 Hey, good afternoon everybody time steward here. I'm a Liz Trotter and our guest today is RJ Patel RJ How the heck are you ma'am? I am wonderful here in the south Nice warm warm south 72 and beautiful and blue Same here in Charleston. This is crazy. It feels like it's spring time I want me to share pictures of my outside there. Please I don't know if I can we'll try 75 degrees no, I've got looking up at my thing looks like I've got 29. Can you see Blanket of snow there, huh? Yeah, it's so nice. I'm so happy Could definitely be worse right In you you were saying that that like started Christmas day Christmas day. Yeah Wow Yeah, it started at a white Christmas and a white day after Christmas and two days And you're gonna have a white new year at this right thing so we are gonna have a white new year Yeah, it doesn't look like we are going to heat up enough. We have one day where we get like 39 That's not enough to hey Linda That's not enough to do anything to nine inches of snow Especially because in my city We have not figured out yet, or I guess it's kind of my state We haven't figured out yet that in the winter it snows So Nobody knows what to do when it snows. It's like what's happening It's winter y'all. Yeah Clothes our stores clothes our schools clothes everything closes because we don't have We have enough snow to justify snow plows we don't have snow plows where we are either because but how often does it snow there Tom? Not often last time it snowed here was maybe four years ago. Yeah, and how long did the snow stick around a week? Good chunk of time then well, but it was like a healthy snow. It was like six inches and You know, I've been living here for like 25 years and that was the first time I ever saw that much snow All right. Well, we don't we snow more than that not not not like you guys We used to snow like want get snow like every once six years maybe But now we're getting it every two years and we had it last year So, I don't know. Maybe we're doing it everyone every year now. So I just don't know I feel like now it snows here You know that was changing in all the parts of the country. So There's something special about a white Christmas. Let's just leave it at that, right? Yeah, what really is nice I know up with one and I still love it Yeah So what's RJ what's been going on in your world? We haven't you're you're a regular contributor to smart business moves, but we haven't seen you in a while. What you've been up to? Working a lot and You know, I think One of the things that you may know Tom I used to own the shopping center where my office is yeah, and I sold it And so I've been busy doing that Didn't you like February of 2020? Yes, I did It was supposed to close end of January and for whatever reason it got delayed but I know now why it was delayed because Believe it or not. We close I think on February 3rd of 2020 and then March came the COVID Effect and so we sold it. We were out And I felt sorry because every single business here except us was closed So I was wondering how this new landlord was cutting the rents. Yeah So I felt sorry for him for about two minutes Because I was in that situation And it was like it was rough But it was it was really good to get out Be done and just focus on the cleaning industry. Oh, that's so nice. Yeah, perfect timing I Never I've told so many people that story. I'm like Perfect We've been we've been doing a lot of disinfecting Tom The company goes sharing and we opened We have done just over four and a half million square feet of disinfecting. Wow It's been quite busy and what geographic area are you servicing? We have done it in Wisconsin, Illinois South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, of course, Georgia That's it I said moved around a lot, but I didn't know it was out. Yeah. Yeah Yeah You've got one of our strategic success People started doing this and they're doing really well, too. Caleb over at Pink Power Cleaning. Yeah Yeah, so he's got his brother running that part of the business now and yeah. Yeah, we lot He was telling us about that. Yeah. Yeah, we trained him and said, okay. This is how you do it Yeah, he gives you props every chance he gets. Well, thank you, Caleb Constantly telling everybody about it. So yeah, really awesome. Well and and go shot, you know, both What's the name of your company RJ PCT disinfecting. Oh, okay, so that's that's easy I thought you guys might have changed it with Combined yours and go share or something. So no, I think we leveraged our PCT brand here and just Use that. Yeah, and it's it's it's proven to be quite effective. We're very happy with that and Grateful to have diversified during that time. Yeah, yeah Diversification we were just talking about that something that you highly recommend for sure, right? Yes for sure so we certainly do Recommend diversifying You know our cleaning industry is a is a big industry, of course and the ISSA kind of helps us open up our eyes and minds to What is out there and You know, it's We we decided to step outside of our comfort zone. I believe in March and April of 2020 When none of us knew what was going on what was going to happen You know, we didn't know what a shutdown would do yeah, why would you shut our entire country and world down? We had that was just like looking over the abyss had no idea what was happening the next day. Yeah, I'm none Right, the supreme