and then we opened on officially got a got an office located and Had some a manager hired and sitting there After that, so we I said we lost money the first year. That's part of the reason I wanted a manager in place Like somebody who could look at people somebody who could come in and talk to them about things I wanted a home base for those technicians and I wanted to hire Um in the town that we were cleaning in so I I put somebody in place pretty quickly um Robin wants to know about uh, do you use smaller monthly contests for your cleaning pros to keep them engaged? On quality and consistency Um, not nothing out of the ordinary. We do um, we do a quality score uh bonus so if for us, um If you score was it 4.85 as a quality score or above you get a hundred dollars a month We do that we do Some people call it made bucks. We do dirty dollars So we're giving away dirty dollars for every five Four or five five star that you get um So those are the two things that we do specifically once in a while we'll you know post your Post your before and after and We'll draw the best one something like that I'm not that creative I'm not that fun So I don't do a lot of contests. That's a lot more than a lot of people do though. It's more than I do And you and you do it consistently. I think that's uh, you know, that's that's a big piece of it Yeah, I think you know I think leadership definitely like top to bottom. I think you've you've set good expectations Um across across your business and I think you know from leaders down to the technicians like you said They know who they're going to talk to when they when they have a problem They don't they don't have like a like for one thing I think probably the way you have it set up is it's not as fractured like it is There's direct lines of communication and and everybody knows who they're supposed to talk to That's that's important as you kind of scale up even if people have multiple hats they have to wear They know who they're reporting to and who they're responsible to The uh 4.85 quality score Equating to the hundred dollar bonus. You've got about 60 cleaning professionals Have any idea roughly how many of them on average get that bonus each month? Yeah, I'd say a third to a quarter Okay But that that motivates them every month. They're they're trying to do that It motivates them a little bit. I you know, it's debatable we like to say You're you're also rewarding the people that just inherently are going to get that score and do that great job and There's something wrong with that either And then you then you get that really bad score at the beginning of the month and you go Oh, I'll never get it now. Do they like take it easy the rest of the month? No, they go in and talk to their manager and they say can you change the score I was like, that's not fair. I make sense. I did a good job. It's uh, The customer's crazy. That's Daniel's favorite part when that happens the customer's crazy But I really do like that Um, this idea like I know it's not a motivating thing. I I think that that's kind of improved through research a lot but I think it's better that you're rewarding those people for doing it I think that's almost better than motivating them or incentivizing them in the front because So many times that's a huge frustration for people Is I'm doing this amazing job So-and-so is not and we're basically getting paid the same. We're treated the same. So that nice built-in reward That actually is not incentivizing but it is very team building It it it builds the loyalty for the company. So I like that Yeah, so we have a couple of questions about teams or solos and I guess a two-part question Solos Did you ever consider doing teams or have you been solos from the beginning? Um, I always consider doing teams and we always haven't gotten to the point where we have to make that shift Um, I really admire or I'm very curious about the companies that can run some teams and some solos Uh, I I think until we really hit our head against a staffing shortage that we can't get over or hump or Some some revenue stall out um I think we'll stick with solos because we can control the costs better Yeah, I always thought solos weren't going to be as big of companies But over the last year the three biggest companies that I've run into either run solos predominantly solos or like a mix of Some some team and solos, but they all have solos in the mix to be able to scale um, so I think Solos makes a lot of sense for a variety of reasons Um, it's just sometimes it's harder to find those quality staff members So you've definitely built a good pipeline and good bench Good training program to to build solos up because that's the hardest challenge people have is like, how do I hire Somebody and get them out of the field and making money for me um in a reasonable amount of time and I think they They miss that it can be done with solos. It's just you got to have a solid training process and stick to it Yeah, and how many homes does a typical team of one do a day? One really big home and then they might go help someone else or Typically, it's going to be a home in the morning a home in the afternoon or first and second home and then we have everybody calling in between 230 and 330 is saying, you know who needs help and so we might go finish a job or throw a solo on a deep queen that's going along or Somebody that needs help finishing