 with Aja Holiday. Our guest today is Heather, a lovely button. And this is May's social partner profiles. Yeah. Hello, everybody. Welcome, welcome, welcome. So yeah, this is our newer sort of partner profile series. This is our second one. So very excited, Heather. Thank you for joining us for our second one. Just kind of letting us get to know some of our partners a little bit better. Yeah, I guess. Tell us, I guess, what was your, what did you do before this? What was your real job, your last real job? How are you? Let's back up a little. Where are you? I was just kidding. Where are you? Tell us about your business a little bit. Well, I'm in my office. But I am staying here. In your office is located where? Central New York. So we are in a very small town with about 3000 people outside of Utica, New York. And we have an office here. And then we also have an office right outside of Syracuse. So we have the two locations. Syracuse is a larger, more metropolitan area. Right. And what is your business called? We are Home Sweet Home Cleaning and Gardening LLC. Awesome. How much gardening do you guys do? I've always been curious. So we used to do quite a bit. Then I got pregnant and had a baby. Then I got pregnant again and had another baby. So we did put that department on the back burner. We are kind of, we're stewing if we're gonna drop that permanently or if we're gonna bring that back. So we're talking about it. So help me out a little bit. I mean, gardening, does that mean like growing corn and tomatoes or does that mean like landscaping? What is gardening? Sure. So we set it up basically the same way that we set up our recurring cleanings where we would go, we would do a big clean out. And then we would show up on a regular recurring schedule and we would focus on their landscape and their perennial gardens. So we didn't mess with vegetables. I did have an organic vegetable farm in on my past life. But this was just focused on keeping the fronts of the houses or the backs of the homes, the perennial gardens up to maintenance level and keeping them nice just like we do with the homes. Okay. You weren't like cutting grass or anything like that. So it was like maintaining the plants. The plantar boxes and yeah. It was pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, it was going very well. We got a client face just like we had our recurring clients for our cleaning. It just, it's seasonal and it's hard to scale. It's hard to train people on it. So I have a botany background and it's hard to find people that know the difference between a perennial and a weed. So when I got pregnant and started focusing on my family, I was like, I'm gonna put this on the back burner and we'll see what the next few years brings. So being in like middle of state of New York, I imagine that seasonal too, isn't it? Yeah, it is seasonal. Okay. Whereas people get their homes cleaned, all the time. Yeah, they do. Not a big snowbird population up there that's going back and forth too much, I'm guessing. We get a few people. We have some people that go to Florida for the winter. Okay, yeah, definitely. So botany background, what did you do back when you had a real job? Well, so I, let's see, before I worked here, I've basically done a lot of odd jobs and that's kind of where this whole idea came from was like, let's take these jobs that are actually turning into something. But I never have had a job really outside of like odd jobs. I have a horticulture and a plant science degree, graduated, traveled a whole bunch and then ended up back in New York when my mom got sick back in, gosh, 2012. My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, so came to home and tried very hard to leave again and then met my husband. And so here I am, but I've never really had a job outside of just picking up things like cleaning or I was like a personal assistant for a long time, waitressing. So I bounced around from these types of jobs. Wow, okay. That's interesting. How long have you been running your house cleaning business? Since October of 2014, we got our DBA. So just about 10 years, that's cool. Yeah, yeah. What, I mean, how did it get started? Where did you start? Yeah, so I'm actually third generation house cleaner. So my grandmother and then my mom and some of my aunts all did it. So I've really been in the house cleaning industry since I was about, well, let's say 14 because I think that's a legal working age. So it's in my blood, customer service and things like that. I grew up working at restaurants. So when I came home, my mom was sick, like I mentioned and she had a few jobs and so I took them over so that they didn't have to see a law and service and I wanted to make sure that she had something to return to and I was like, you know, I really think there's something here but you are definitely not charging enough. So my mom is healthy. So she was gonna come back and she took a few of them and I was like, well, I like that one. And I had the organic farm at the time as well and was trying to do it all. And I was like, you know, I really think if I get employees that this is something that I can turn into a career. And I really think there's a lot of good money here. That's awesome. Yeah. Oops, yeah. In the end of the process of proving that to be true. We are. We're the Club of Mades Central. There we go. Very good. Tell us about that. How long have you been using Mades Central? So we are new as of August 2023. That's when you went, about when you went live, I'm guessing. Yeah. So we did it all very quickly. There wasn't... I think I had your sign update in May last year starting seeing some job checks in July is when I think your first week was closed was mid July last year. So yeah, just about a year. That's awesome. Yeah. And we kind of bent it off with chunks. I wanna say that when we started, we decided like we're gonna run payroll through there and then we're gonna start our scheduling through there and just kind of did it a little bit here and there until it was like, all right, let's go. Yeah, it definitely looked like there was like a ramp up period. I was looking really in depth today. So I was really curious just like, because everybody's story in ramp up is a little bit different. So we could start to see, I started to see some data in there and even as early as May, actually. Okay. Very little though. It was like, there was clearly just like a couple of like test stuff happening in there. And then June started to look a little more normal but not quite up to standard and then July. Yeah, it looked like that was, everything looked pretty consistent. Lots of equal weeks closing out the week and stuff like that. And I'll explain, I guess, for anybody who's watching who maybe doesn't know what closing out the week is and made central. We kind of lock all the data down on a weekly basis. It populates a lot of our reports, helps us get really good data out of things. We get some of our core KPIs get populated with the closing out the