unprecedented event, right? No way this whole concept of electrostatic spraying as a business venture for you and Gosha Wasn't even a consideration until COVID hit is that right? That is correct They jumped on it. They were the fastest people you guys were fat People talk about pivoting. I mean, you know, you break your ankle pivoting that fast So How long did it take you from Realizing that you know, we're not cleaning homes today And we don't know if that's going to be a one-week thing a one-month thing or a forever thing How long did it take you guys to actually stand this up and get it going? I believe between you know, you're you're looking at the website the name the registration Opening the accounts all of that Took us probably around 45 days. Everything was in the works And then the work began almost immediately So fast, yep, and then while all that was happening we were online doing all the G back stuff that is to say was putting out there and That was very very helpful and then the best thing was just being out there doing the work Understanding what was going on and at the time, you know, they were saying it's surfaces surfaces We were used to cleaning surfaces. That was our what we did. Yeah, that part. They didn't have to kind of Teach us but what we were doing Was paying more attention to the details of what surfaces are touched along the way and Paying attention to that and that's where Tom the electrostatic spraying Encompasses things that we cannot manually clean You know it envelopes the surfaces that need to be cleaned and disinfected For example, what what type of surfaces are ideal? I mean, I know I'm going off topic a little bit, but I'm fascinated by You know, there's a lot of people that I mean everything touch point Let's say door handles Refrigerator handles bathroom door handles, you know, I I know I'm one of those people that never touches the door handle in a bathroom I've always got a paper towel in my hand pulling it and then disposing it. That was before COVID. That's just My OCD I guess But everything Everything that you potentially can touch to open to close to push to whatever is considered a touch point and We have to really look for it just recently in Chicago they they had a 45 hundred square foot office that we did I think a week and a half ago and You know, I had to refresh myself of opening the doors To closets so the inside of the handle could get clean Yeah, and as I was doing that and pulling chairs out because a lot of times the the Hand rest is under You have to pull that out because that's a touch point. Oh, yeah You know so many things don't think of so many things that you don't think of and So as we were doing this I was explaining it afterwards to the Gentleman who actually opened the door for us and he said yeah I noticed you were opening things and doing this. He said I appreciate that So having that knowledge and being aware of what you're doing and making sure that you get everything It helps them as if they're watching Even if they're not watching that's our job anyway, but if they're watching it helps them feel confident that you know what you're doing So I know that we're talking about something else today, but I feel like this actually ties in Annual planning so in case you're looking at doing some more of this in 2022 to be part of your annual planning maybe but I do have a question our day So way back in the day we talked with oh crap her name just went out of my head Tom who did we have on she was the only one at that time that was doing this type of cleaning right in the beginning St. Louis yeah, we love her remember Anyway while you're thinking of her She shared a whole a lot of different things with us RJ like how many claws They would use and how they suit it up and how they would unsuit not how many breaks and stuff And I don't remember this number But I'm curious now because we know a lot more about the electrostatic sprain is who do you got? I see you your turn grammar. Yeah, Sharon grammar So, you know Sharon RJ. I don't you don't you should You You will love her RJ, okay. Yeah, and she will love you too. She's been doing this for many years too, so Her primary business is like crime scene clean up So, I mean they don't do a job unless they're wearing the whole Ghostbuster And well, and it might be a connection for you with somebody who's been doing this even longer I know when you get sort of to the top of your game You start running out of people to bounce ideas off of because you're the most knowledgeable person We all know we don't want to be the smartest person in the room. So no there you go Sharon Maybe she's got a little something for you that could help but my question was Nowadays now that you've been doing this for a while in the areas that you're doing How many square feet can you do in an hour say with? electrostatic so You know that there's a huge variance on that. Let's just say that it's a retail store Okay, we do have retail stores that are anywhere from 19,000 square feet all the way to the largest one is 42,000 square feet. Okay big We can do The 19,000 in less than an hour. Oh wow. Okay. Okay, and we Yeah, it moves fast. There are three settings on the spring Yeah, and it just depends if we need to get up top Versus just things that are more What we call, you know eye level. Yeah, it just depends In an office situation, for example, we have an office