up So typically two Do you have sarah? Like a lot of people have different metrics for when they team people off like a certain size job or a certain number of Hours or do you have something like that? Yeah, if our houses are above five hours We tend to try to put them in the morning and split that job and just write it as either two Ideally we'd write it as two separate jobs Like split the house up or split the job and each person does their thing They're part of it and then they go off to their afternoon job Sometimes it doesn't work as smoothly, but that's the goal I do have a couple of questions here that I've written down to anybody else over here. No, we got all All their questions answered. So One of the things that you said that was intriguing is you said that you brought every back So you had to lay off step. I think you said 17 people and then you had everybody back in six weeks I know in my company When I had people that were gone It was because they were all parents and they couldn't come back because they all had kids But I'm guessing your people didn't have kids. So who do you have? Who did you who do you have working for you? right In that it was a it was a mix. We did deal with that a little bit And so some of the people we brought back Were we brought them back part-time? We might have had one person decline because of childcare or I think that there was one issue that way A lot of our daycares did not close down. Oh So we did not have daycares closed. We are in an open state Yeah And so we didn't run into that as a so you didn't lose it Okay, I thought that you must have be hiring different people. I was like, oh, she's not hiring parents Yeah in ankeny. I will say we only have probably three out of the 20 full time Three that have children. It's it's weird but in but in aims. It's um, it's a broader variety And are they younger or old? I'm guessing younger people just before they've hit that time of their lives Um, I'd like to tell you my average age, but I don't know. Um, I would we hire more younger 22 to 24 probably more of an average okay, and then Uh, I was also wondering your because this is leadership. We're talking about this month When you're hiring Your different managers and supervisors, etc. I'm guessing you have a certain list of leadership Qualities that you're looking for do you mind sharing notes? um Sure, I want somebody who is positive who will Take Feedback from other people not just from me Um, somebody who really wants to make sure everybody else is okay Um, everybody else is comfortable um and And be a team player So let's focused on I mean if we know them we kind of know that coming into it But those are the things that I'm looking for if I don't know them. Um, I want them to be more of a Um, a weave mentality than an eye okay Do you have a way to check on that? No, no Yeah, but but that's what you're looking for And you're looking for people from inside first. So you kind of you already know that who are the people that Instead of calling at 230 or three are like pushing it to the end at 340 so that they don't have to go help those kinds of activities Yeah Well, we only have one minute left here sarah I'm wondering if you have any last things that you think would be really helpful for our audience to know for Either what you do or Any anything that you see companies doing that you're like, oh gosh, I wish they'd stop or I wish they'd start Yeah, um I Maybe a pet peeve is when I When I see people not starting something because it's they they don't have it 100 figured out and I like to just start something And figured out as I'm going so I think that forward motion is really important. Um And then Kind of coming back to the it's all you're like don't blame somebody else don't blame the higher some Somebody said I can't hire anyone. You know indeed. It's terrible and I'm like, well We can and we're not magic So there is a way to do it and and just push forward and You know don't assume that you can't Persevere. Yeah All right, that's great Well, we are at the top of the hour and it is Wednesday afternoon that means we're Done for the week. Doesn't it? That's it. That's it for this week. We're back next week with more leadership, um, you know, this was a really great Call here or whatever this is a meeting here today. So what is this thing? What do we call these in meetings? This is a this is a live stream A show It really was it was a really good show today They're not always this good. Although. Wow, my days was really good as well. So I don't know. Let's spend a great week Yeah, you know an hour goes by fast. Doesn't it? It's not bad. Yeah Yeah, this was this this was good stuff. Yeah You got to do this more often. We'll have you we'll have you back like every month and we can hear this Good luck, Tom Much appreciate uh truly, um Let's say monday ken carfagna is going to be here and we're going to be talking about getting clear on the why Yeah, it's going to be good if you guys have ever seen kim before he's uh a dynamic speaker and uh, he'll keep things moving at a good club He will it'll be fun. Give you a new brain paper and pencil or something Bring a remarkable bring something Yeah, bring a pad. You'll need more than than one sheet for sure Um, okay, so you guys have a good rest of your week. Uh, we'll see you back here monday five o'clock eastern take care Thanks again, sarah Thanks, sarah