week. So I think I started to see you guys closing that out mid July last year. So I think you guys might've done it faster than you think than even you remember that you ramped that up in maybe about like a five week period heading into July, actually, which is awesome. Okay, all right. That makes sense now that you're saying it. It's kind of a whirlwind, you know? And I do have a type A personality. So I was making everybody do things in two places for a little while. So I can't remember exactly when we pulled off the band. Yeah, what were some of the first things that you remember like, you know, switching from your old software, some of the first things you remember just being easier? So this is something about me is I didn't have a software before Made Central. I did it all with Google Calendar and Asana, which I don't know if everybody's familiar with Asana, but it's basically like a task management system, like ClickUp in Monday. So people will ask me, you know, like, what do you like about Made Central more than, you know, these other platforms? And I'm like, I don't know, but I'll tell you what, I felt like I could get rid of one person in my office as soon as we started using it. That's huge. That's gigantic. You really took the, this is the only software I'm ever gonna need to heart. Yeah, you know, I knew, you know, there's a Wayne Gretzky saying like, you don't shoot something about like, you go where the puck's gonna be, right? Skate to where the puck is going. Yeah. And I knew that we were going to need Made Central. So when I, I will tell you, I was like six months postpartum, laying on my couch, baby in arms and watching the YouTube videos when I was like, I got, something's gotta change. And I actually cried watching the Made Central videos. Good crying, bad crying. What kind of cry are we talking? It was a good cry because I was like, this is exactly what we need. And the only, I was like, I was in awe because we were doing a lot of what, what Made Central does is makes it all the report so easy. And like, I had a spreadsheet with like the master schedule. But anytime we added somebody or somebody left our client list, I had to go in and edit it. So it was like, a lot of the reports that you guys have, not all of them, probably a small amount actually, because I'm still learning, I had, I had us doing it, but it was such a process that it was like, I cry, I was just so relieved. I feel that. So I guess, so did you just find us on YouTube? How did you discover Made Central? Where did you first hear about us then? That's, I've never heard this, this is great. Where did I find Made Central? Well, I'm part of the CBF program. Okay. So, and you guys are a hit with them, of course. So I wanna say that's where I heard about it. And then I'm like the biggest skeptic ever, you know? I don't trust anything. So I'm like, well, like, how good is it? Let's put it on the rabbit hole. So, I mean, we're popular in CBF, I mean, we've got friends here. Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah. That's what you like to hear. It's funny hearing it from somebody else, because I think I had the same sort of reaction over, oh, she asked a lot of questions. So you were the question asker going around to all the tables. What do you got? Tell me more. I see Tammi. Tammi, I do ask a lot of questions. Hi, Tammi. So, I'm sorry, you were asking about how I found you. No, I was just saying, yeah, yeah, how you found us through CBF and then just kind of going down the YouTube channel and really figuring out, you know, seeing for yourself what all the things that you could get from it. I can relate to that a lot, just as a user in my past life as well kind of going from spreadsheet to, you know, for the master schedule and having it in the system and some of those reports and removing that, that not only being able to remove like a whole position of activities of things that need to be done, but then just the reporting happening automatically is that, are you including that in some of that position that you were able to remove? Or is that on top of that just on your own, on your own task list being able to kind of reduce? Yeah, well, you know, we've had a change in our office so I've gotten pulled back in, but there's a lot less that we have to do, but I think like from the owner perspective, my mind is so much free. My mind is more free because I've made central because when you have all these things, did they update the scheduling sheet? That's what we used to call like our old version of the master schedule. Did they do this? And like I'm a very organized systematic person and I give my team lists and you start at the top if we have a client that cancels, you know, you work these steps and it's all in a sauna, pretty straightforward, but you know, the removal of human error from the system and then like the micromanagement, it felt like I could breathe again because I wasn't worried, did all the steps get followed? It's just automatic and everything's so interconnected that it really brought me so much peace that like I wasn't stressed to the max anymore. Do you sleep better at night? I do, I really honestly do because the task list is like a third of what it used to do or are you used to me, I mean? So, you know, we used to and we've updated all of our SOPs or playbooks, however the new age people call it, but you know, I would have a SOP for a client canceling service kind of thing and it would be like 10 subtasks under it, you know? And now there's four and it probably doesn't need that many but I am a little anal. So it's just amazing, it's amazing. I think it's gonna be like a common thing because I just got a little teary-eyed hearing that you sleep better at night. Like I think I'm gonna get a little teary-eyed hearing every one of these partner profiles because I just love hearing that kind of stuff. It makes me, it just gets me very excited for you guys. But you know what, we've heard that before from people where I remember Keith Clem, he's a gentleman who's a clean business in Texas. He's been doing it for a long time. He said for the first time in 20 some years he's able to actually sleep at night without worrying about what was gonna happen the next day, so. Yeah, it's so true. Like even recently we instilled the, we've always done like the following day reminders, the one day reminders and we finally did the three day. And the reason we hadn't pulled the trigger quicker was because we felt like we were still, is the schedule ready three days in advance? And I'm like, well, it needs to be. So we need to make sure it's always clean. It's helped us, it's just tightened up so many systems. But the now with the three day text message, the removal of that stress of the last minute, like, oh, I forgot you guys are coming tomorrow. The removing that stress level where like as an owner of the company now you're worried about your staff, you're worried about your revenue, you're worried about like, oh, now there's a gap