that is about 250,000 square feet but on 11 different floors Wow Okay You know that office They put away everything. Yeah, they just leave their keyboards and screens and everything Um and the products we use are very safe for electronics. So That one floor which is around 20,000 square feet 22,000 square feet will be about an hour Okay, so that's a big job though doing that one building. That's a Oh, yes. Yes, and we we have to move with security because it's a It's a very secured building and so You know, we we go to each floor with a security card How often Now that people are in the situation they are with cobit How often do you find yourself going back to to businesses? Is it like a once a month thing once a quarter? um You know, we have a church that we've been to twice now in 10 days Oh, okay. So I do you know depending on what type of facility it is um offices Depending on their policy You know Everybody has a sick policy now. Yeah, if you even sneeze twice within two minutes Yeah, stay home Right. You got to go, right. Yeah, exactly Uh church now is a different story, right people come Yeah, and they all different kinds of people come and They may bring things and what may happen is afterwards the church will get a phone call and say Hey, we had some so that tested positive. So they immediately call us and we go in and take care of it And do it all So you pretty much are right now People are doing it more reactively than proactively. That's correct. That's correct. That makes sense the preventative Measures that people were taking because you know, there was a there was a point where Media everybody had everybody scared Yeah, and That was when preventative was more Yeah Popular Yeah, now it's more You come clean up after Yeah Now they're doing it because Then they had an outbreak and they know they have to or people aren't going to accept it They're not going to accept that you didn't do the do the disinfecting. Yeah, that makes sense So if there's anybody out there who Has an interest in learning more about this or thinking that part of their plan for 2022 Maybe should incorporate, you know, this type of cleaning and disinfecting They can they can reach out to you rj and absolutely, please do Yeah Have the discussion Yeah The website again, I drop the link in the chat if you guys want to take a closer look and and dig into this this is Impressive very cool You can't not remind everyone that These are the I mean you guys are the people to look at because when When COVID hit 45 days 45 days and you guys were on it It didn't seem like that long. I remember that Tom when you and I were talking we had Just gotten started doing the smart We started doing the silly live stream because we didn't know what else to do Yeah Yeah, and we wanted to know what was going on out there in the world, right? Yeah Like we had just barely started Doing a live stream, which is so easy We had just barely started doing this and you guys were already Like had a whole brand new company up and running and doing all this disinfecting. I was like, man Awesome. I'll tell you what I have to give Gosha full credit for that because she's a she's a bulldog She once she gets her mindset on something That's it I kind of get out of her way and say, okay fine, you know and then You know, we've had the privilege of not only traveling the country to do this but One of the properties and we did sign the NDA. So I'll just share Uh, the gist of it One of the first six star resorts That I've ever been to um It was like I know I didn't know. Yeah, I'm just thinking six. No. Yeah It's just like having 11 on the volume control. There's no such thing. Is there no such thing, right? But this This place was just Unbelievable. Um You know, I could take a I could take a cooler and bounce it off the bed The the sheets were so tight and I I appreciated that because I owned a hotel for 27 years So I'm like my sheets never did that. Um, you know, uh, the Caribbean. Where were you? Uh, believe it or not. I was in visconsin Wow Wow, all right. Yep, super exciting. I didn't even know they had a six star resort in Wisconsin, but yeah, that's super exciting And it was it was pretty neat. Um And tom, I know you're googling It's the cola resort And that is in They had the uh, I see it tournament there. Yeah. Yeah, matter of fact when we were leaving The posters were there and they said, please don't take pictures or anything of that Well, this is the color faucet company. Yes. Yes Every single bathroom Is unique Every single bathroom is unique. That was for the that was for the rider cup. It was in the fall Wow, I'm looking at the picture here. This is amazing It was it is beautiful All that furniture is from england. It's old english furniture Wow, it's so pretty. Oh, okay. So i'm gonna stop googling now come back to work Anyway, we've had we've had the opportunity for that we've had the opportunity, um actually to clean and disinfect for the past two years for a worldwide celebrity Um and that in da i have to Honor i'm gonna be able to say anything but Can you give us initials we could get down? I'm gonna bug you about that So, you know, as we're as we're cleaning this house, right? The staff is lifting everything from It's it's a 16,000 square foot, you know, yeah um One of the staff is holding One of his Grammys And i'm like, do you realize what you're doing? Yeah. Oh gosh, you know, it's like wow. It was one of those moments Yeah, did you just inspect it? You spray it now? We cleaned the dust off of it Ah, awesome That's exciting Yeah I I love the big names. We've only really ever cleaned two people that we had to sign an nda for and really I didn't even know who they were Like oh big names. I googled them and I was like, oh, okay. Now I see why but Um, I didn't even know yeah, if I gave you initials tom you would go really? Oh, that makes me think it's either cars or sports. I don't think it's sports All right, don't don't be giving me any kind of clues because I I'm like a bulldog with like a hints to let it let it go I saw you're in Atlanta, so it's probably i'm gonna I have a guy i'll have a guest but i'm not gonna go there I So i'm thinking but you can't say anything He didn't say anything so We're good. You know what i'm googling size of his house right now Is it 16,000? All right, we said grammy duh. What am I thinking sports? We're here today to wrap up 2021 and talk about getting ready for the new year in the half hour or so that we have left dog on it We're gonna do it. Sorry tom It's okay. We're having fun. Hey, it's the last throw of the year. We can have a little fun Yeah, it really is last show of the year. So we got to get some fun in there You know, I want to share this with you guys. Um We all believe in the spiritual principle. Um Well, most of us do but I've heard this saying that says You plan god laughs, right? Right. So you think to yourself, why should I plan? Right. Yeah, god's gonna laugh at me anyway Well, god wants you to plan regardless And especially in business it is important to plan It's important to have your quarterly meetings. It is important to have your Organizational chart it is important to do everything that you're supposed to do because If another covet or something comes along, yeah, you're always going to be better prepared than you were If you didn't do all of that. Yeah, absolutely So, you know, as much as I believe on the spiritual side, I still plan God can continue to laugh And he'll make the necessary adjustments Yeah, um, and I'm good with that but Please plan Yes Also a huge believer and yes, I I agree, right? You plan god laughs But if you do nothing god's like I'm not wasting my time with you I'm working with people that that got that game. They're trying they're doing the thing. So Yep This is like the expectation is there for us to do our part Yes Yeah, like the secret remember when the secret first came out and people were like, I'm just going to sit and I'm just going to visualize I'm not going to work. I'm going to quit work And I was going to think about what I want. I'm going to visualize it. It's just all going to come to me I Piece there critical piece that you got to do you got to do you didn't stand up a disinfecting business in 45 days for Visualization maybe for the first hour, but you or there was a lot of action Well, there was a lot of action behind those thoughts and those words and um A lot of uh, yeah A lot of are you sure we're doing this right? you know So yeah, there was there was lots of questions because we didn't know All right, so denny wants to know where our new year hats are. I'm not sure is this I don't know if I have one or not. I found this What holiday is this associated with that's the fourth of july french fries. I don't know what what about my, um It's my giraffe. It's a giraffe How cute is this giraffe, right? I wear this around my house sometimes just because my husband's like cute. I know. Thank you So what he gets his attention, right? Please. Yeah He's easy. Okay. I think maybe this is more New Year's-y. All right, denny If you sent us new year's hats, we didn't actually understand that Well, she sends us hats for every holiday RJ so You're twitching your head, aren't you you're making that It's gonna wiggle so much. I'm looking at you having a seizure No, it looks like my hat's having a seizure. I mean, you know, tom if it didn't say french fry you'd look like the pope Oh, wow Green in the top part Yeah, there you go What's going on with that? Just laying down it fades into the back Yeah, you really should have seen RJ at christmas He has a christmas tree hat that denny sent him that is I don't know 20 inches tom 20 inches tall 18 it it looked like something that the pope could wear actually because it was it was towering Yeah, it didn't really fit completely on the screen It's awesome. All right So we have to stop having fun for just a few minutes and we have to well It's fun to talk about budgeting an annual plan when you are I'm doing it with a mindset of where am I going to be and how exciting is it and you're thinking of it in a really positive way So stop fun. Just a little bit different like no one thing I'll mention on budgeting is um, I'm probably I've had five businesses and Budgeting and all that is just maybe not my thing, you know, which is okay. I don't beat myself up I just I know where my strengths are I focus on that and wherever my weaknesses that I hired good people and Having had this lady that has been absolutely superb with budgeting She has literally come in and helped us clean up our cleaning books and um She has got us on this budget now And it is just amazing the turnaround that she's helped us make Yeah, we understand cleaning but she understands numbers. Let's differentiate up here