in the middle of their day. There's so many thoughts that go through your mind that those three day reminders, it's really taken off like that. I can't find the right word right now, but just like the level of anxiety that comes in when somebody cancels their appointment the next day. A little bit of that like volatility too in the schedule that, you know, the idea that you couldn't send a three day reminder previously because the schedule was volatile was able to change up until the day of so much that you didn't feel like you could give proper expectations by sending a three day reminder. I mean, that's huge too, that your schedule has become consistent enough and capable enough that you can do a three day reminder now. That's gigantic. I mean, you know, have you stopped having scheduling dreams? When did that, you know, when did you stop having scheduling dreams? Because I think that's one of the big effects of Made Central too that you stopped thinking about, you know, dreaming about the schedule all the time. Yeah. And like, so I just moved a cleaner into the office. I know the cleaning world probably just gas like, oh no, you did not. No, no, that is everything that I am a big, big, big supporter of moving from the field up. It's a lot less to train. Yeah. So he came in here today and he was like, where, I think I was at that client's house yesterday. And he was like, was I there? And I didn't know because my brain is like freed. I'm like, I'm not sure. Now six months ago, I could have told you where every single cleaner was, all week, it's like you were so focused on the schedule all of the time. And I used to think that scheduling was a full-time job for cleaning companies because it was, when we used Google Calendar, it was. So now the fact that I think it's like a 25% of, you know, so we just hit a million run rate and I'm hoping to be this month, we might hit 100,000 in revenue, which will be fantastic. So for a company our size for the scheduling aspect to be about 25% of a scheduler's day is such a huge shift from where we were. And I know from other softwares that they're still spending so much time on it. Yeah, I tell people that with maid's control scheduling is not a full-time position anymore. It's not. You know, it just, it doesn't need to be. You're able to do a quarter of your day or less and even a quarter of your day. Once you really get things going, that's even high. You know, it turns into a 10 hours a week type thing where it's a quarter of your week sort of thing that you're maybe spending two hours one day and then an hour every other day on it sort of thing. And that's on the high end. I think that's great. And that's that, I mean, that means that you're really taking into account the things that we really, we really want to see from people that you're able to create these, this really good consistent schedule where you're able to send out three-day reminders without feeling like you're setting unrealistic expectations. You're spending less time on scheduling, which means that what are you spending more time on? Where are you, what are you using that time on now? Exercise. As of next Wednesday, I will be taking off every Wednesday to be with my three-year-old by one-year-old, which will make me cry. It's so big. I'm networking. I do a lot more networking. I've joined organizations locally in my community. I'm going to a town meeting tonight to talk about the state of our commerce here in our small town. Home renovations, I'm gonna be gardening. Like I'm dreaming about my gardening this year, my personal garden. And I haven't really wanted to garden in the last couple of years. So as far as the business goes, I'm cleaning up a lot of our systems. I'm managing from a much higher level where I have the information and the data that actually can guide me where before I was like, yeah, I think so or that makes sense. We're now I'm like, oh no, that is exactly what we need to do. And I know that because I have this data. I wanna just like pause on that for just a second. You said, I'm managing at a higher level now because I know where, what everything's at. Like I know the information that I need to know. And that's gigantic. Like that you can see that not only are you able to spend more time thinking about networking and on your own self, on your family. I mean, people don't just become entrepreneurs and start these businesses just to start their businesses. They wanna give time back to themselves, right? And it's like you're really seeing that happen. And that's incredible. But then also on the business side of things, you're like, not only am I spending less time on the business, I'm operating at a much higher capacity. Right. So to help people understand the difference, what were you spending time on before you made the change? What did the typical day look like? What went away, I guess, is what I think some people, including myself would like to know. So a lot of scheduling, a lot of small tasks that like Mead Central just does in a Jiffy. So I was mentioning like if a client canceled services, we can just take care of that really quickly where before it's like, I had to update that my scheduling sheet, I had to, gosh, I don't even really remember now, but I know that there were like 10 tasks. A lot of micromanaging, honestly, because there were so many steps that had to be done. So it was like, did you do this? Or checking over that it got done and then that it got done correctly. So now it's like, somebody canceled services tomorrow. I just, there's like two, the only, the extra step is like making sure both service sets, because we do have a lot of rotation clients. So there's just a few steps that I'm like, make sure you don't forget that. I think I was spending most of my time just worrying about, did it get done correctly? And is somebody gonna mess it up? Okay. Cause there was so many different places you had to look at and so many different steps that had to be done that it was easy to miss a step. And so not only did you have to go through and make sure that all those steps got taken care of, but also did they get done correctly? And they're all in different places and especially coming from not having a software so that it was in all sorts of places that you had to track it in. I can't imagine. Yeah. So we used to, you know, remove them from the scheduling sheet and then turn those cells green to indicate that that's now an open spot for future recurring clients that we sign on. So it was like, if they didn't turn it green, then the scheduler wouldn't be able to quickly at a glance, figure it out. It was just, I felt like I was always chasing behind people and cleaning things up. And like that is a really stressful place to be for everybody, but then on top of that, for like a new mom, it's like, I'm already doing that at home. You know, I'm doing a lot of babysitting. I'm doing a lot of cleaning up. And it's like to come to work and not just be at this really CEO level and be down and chasing everybody around. What a waste of my great energy. Would you ever have considered yourself a CEO before? Like, would you have used that term for yourself? No. Would you consider yourself a CEO now? Yeah. We're closer to it. I'm getting there. I was, and then we lost somebody in our office and then I had to slide back in. But in asking me that again in like a month, and I will say- When you train somebody up, but yeah, like right now you're helping cover for somebody that you've lost a position. But you know, in general, you're able to consider yourself a CEO now. That's gigantic on its own too. Yeah. The person I'm training, he was in the office today and I was like, he said, I don't, I hadn't listened to some calls this morning while I brought my kids to daycare. And I was like, just listen to the calls, just listen to the sales calls. That's what I want you to do for the first hour until I get there. And so I came in, how was it? Oh, it was good. I just don't understand how are you doing the math to provide the quotes? So I was like, oh, made central does all of that. Let me show you how we used to do it though. And I brought up my spreadsheet and had the ranges of the homes down the left side and our options across the top. And here's the initial deep clean crisis. And then down here's the maintenance clean. And sometimes they want to want to add on and take off. So you'd have to put them on hold. I was like, it was to provide a quote before made central was like, it was embarrassingly long. So the point where sometimes I'm like, let me, I'm just gonna have to work this out and I'll give you a call back. You know, where now it's like, I can do it while I'm texting my husband and you know, like it takes no thought process whatsoever. And that is just incredible. I think the dream of having the one call sale or one, yeah, one call sale, you know, you finished the entire sales process and one phone call that that's a dream. You know, that's one of those things where it's like you're able to talk to a person, give them a quote, put them on the schedule and without the right tools in place, that's impossible where you might, you might be able to give them the quote and even then you might have to call them back and give them the quote and then you have to find a spot to schedule them and that might take a little bit of time where it's like, let me put you on a brief hold while I go double check a couple of things and you're looking through weeks on the Google calendar to make sure that you aren't gonna double book somebody or looking through your scheduling sheet to make sure that that's actually a really open spot versus having, you know, all of that information that your fingertips all in one tool. Like that's, that's awesome. And text your husband at the same time. It really doesn't take, you know, being talkative and making a sale is, that's always been a strong suit of mine, but doing all that and then like having the paper all over your desk and it's just, it was really stressful. And now to be able to like look at quickly, look at the customer efficiency. Like I did, I sold three recurrence today and I was like, I said, I was training somebody and he was like, how did you, I'm like just go to this report, go to that report. Then you're gonna look at the master, it's right there and like you'll get it. It takes a little time, but like once you've got it, you can do it and it's so quick. It's amazing. Yeah. So a couple of things that I noticed while I was just kind of like looking at your stats, looking at some comparison things. One of the really big ones that I saw was your, actually your customer attrition that improved significantly in the last year. So we, something that will come up commonly in our conversations during our partner profiles, but we quartile out our made central partners. So, you know, our bottom 25% of people in certain KPIs are fourth quartile, third quartile, second quartile and first quartile, but your customer attrition went from fourth quartile a year ago to first quartile now. So what are some of the things that you feel like you've changed in the last year to really drop that from losing almost 11% of your customers on a monthly basis, almost to 3.5% now, which is like the dream. Which is really an awesome place to be, you know. Yeah, that's like a dream number. That's awesome. So I guess I didn't realize that we were doing as well. Surprise. Yeah, what a good surprise. So I would think that a huge change for us personally was being able to just the consistency. So a lot of people aren't gonna be able to relate to this exact thing because they haven't ever tried to run a million dollar company off of Google Calendar, but it like duplicates and then it gets super messy. And if you change it to this person one time, I do not suggest anybody ever try that route. But now it's like I can stick a client onto a cleaner and it lives there permanently. So that being able, and then being able to run, so say that cleaner request next Friday off, I can go in and see which technicians have been there before if we've ever sat a different technician and say like, oh, okay, Hailey's been there before. She has subbed in for Nancy. So let's send Hailey again. And that consistency of like not just sending anybody, I think has been a huge improvement with Made Central. I love being able to quickly see like, okay, these are the people who have been there. It's not gonna be a completely new thing. So I would say that is probably one of the top factors improving our attrition. Another is gonna be the scorecards. You know, the scorecards, there's always this dream that like, well, I'll call and check in on them when we have more time, right? And the scorecards are like a quality survey that go out after every cleaning. Yeah. So, and we always think that we're gonna someday have all this more time. Or that, you know. Between the 10 items of every canceled customer, we'll figure sometimes to call these people up. I mean, I'm definitely an optimistic person, but, so now our ops manager even, and it happens often, I think, well, not often, but it's happened a couple of times where they'll say like, oh, I didn't, I'm happy, but they went from a four to a three. And we'll call the next day like, hey, you know, did something change? Is there something that was missed? We wanna make no in your account. And sometimes it'll be like, oh, I didn't, I didn't need that. And I'm like, did you just have a change of heart? Cause I think you know what you're doing, but no matter what, even if it goes from a four to a three, we're calling, you know? So we are any chance that they're not happy we're calling. I think it also opens up a platform to vent quickly. So it's not, you know, they're getting that as soon as the text leave. So it's not like, it's not like they have to wait the next day to call the office. And a lot of people aren't comfortable, you know, Aja, I know you talk a lot about like the generation thing where