Hire somebody good if that's not your forte And don't beat yourself up You know that's something nobody has said yet all month long That you don't have to be the one that does it hire somebody do what you're good at Hire somebody to do the stuff that you're not good at. That's perfect That that and that's so Yes You know, we've run into this so many times over the years It's like do you try to fix the engine in your car or? You know, if you have a medical condition, you don't do your own Sir, I mean, there's only certain things that that you can really be good at Don't even try don't even I mean it's like I have to learn how to do this. No, you don't No, you don't And a lot of times it doesn't make sense for even to spend your time trying to learn it Just hire somebody who can do it and do it okay one caveat when you're brand new in business And you're still at a place where you're just making enough to like Eek out your own living and you don't have enough extra money. All right Do your best and get started with the idea in mind that one of the very first things you're going to do Is hire someone that can do that because it is something that will help you grow so much faster, right rj That's what you're doing But you know on that caveat, right if you have that person from the very beginning Yeah, that's the person that's going to help you grow systematically rather than just like a randomly Yeah, luckily Yeah, luckily. Yeah by chance You don't want it to be you don't want to be successful because just accidentally successful Well, you probably I'm not going to complain But it's a lot easier if you're doing it Usually that's not sustainable though that works as long as everything is static But then something changes, you know, like a worldwide unprecedented event pandemic and Then you know and then, you know, you start seeing inflation rates of seven and eight percent and the labor market goes crazy and If you don't if you were just accidentally Successful, then you don't know what knobs to turn to be successful when the world around you changes. That is correct. Yeah Yeah, you know, I I want to mention one thing that was critical in 2020 that we did Um, I networked a lot in my community. I'm part of many boards here locally. I'm involved Uh, not all of us have that personality, which is fine But in 2022 i'm going to encourage you Know number one who your state senator is know who your congressman is And seek them out Make an appointment because you can Either in person Which may not happen because of covet or at least over the phone or um, you know, uh zoom or something Get to know this person and this is why I say this In georgia, they were about to make an announcement that uh, majority of the industries are going to be closed Door shut. Yeah, and I said no way I said, we're too important. We're too essential. That was the word, right buzzword. Yeah And so I called my congressman who I know him. He knows me He knows i'm in the cleaning business But he didn't really understand exactly what we did so, uh congressman louder milk and I got on the phone and spoke for 18 minutes And he says to me rj. I didn't realize because he asked me a bunch of questions And he says I didn't realize the scope of work that you provided So then he says i'm going to now put the phone down and i'm going to call the governor Because at noon he's making an announcement of the industries Businesses that need to stay open as essential And i'm going to make sure that your industry is Yeah, and so that relationship. Wow That little bit of networking That proving yourself in the community of who you are what you do Taking the time to make an appointment with your congressman It proved to be very effective because one of our businesses It's an office that we clean We were we were doing about 55 000 a month with them It went up to 82 000 a month during 2022 Okay It's it's a big jump. Yes And it's a very What we did for them You know, they have over 700 people working there 24 7 So we had to really up what we were doing for them and keep them safe Every time there was a covid case. We were on it You know, and that's why we were talking earlier about diversify if you do Home cleaning even we we did a lot of home cleanings uh COVID cleanings because People had COVID in their homes. It's not just the office You know, it's good to have that knowledge um and Be of service to your clients most importantly Yeah, I I've always really um Felt really strongly about that that You have to enjoy the idea of being in service. You can't see that as being There you're being oppressed by someone you have to see that as a choice that I'm in service on purpose Because that's it's a calling right to be in service to people sure to help someone But I have to go back. I wrote down my little notes here Make sure that I know who my senator and my congressman are and make an appointment And what am I going to talk with them about? What am I going to ask them? What am I going to say? What You make a contribution to their campaign Um You know, I'm not going to go to the party thing, but uh Um, you know what? You won't have to because they'll come ask in any way You know, you don't have to offer the the invitation will be extended Um, that will naturally happen. Trust me Um, and it doesn't hurt to contribute because you know when you want them fighting for you You want to make sure they remember