if somebody has to call into book of cleaning, they're not gonna, they're not gonna do that. They wanna do it at 11 o'clock at night from their bed while they're stressed out about that. Gotta clean this house. So the fact that people don't have to be considered confrontational and quoted, we can't see it. That they don't have to be considered confrontational and let you know exactly how they feel. And I would say everybody's been respectful, you know? It's not like they're being belligerent or anything, but it's an open forum for them to speak freely and openly about exactly how they feel about their services. And then the fact that we're following up the next day, if it's anything under a four also lets them know like we have our eyes on this. This isn't just like a set it and forget it and we don't care about how it's actually going. Oh, you know, when you mentioned that customer attrition rate going from a little over 11% to down to like 3 1⁄2%, one of the things that we teach is that you can take like one and divide it by that percentage and that gives you the average number of months that a recurring customer is gonna be with your business. So your average number of months when it was like over 11 wound up being less than nine months on average for a recurring customer, giving it down to 3 1⁄2%, the average number of months is now over 28. So you went from less than nine to over 28 months of service. So what is that? That's like three times as much, right? Over three times, you're getting three times as much lifetime value out of a customer now than you did before by lowering that attrition, right? Yeah. That's crazy. I mean, just like even more on that, that's less fighting for new customers to fill in those spots, that's less marketing to fill out those customers, that's longer relationships, better relationships with them. Like that number, especially when you hit that million mark, like especially, I say especially, but just in my head, I see that as an especially point, but it's just like putting a stopper on that back door just means you're fighting that much less for each little bit. Yeah. And Aja pulls some numbers and she's got you at like 3.2 million by the way. So I think you might be doing better than what you're giving yourself credit for. No, I've got 1.2. I'm sorry, 1.2. Hey, we can have that. But you're on your way because... Yeah, you're on your way. From a percentage standpoint, you've grown your business about 60% in revenue from... You've been all made central, yeah. In less than a year, I mean in 10 months. It's just crazy. Yeah, in the time that I pulled, which I tried to look for a time where it looked like things got really steady where you guys were using it really consistently. That's why I knew that June date or that July date so clearly was because I went through it really when to make sure everything was really consistent to give you good comparison numbers. And yeah, you were looking at about 3.4 of a million just under that. Last year, last July. And now in April, you're looking at that 1.2. And that's crazy. That's so cool. And you have more time to go home and take Wednesdays off. And I'm just like... If we were doing a word cloud from this discussion, consistency would be the biggest word in that word cloud. I think that's part of the secret sauce. That's a metric that we measure inside of Made Central that is really underappreciated. But we saw this, we talked to Brian Morton a couple of weeks ago and we're seeing again in your business, you've done a lot of things to maintain a higher level of consistency. And that's reflecting itself and growth in revenue, growth in customer retention, lower employee turnover rate. That's a meaningful amount too. Yeah, and we've got in that feedback. So we do a lot of checking in with our cleaners, which is another thing that Made Central has free to set to do is we are no longer behind on our quarterly check-ins. So that's another point. But they have said like they, especially the ones that have been with us for a couple of years, like we just feel like we've gotten to know our clients a lot better because we're going to the same ones consistently, where before it'd be like, I'll just delete this one. I think this is who went there. And I wasn't going to, I had a clock in system. So we were using like T sheets and switched to Quick Book Times. So, but I would have to like have ran a report for each job where, and then the other thing is the technician preference, that may have been the video that made me cry that late night holding my baby because like you would, so I wasn't doing the scheduling. I am right now very, very temporarily, but I used to be like, oh my God, you can't send that person there or you have to make sure Stacy goes to that job. And I would be like, how did they not know that? You know, of course they don't know that because they don't have the mind of an owner where we can keep all these little tidbits about all of our clients in there. So that is, that may have been the one that made me cry because I was like, oh my God, it's gonna give them a flag if Stacy doesn't go there. In addition to being able to mark my VIPs as well, you know, so being able to put that icon on there. So if we do have a call in or if we do have to bump things, like do you do not bump that person? And that is a VIP. You know, Heather, we had a meeting today, kind of a planning meeting we do at every quarter. And one of the things that we went through an exercise of identifying the things that make residential cleaning different from a lot of other home services. And what other home service really has a preference and dispreference for technicians. I mean, really doesn't matter in other services. Right, yeah. Yeah, but they certainly do care in this industry. I remember so clearly, I can almost like, if I had a calendar in front of me, I could tell you the date, but it was the first week in December, the year that we switched to Made Central 2019. And I remember very clearly the first night that I didn't have a scheduling dream, that I didn't like plan out what was gonna happen the next day if somebody called out, because I had taken the time and that like five weeks of us being live or whatever to add all the preferences and dispreferences and tags that we had created and whatnot, and I knew that all of it was, with every tag and every preference that I added, it just like floated out of my brain. It floated away and there was some empty space for other things to happen. And I just remember so vividly, like waking up that morning and being like, I didn't have a scheduling dream. My goodness. Well, that was another thing. I've never heard that term used before. A scheduling dream? Right. Have you never been, you've probably never been a full-time scheduler. It was a while ago. It was a while ago. Yeah, schedulers have scheduling dreams. You just are seeing things moving around the calendar. Yeah. And I never thought I would get over, I just mentioned this to somebody in Texas this last week. I never thought I would get over it because Google Calendar's nine to five, up and down and made Central's the other direction. And like it doesn't cross my mind at all now because I'm so used to it, but yeah, when I first switched over, that was like the thing that gave me like, am I gonna be able to get used to this? There's a lot of things, schedulers are very particular. That's why we like the puzzle and we like to have things neat and orderly. So I've definitely had my fair share of scheduling dreams. And now for you to be able to like know that you are literally temporarily scheduling, that you don't know who cleaned what house yesterday that you are just holding onto this until the next person can be trained, like that you trust that whoever fills this position has the tools to keep that consistency going for your customers, like that to me is just so incredible. Right, I feel like I could, so this is like a huge thing, is the fact that I feel like I can pass that off where before it was like, how am I gonna ever teach anybody this system? Now it's like, I mean, it's so clear cut that I think as we grow, I have a vision to have, you know, five, 10, however many sales people. And I imagine them all on the calls and they're cleaning after cleaning after cleaning and they can just look at the calendar and be like, there's an opening where it was not, it's not obvious like that with a lot of softwares where you can be like, okay, on the 26th of April, we can fit this, you know, 12 hour deep cleaning and they hang up and the next one gets buffed, you know, so it's like, and I really think that this is just such a scalable software that that is gonna be a vision that comes true and it's gonna be very easy to not have to communicate internally and just get it on the calendar and just move through it quickly. Yeah, I always say that we only need like any sales person really only needs like three reports open at a time and really they only need to use two of those, honestly, if you've got a good enough system going, they only need two of them, there's two optional. I say there's four total, two required, two optional essentially. And as long as you're using those ones, you can book anything, one single call, so. I also wanted to mention something about just like having, going back to like, you know, how I used to spend my time and how I spend it now, you're, you know, I can't come up with these quotes whenever I'm live like this because it's like a little nerve wracking. Sorry, we're all looking at you. Just don't worry about it. But being able to see your revenue in the top right corner and knowing what, so like when I looked at April, like I know the capacity that we can sell. So I know when it's, when it is time to put a little pressure on my sales team and say like, hey, we still have $6,000 worth of availability on the schedule for the next, you know, for the rest of April, I'd like to see that booked by the end of this week. Let's get some ideas on how we can get that filled or whatever the case may be. I like my calendar completely full of week out, which I, from my understanding is a little overkill. I heard some people say like two to three days and I'm like, oh boy, I cannot handle that. I like a week. I like one to two weeks. That's my, that's my help. Are you a two-weeker? I would love two weeks. I mean, it gives like a sense of value to new recurring services. Like, ooh, people are waiting two weeks for this cleaning service. Like, yeah, put me down. Yeah, that's true. You know, like, I like that. I mean, a week, a week, not more than two weeks, but between that one to two week range always feels, it gives the right value, you know, level to the people. It kind of reduces the people with too high of expectations of being able to be really last minute because we don't really want those people that expect that super last minute. Right. Hey, we can clean your home today if you want us to. Yeah, we don't want to set that expectation. That's not it. So like that one to two just feels like it brings the right type of customer in that are willing to wait that week to two weeks and understand that that's because of the value that we're bringing. So I'm with you there. I'm right on there. I guess I'm more of the camp of like, we can relax a little bit. You know, the pressure doesn't have to be so on, but I do understand what you're saying, but I want to mention about like the, that knowing what your revenue is going to be and be able to plan for that and to be able to like the forecasting of it and knowing how to manage your team, like, okay, we need to really increase our hiring right now. We need our interviewing slots need to go up 100% this week. We, you know, we're this fall or whatever the case may be. That has really brought a back to that like high level management. I love it. I'm going to give you one, one extra report to use for that future revenue predictability. It's kind of an underutilized report, but I think it's really helpful. It's on the kiosk dashboard. Okay. I can't stop teaching. I just can't. No, I can't pull it out. So the kiosk dashboard, there's a tab on that that is called future revenue and it shows you the next seven days of revenue and what it was compared to the seven days prior. So if you have like a last minute cancellation or something on it, especially as a salesperson being able to watch that and know if they have a last minute spot to fill, you know, you can watch that, your salesperson can watch it. It's just one of those reports that I recommend kind of having open and kind of referring to a couple of times a day just to see if something got canceled by somebody else or skipped or whatever. And if there's any last minute availability to fill up just because you like to keep that seven days full, that one's a really good one because it keeps a rotating seven days for you. And if the number's smaller than it was seven days prior, it shows up red, which is kind of an indicator that you need to do something. Yeah, that's something canceled in the last. Don't see red numbers on that report. Yeah. So that one's just a little helpful under your eyes report for you. I'm very excited to know about it. Oh, and just, gosh, I forgot one more thing. You said, when you said that you hired this guy out of the field and you went, oh, other people probably gasped at that. I was a cleaner and was hired out of the field. Oh, right. Right. Can it work out okay? Okay, we're talking now. So I'm gonna say like sometimes you don't know what talent is hiding in your field. And they, especially as a salesperson too, they're gonna be able to sell that like so well because they know exactly what goes into it. They know the processes. They can answer all the questions without having to be taught it because they've literally been in the trenches doing it. So I think there's a lot of really good potential of hiring out of the field. I agree. I agree. I think, you know, we just