you? um And you know, again, this is just something that he and I had an established relationship So he knew of us He knew What we did but he didn't understand the total scope of what we know So I think that's the connection you want to make liz is Look, we in our industry we in the cleaning industry. We're not just house cleaners We're cleaning professionals And if you happen to have your g back certification hct all of that right let them know Let them know that these are the uh certifications you have Because they have no clue in our industry that these are okay. I got you All right, so just a little bit of education about who your constituents are Correct Who you're working for and okay. I love that. I can do that. That's easy If if the if the perception is we're just doing a chore that somebody else doesn't want to do We need to fix that we do You need to fix that as of our lawmakers Yeah, we're not just things look pretty. That's correct We're actually performing a service Okay, I will do this as part of my 2022 plan And this would be probably a good discussion to have with your groups was Absolutely, absolutely I I can actually do that. It's perfect timing. Thank you for that. I will All right. Good job our day way way to make an impact there, right So let's swing about around to the the person that that that you have in your organization that does your budgeting for you and the impact that that made yes What is what does that whole process look like if if if You know, we aren't particularly, you know If if if one feels that they're not particularly strong at this and you hire somebody that perform this activity How could that change your business? Well, I can I can certainly tell you how it's changed hours, right? How it's impacted us And and you guys understand this right as you Like you said Liz If you're a startup or you're in you're wearing many many hats, right at some point you take Actually, it's got french fries. But I understand what you mean, right So you're making french fries today, but you might be making burgers at the same time, right? We're doing so many things right that you cannot effectively do everything Properly. Yeah, so whatever your forte is Let's say you are good at the numbers, but that's not your like love Right, maybe it's taking care of your clients or growing your business marketing doing this doing that Stick to what you'd love to do every day Right. Yeah, and let the others do what they do Because sometimes we have an emotional attachment to this And we need to eliminate that and make it totally business And the way that her name is louise the way that louise came in and a quick background she has uh years of experience 21 with uh Yamaha corporation. Okay. Wow, uh amazon and Kenesaw State University So she has a very diverse. Yeah background And then she comes into our business and she told me about I don't know three months in she says I had no idea a cleaning business can do What you guys are doing She's just kind of like what you said earlier tom. She she just thought oh you just clean houses She's like I'm impressed So she was impressed but Still needed a lot of work Yeah, so I said to her. Okay. Help us clean this up And the way she helped us clean it up is basically categorize What are the profit centers right is each job Making money or not? If it's not Do something about it. Yeah Right either increase in prices train your people better do something whatever the problem is And each job has to be a profit center And if it's not do something about it that was like You know that there are actually one or two jobs that don't make us any money But that's because they're part of the cleaning for a reason Yeah, and we're we don't want to that's not where we want to go with that So she understands that part, but you cannot have too many of those But that's a choice. That's a choice And you make a decision and like you said you can't have too many half your company can't be cleaning for a reason No, no And you know once you once you overcome those things and you see that okay each one is making money for you Uh, you see the cash flow. We were having an issue with cash And she came in and helped clean that up And actually when you road to a certain level You're going to hit that block and we did We had maybe I don't know six eight months ago where One uh payroll period we're like, are we going to make that? Because of the cash flow. Yeah, right. Yeah, and or lack of I should say So those are the kind of things that she helped us clean up All right. I do have to do a plug real quick here Tom, um, actually, I don't know if you can can you I'm not sure you can I might be able to post for strategic success groups, but all right, so If you hit that block and you're stuck and you're like Don't know what to do. You're having a hard time We have an end of the year special right now For strategic success groups. Go check it out But one of the things that you can do is get help if you can't hire somebody to do all of your financials and you have to do some of it yourself great But it's not always your financials Sometimes you are going to have to do some basic strategic stuff with your company and you can get the support that you need to be doing all of that too, so All right Just because it's end of the year specials are going on and I know a lot of I've had a lot of people reach out to me From this