have to make sure that it's a decision that we're making for the right. For the right reasons. Not at a desperation out of potential. That's right. And, you know, if part of the interviewing process, you know, that's one of the things that you should be assessing. I mean, not everybody you hire for a cleaning professional necessarily, you know, has all of the traits necessary to be successful on your support staff, but sometimes they do. And if you're looking for that as part of the interviewing process, I mean, that's something that, you know, can create opportunities to bring people into the office when you have a little extra supply, I guess, a little extra capacity. And, you know, some really good things can happen. I've seen a lot of great success stories by bringing people, you know, starting off as a cleaning technician and grooming them to take on more responsibility in the business. Sometimes people just burn out and they turn to cleaning just to kind of refuel for a little bit. And, you know, if you know what their experience is and what other potential they might have when that burnout phase kind of fades. Right. That's what I did. Exactly why I ended up cleaning. Yeah, I was just kind of like, I don't want to do that anymore. I still want to do customer service. I still want to help people. I just don't want to be in retail or, you know, restaurant work anymore type things. And so there's still some, you know, sometimes they just need a little breaky poo. Yeah, I can understand that. And, you know, it can be empathetic to the customers and to the cleaning professionals. I mean, there's a lot of magic that can come if you can find, you know, the right people to bring up in the organization that way. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for your support, guys. Yeah, I'm all here for it. I love hearing it all. So what's next? Is there anything in Made Central that you haven't implemented yet or you're still working on? I just put some goals in yesterday. So I was like, okay, this is goal setting is, celebrating is like not my best, you know, I'm kind of one of those, get to the goal and then what's next kind of person? That's Tom. You're pointing at the wrong way. Well, I don't know, but I'm thinking, yeah, I know somebody like that. Yeah, I have that same affliction, Heather. So, you know, I'm trying to slow down and actually like set the goals and then have a celebration for them and things like that. So I just started using the goals. I only, there was like, I think five or six that you could set and I only put in like two. I was like, let's just start there. Great, I love that. So that's definitely one. Are you setting these goals up in the toolbox? Or the spotlight dashboard? Where did I put them? Are you in Made Central? It was in your Made Central account? Yes, yes. Okay, so it's either probably on your dashboard or on the spotlight, which I think those are connected now. So it's probably both actually. Yeah, I was able to click one. Yes, that's where it is, the spotlight dashboard. So I could put my goals there and I was like, this is really, really cool to have a software that actually lets you put your goals in because I think a lot of times our goals are something that we're tracking on the side, right? And not like actually in our software. Connected to the numbers to actually show you if you're succeeding. Some other things, I am like obsessed with this beta version of the sales KPI, by the way. I just wanted to mention that and I love it. The consistency report is something that we just pulled. Now that reminds me on how I pulled that but that was something else. Like we need to make sure this is part of our level 10s on a regular basis to be checking in how good our consistency is. I haven't done a rate increase yet with Mate Central. So I'm really, really, really looking forward to that. And then just to be able to... When are you gonna do that, Heather? Are you trying to hold the accountable, Tom? Yeah, I mean, I might send you an email. It is free money. I know. So I did have a couple of questions. I'm meeting with Alvin, Yodi. Yodi? Yodi. I'm meeting with her, I want to say on Thursday. So I just had a couple of questions and like that I'm, so I'm gonna do it Friday, Tom. And you don't have to do it with everybody. You can run filters and just get a small number of people. Don't go crazy with it, but pick 10 customers and give them a rate increase. I already have them listed out the 10. You know, there's a calculator. Are you familiar with toolbox.madecentral.com? No. Okay. That's a free tool that anybody has access to. You just have to sign up. This is a different login than your made central login. So if you haven't used it before, you can create an account, but then you can create accounts for other people in your organization if you want them to be able to share the same data. But one of the things that's in there is a calculator that will show you if you do a rate increase of some percentage, you can make an assumption about losing a certain percent of those customers. It'll take into consideration if you, based on your pay plan, if you do like a percentage pay as opposed to hourly or job ticket, I don't tell you how much money you're making. So you can actually clean fewer homes and still be making more money. Once you play with that calculator a little bit, you'll be a little more motivated to do that rate increase. Now that you explain what it is, I think I have played with it a little bit on maybe the core KPI meetings or... Yeah, it used to be branded corekpi.maycentral.com. We kind of rebranded it because we've got all kinds of other tools that we've been putting in there too. Okay, so the other thing that I really want to go through is just the touch points and the template emails. When we started using Made Central, which is amazing and so huge. That's another thing that I used to have my team doing is they send a quote on Monday. I'd say, on Tuesday, hey, did you follow up with this person? Now they had the task that they were supposed to follow up but it's like, did they use the right text that I told them to, you know what I'm saying? So it's like, yeah, to take all of that out. But I put them all in there when we first started using Made Central and I was like, this is good enough for now. And it has been. But it's like, I want to go through and just look at them all and see where I can put a little bit more thought into them. So I don't know exactly who did I talk to? Oh, Camilla, do not ask me to pronounce her last name, but we decided today that we were gonna do like some, she was just at your guys' Made Central Academy. Oh, really, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, not just us. And- Over the last week. Yes, so we've decided that like by the end of the year there's gonna be nothing about Made Central that we don't know. Wow. That's so cool. I'll let you keep coming up with new stuff, but that's, we're like, we're going deep. I want you to know, Heather, a week doesn't go by that like somebody like Aja and certainly myself is like, wow, I didn't know we did that. Okay, so maybe we're setting the bar high, but that- I think like once a month, something comes up where I'm like, oh, when did that happen? It happened last week. Well, you get the gist. Is that like, I really wanna study, you know, going back into the CEO role, it's like, what am I gonna, I'm gonna have time that I'm gonna work in the business. I'm gonna meet, I'm gonna do my level 10s. I'm gonna meet with my office manager, my sales team, all of that fun stuff, but I really am gonna focus the next, you know, what do we got here? Eight months left of the year on high level, working on my business stuff. And that includes getting very, very comfortable with Made Central, maybe not as good as Aja or Austin or Tom, but like really, really good. I wanna be great at it, you know, because I know that there's so much in here that we're not utilizing and things that would be able to help me just figure out what's going good and what is it. And you're on a really strong growth path right now. So that's just gonna accelerate that crazy. I'm excited for you. Thank you. I'm so excited for you on Wednesday off. Like, give me a little teary-eyed over here because that's just freaking amazing. So yeah. It is the most important dreams. And it's better than, this is what I've decided, it's better than a Monday or a Friday because that kind of just blends into the weekend. And, you know, with a three year old and a one and a half year old, it's like, you don't always have, say I had Monday's off, it's like, I'm gonna be tired just spending the whole weekend with them, you know. So you're like, I need a break actually. Yeah, we do need breaks, you know. So like to have that mid week, like, okay, now we can go out and we can do fun stuff. And it's about to be summer here in upstate New York. We get very small amounts of nice weather. So I'm just gonna soak it up and enjoy every minute I count on my babies. I love it. I love it so much. So, tell us about Mades Central Training events. You've attended some of our stuff before, haven't you? Yes, I was at the one in Detroit or whatever, Rochester, in Hills. Yeah, Rochester, yeah. Yeah, outside of Detroit. We're gonna be doing a three day event in Charleston in September. I think we're gonna be announcing that pretty soon. Yeah, so I think when I came the first time, it was like, whoa, this is like, because we were still pretty new. So that was in October. So I think it would benefit me to go again because, you know, I'm gonna be an expert by the end of the year, so. Yeah, you can help teach. We'll give you a segment. Sounds good. And I think that getting some time, and I think, I listened to your previous guest, your friend. Yeah, and I think that he said that he was happy he went so quickly. And I think for me, because of the way I learn, I was given all these really amazing learning tools with Mades Central, but because I am who I am and like very stubborn, you know, I like to like learn everything myself and not just watch the easy videos. So I was still a little like, whoa, this is like crazy. So now that I have a really good handle on Mades Central, I think it would be really beneficial for me to go in September. Now, when my husband agreed with that, to be determined. I guess I'll find out. Yeah, I know, I think Brian is the fact that he went to a live event the week that he went live. He is in the minority in being able to really, really utilize as much of that. I think he's got a different style of brain because that would overwhelm a lot of you. Yeah, you know, and there was a lot of people there that were interested in the software at that time. And I'm like, I wonder how, you know, what they took from it, but. It's definitely a different experience for people who don't use Mades Central. It's more of like some of the operational foundation stuff that we talk about, maybe less of the features, but more about like, how does this apply to my business and like, what can I take from this to apply to maybe our current practices to get some of these good returns or how do I track some of these numbers in my current software? Or, you know, is this even possible with what I'm currently doing? So I'm getting some of the value out of it. I mean, we've had a lot of people that don't use Mades Central get tons of value out of those live events too. Yeah, and that's another thing about Mades Central that I just love is like the core KPIs because you guys helped me figure out like, what should I actually be paying attention to? Like what is the major things where, you know, it's like the dashboard on your vehicle. You need to know these certain things. Now, if your car is dirty, it's like, ah, it's something I don't love, but like, if you're running out of gas, that's a pretty important thing, you know? So being able to see that, like especially going back to the CEO role at a quick glance and being like, where's the issues? That it's just amazing to have that right at your fingertips so quickly. You know, we're at the top of the hour. How quickly that goes. Yeah. Heather, you're rocking it. I am, congratulations. Seriously, you're doing something special. Well, that means so much. Thank you. Thank you for making us look good. I hope I say. I don't think that, you know, people will say, oh, you're such a made central cheerleader. I'm like, and I am. I mean, you're making it look effortless, honestly. You know, you're doing some great stuff and I love the way that you're talking, like that you explain, you know, kind of your process too and just how you got to where you're at with Made Central and knowing what your goals are too. I just really enjoy being able to put that into both like objective terms and subjective terms with your family too. Like, we can't make this stuff up. And we talk about three stakeholders and you're taking care of all three of them. Your, you know, customer attrition rate has dropped like a rock. So you're providing great service. Your employee turnover has dropped significantly. So you're making better jobs and your revenue has grown a ton. So you're building a better business. So, I mean, you know, you're a cheerleader but you're making it happen. The numbers speak for themselves. That's right. Well, we are gonna go ahead and call it a day, I guess. We're gonna wrap this, but Heather, thank you so much. Thank you guys. We'll be back. When will we be back? First Tuesday. Are we? Today in May, it's the seventh. Seventy, if I know how to count. It's May 7th. We're gonna have a guest. And we should know who that is. I do know who that is. It will be Kim Sandberg with Busy B's maid service. Well, Kim's fine. She did foundation for us a few weeks ago. Yeah. Yeah, she, I'm probably gonna cry on that one. She gets me emotional. Anyways, that's it. I'm just empathetic. Thank you guys. Thank you so much, guys. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.