from this group too So there you go guys. There's your specials. All right, so go ahead RJ well, so You know making sure each one is a profit center Making sure a cash flow is there And I'm telling you, you know watching all the expenses She did say that you're you don't have any expenses that we could cut back on Only there's one my rank is too high so now Middle of this year. I'll be looking for a new place to go After we sold the shopping center. They jacked up my ring I figured you could afford it All the money pretty much I think all my profits are going back to them Bottom line is once you know all that information That's power. We always come back with data right once you have that information Now you can make the moves that will make you more successful period But you can't do it if you don't have the information to to work off of until you knew you had a cash flow problem You're just stuck and it's the same thing Right, we know a lot of people that are struggling with net profit And if you don't understand what that problem is you're going to stay stuck for a while So turn it over to somebody who knows and understands it and doesn't have an emotional attachment to it Yeah, yeah that emotional attachment is really big too So hard for people to get out of their out of their own way when They're emotionally involved Oh, thanks Liz is an amazing amazing coach. Yeah Thanks. Thanks, cheeky. All right. Um I forgot what I was gonna say. I don't know. She distracted me. That's a good reason Yeah, I don't mind. I know who doesn't like being tagged on the back every now and again, right? Yeah Okay, so talk to us rji. I would really love to hear about your because you do have You know big business you've had lots of businesses. You've done tons of different things I would love to hear how Your annual planning Progresses, how do you do that? Is it? Yeah, just tell us about it if you would All right, so we do have our strategic plan for 2022 put together Due to different reasons we haven't been able to get it actually executed And part of it was because this celebrity is coming back here and He has had us in there every single day cleaning um Is this like for disinfecting like a covet thing or no, no, no, this is a total deep Detail clean Let me see if I can even show you this picture Uh, I spent two days cleaning five light fixtures Oh, wow I was on the ladder. I really want to see one of these light fixtures. Come on rj pull up that one light fixture One light fixtures value is 90,000 Yeah, you see the before after Oh, wow. Wow, that does look great. Wow What was it? Does he smoke? No, no, it was installed in 1991 Oh, okay hasn't been touched never been cleaned 90 90 thousand dollars that looks so good Yeah, you call your insurance company just to make sure you were covered in case something happened Why do you think I was on that ladder? Because if something goes wrong like I know i'm not going to kill myself, right? Not so sure about some people Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Oh gosh. That does look really good though. I mean and really if you have a 90,000 light Don't you want it to look good? I would Yeah All right. Yeah pictures. Anyway, um, we have our strategic plan put together um One of the things that I think I'm still really focusing on this year 2022 is the organizational chart and really making sure that Whatever my responsibilities are, that's it My I don't want to be dealing with somebody else's responsibilities over here They need to do that. Yeah And really having a better separation We're going to do Weekly meetings some monthly meetings and quarterly We we have that but I think our structure needs to change or get better And so I'm laying out everything for my staff I love to add humor so I've got some Uh nice videos in there uh also and Originally, I wanted to actually take them away from here into the north Georgia mountains and Go up there to amicola falls and Do that, but it looks like I'm not going to be able to unfortunately because that hotel's booked up there It's a tough year for I'm not as bad as last year, but it's still tough Especially with omicron or however you pronounce it Fighting like it is to to build people together So I may just pull them all in on a saturday and Do it that way I do feel like the strategic planning meeting goes a lot better in person than it does over zoom So we have been hearing that a lot. I know that larger companies aren't getting everybody together every year in person, especially now so This new variant is so contagious though and just the risk of getting all your key people together in a room and one person winds up getting sick and I mean, I've heard stories and have some firsthand experience with large groups over the last few weeks that A bunch of the people are getting sick not not six But they can't go to work because of everything related to kovat Not good Out your whole entire management leadership team Yeah, I think companies are um also very sort of uh Gun shy about the liability that falls on them And uh, the thing is though, I mean, how do you how do you say or how do you prove I picked up kovat when I was in the strategic plan meeting. Yeah Yeah, yeah, I mean I wouldn't be as worried about that is it's just like well if everybody gets sick Who's going to be answering the phone on monday? The v8 I think that people are nervous just because They're they're tired of not knowing things and nobody really knows how the liability is going to play out yet and I don't want to be the first case that they decide This is the one we're going to court on this one. It's going to be yo You know, it's obviously that's not happening to us these are little cleaning companies But some of these big companies I know are nervous My daughter's company is nowhere near like a p&g type company and they've they've had the conversation about We don't want to be the test case We're not going to be the test case Oh We are Do what Okay, well, we're getting close to the top of the hour. We've got five minutes Oh, what do we want to talk about for the next five minutes? Hear a little bit more about so we've heard from Um All the people over the course of the month The most everybody is putting into In place with some weekly meetings some monthly meetings some quarterly meetings Right, and then they're they're um every six months But I don't um One thing that we haven't heard a lot about is the agenda Can you we've heard only from I think Oh Is that me? I think uh RJ's got some some guests in this office. Sorry I thought it was me, but it's you. Yeah, I'm glad to it's usually me Yeah, I'd love to hear about like What is your agenda look like RJ? Do you kind of have do you follow a certain agenda or I'm guessing you do you're you're very Yes So each each meeting will have a different agenda There there's going to be a format the weekly meeting is primarily about our scorecard Uh, are we hitting the numbers that we're supposed to hit? And I know there's always that You know, you should only have five numbers six numbers 10 numbers 15 numbers but sometimes You know, I I decided you know what? Um It's not that I don't want to listen to everybody, but I want the right numbers That I want to pay attention to yeah, and if it means it's 15 of them Then so be it Um, that's that's tom's thing. He's loving that Thank you Tom. Thank you. Yes. I want to follow more numbers. Yeah Well, it's not just about the more numbers. It's just it's critical to each part. Um If we were a smaller company then the numbers are obvious It's reflective and it doesn't mean that everybody in your organization worries about all 15 numbers I want to know though as the ceo and owner of the company You can get you're entitled to all the numbers that you desire to have I I'm more numbers is better a lot of times right. We want I mean I I feel like for me I don't need to be tracking all of the numbers on a daily weekly basis But I need to be looking at them all I don't need to be every single day every single week tracking every single one of All of these numbers But I absolutely need to be looking at them and making sure that they're trending in the right direction and That we're not gonna Getting ourselves into a bad spot because that's really fast RJ in 30 seconds. Can you share with robin? What budget metrics you share with your cleaning professionals? What budget metrics? Um In terms of like what numbers? Yeah, what kpis are do your your cleaning professionals Look at are there, you know accountable for Or have access to or Uh, the the actual people that are doing the cleaning. Yeah, okay maybe Well attendance, uh quality um, what uh google You know Yeah reviews, uh Because last year about this time we had 74 google reviews with a 4.8 Today we're at 276 With a 4.9. Yeah, that's amazing Um, and and I know you so I know you didn't buy those No, there's no where I can buy them technically I did because what I did was I incentivized my people knowing that You know the more reviews you have and the stronger, you know, we're streaming us on the internet and if google here, you know Yeah, they're gonna He did he's kidding. He really didn't no. No, I'm kidding. I'm joking But you incentivize the No, I incentivize my staff because instead of paying Yeah, um, why not pay my staff to bring in those google reviews? Because my staff actually did a good job at the home at the office wherever they were Which makes that that's what the google reviews are supposed to be about There's no need to be about the word good. So that makes perfect sense and with that Smart business moves has wrapped up 2021 2021 is in the books All right. Thank you. Thank you. This was this is good and uh, You know, you're I'm sure you'll be joining us A few times next year as well. We're counting on that Absolutely if you want to know more about diversifying in the whole aspect of incorporating disinfecting Space in your business Reach out to rj. He's the go-to person on that. I'll take the Link to his website again, and I will drop that in chat in Liz You're doing something special here with mastermind accountability groups. Do you want to share where a quick what's going on here? That's groups 365 day access to Experts in the cleaning field resources Just get out of your own way a little bit. That's it. So see to see the end of year specials if you're interested if In other words, if you want to sign up for this, don't wait until january to do it Take advantage of this over the next what two days three days Yeah, um end of the year. Yep three minutes of the year. It's almost here Yep. Yeah All right, awesome. Okay. Again rj. Thanks a bunch ma'am. Appreciate your help. Thank you everybody. Happy new year See y'all later. See you next year. Liz. See you next year. Bye. Bye. Bye