 Hey, good afternoon everyone time Stewart here. I'm with Liz Trotter Matt Ricketts and our special guest today is Sherry Weaver Is bringing it to us from somewhere north of the border. Hey, Sherry. How are you? I'm good. Thank you We were just talking about COVID and COVID vaccinations and Most of the people in Canada are getting vaccines and is that is that correct sharing or being vaccinated a good percentage? The ones who are wanting and pretty much are vaccinated the ones who don't want it We're still trying to figure out how to get them to join our team Just ship them to United States. So yeah, right in that said we just opened Restaurants for the first time in over a year last Friday Hey, Denet, so well there is conversation here that Starting in September They want to make it mandatory that if you are working at a job even if it's remotely in your own home, you have to be vaccinated Wow Say that again Liz Exactly what you think you heard that to be employed in the state of Washington You will have to have to be vaccinated even if you never leave your own home Even if you are Yeah, so I don't know how they would track that like if you were an entrepreneur or soloprenar, but I don't know I mean does have they have they found out that COVID spreads through zoo? I Think it's just one way to be able to control it, right? So They they were talking about attaching it to registration our registration, but then they thought well only one person in a household So Wow That's our new conversation right now That would never fly here So what's happened must been happening in the world the last couple of days anybody watched the news Have I missed anything? I've been kind of busy lately. I have not looked Tom. I always count on you You know We're here Monday in the stock market in the US just completely fell apart on Monday because of COVID concerns But it's come roaring back and they're hitting highs again. So, you know Go and figure Drop 900 points came back 200 and I guess we're up Almost all of the losses are back. They're up to 34 798 so above actually what they even closed after our week So, yeah, just still a lot of still a lot of volatility. I think I think that there's definitely concerns that were not through the worst of this year in the states that There's potential for You know more lockdowns restrictions and how that's gonna affect the economy. I I don't know I don't know crystal ball, but I'm not hopeful we go down that road again I'm not sure people have the patience anymore. They're they're expecting this wild summer and travel and Freedom and I'm not sure they're ready to go back. Well, you guys like in Missouri like Less than half of the eligible population has been vaccinated. They're right. I mean, isn't that like one of the hot spots? Yeah, Missouri is Missouri leads the way and Being Missouri We get to blame Matt Vaccinated early and often Like it's like voting in Chicago voter vote early vote often I'll get all three different kinds that are approved here That's a microphone How do I sound Yeah Yeah, things are good. I had I had Gosha from Gosh, I can't remember a company name Gosha Baron in Chicago. Yeah, Chicago. So Gosha was visiting me today and Firm age is that somebody is that sound right? I can't remember PCT clean is RJ from He's from Atlanta Atlanta, he was there both visiting today and It was a fun. It was a fun day. We visited my office my recognition broke the day they visited in my office So by we had to get out of there about 10 and it was getting about like 85 degrees in the office That's just the way it is though, right? You have you have guests and and the air conditioners we just replaced in two years ago So I'm like, I'm Certain that I'm certain it's something we did at this point like Being in a commercial Department Matt, are you gonna start commercial? I actually I actually got rid of about quarter million dollars of commercial work during the pandemic because I refocused on on Residential jobs that were more profitable because I was so short on staff. They went the opposite direction. They went Gosh, if they're not doing, you know, RJ is probably 50 50 commercial at this point It's just the way, you know the way that he swung during the pandemic They're doing they're still doing a lot of spraying and disinfecting a lot of businesses still want those services I'm not surprised. I think that there's still a lot of You know COVID concerns and you know, the new strains people are getting concerned and so I'm not saying that they're capitalizing on that but they're making money off of that for sure They're they're they're finding a way to grow their businesses It's an interesting niche and are they like looking for for local partners? I mean, they're expanding in various parts of the country Working with other house cleaning businesses, right? Dude, I didn't dig too much on that. They were really here. They were really looking at made central quite a bit We're kind of looking at my operation You know, I had plenty of questions for them, you know sharing ideas and You know, but they were here to learn and grow and we dug into my operation a lot and but I did look at the way they're doing things and You know, they're their teams and they're moving towards some some mix of solos They're trying to figure out how we pivoted to that and you know language around that They were very interested by the fact that we charged $25 extra for somebody to be first thing in the morning if somebody wants to be first thing and That was you know an interesting thing to them, but a lot of a lot of different a lot of different good ideas were shared Gosha does some really interesting things with the way she does commission for her salespeople and I think that I would love to track it a little bit more granularly by who makes my sales and how that contributes to overall revenue growth of the company And she bonuses based on a percentage of that On revenue growth. I thought that was a good takeaway. So there's a lot of there's a lot of learning Jerry. Oh, sorry Tom go ahead No, I'm just thinking $25 for first thing in the morning I guess there's a lot of customers who want first thing in the morning. It's just easier to schedule Is that the thinking? Yeah, and what we do is we tell them Hey, you got a 50-50 shot of being first thing most of our cleaning techs are just doing one or two jobs a day But if you absolutely must have it and you want us to lock it in and make sure that that always is the case But if you're flexible, you might get it anyway, but it's just a good amount of people are willing just to say I need to be first and they're willing to pay for it. So We would have the same Yeah, that's too Same thing. Well, hey where we get much deeper. Can we introduce sherry? You know explain who she is where she's from and all that good stuff. Let's do that awesome Sherry do you want to introduce yourself tell us about your business where you're located? What what got you into the house cleaning business what your favorite flavor ice cream is So I'm Sherry weavers I own and run three little birds here in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada So for many who don't really know anything about Canada, we are about 45 minutes north of Buffalo I've been a business since 2012 and Yeah, I think we have a really great culture here in our company and we really focus on relationships with our staff with our clients Are you sitting in your office now? I am that is beautiful. Yeah, what do you have pain it? Is that a It's a decal. It says whatever you're not changing your choosing That's one of my favorite quotes Yeah, I like it. Hey chair. You don't by any chance have your logo somewhere handy. I just love your logo It's changing a little bit. I want your car. No the car. There's the logo You'll notice the heart. The heart is there. That's something that got added It's important to us those who want to notice and see the heart will notice it and others that don't care Look right past it. Is it a wing or is it a heart? Yeah, it is a wing, but it's shaped as a heart It's a little subtle little subtlety there. It's a FedEx arrow. That's what it is What's that? It's like a FedEx arrow. It's there. There you go. Yeah, exactly Have you watched Portlandia before? Have you ever watched the TV show Portlandia? It's kind of a kind of a take on like the culture of Portland just a bunch of shorts and So, you know, I use a bird with a logo in some of my marketing too and there's a joke from the show It's like put a bird on it. It's art and all the hipsters in Portlandia have little birds with hearts on there on their little patches and stuff like that. So When that show was popular everyone was like, did you steal that idea from Portlandia? I was like, I don't even know what Portlandia is. It's like you guys are looking at me now But I did watch it and it's entertaining It's hipster television from about ten years ago And if I would have watched that I would have never opened an office in Portland having watched that television show I would have been like It's a shame it's a shame that one of us never watched it would have been good it would have probably saved us some trouble But yeah, put a bird on it. It's it's a funny line from the show just YouTube that part and you'll get the gist of it, but Yeah, I'm looking at Hamilton on a map I didn't realize it was so close to it was so close to Toronto and that Not far from Detroit. I used to go up to London As a kid and play in hockey tournaments not too far from not too far from there Yeah, my son drove to London today just to do some shopping. Yeah But yeah, I'd say we're about halfway between Niagara Falls and Toronto Cool So are you so we're we're going to be talking about Productivity to matching scheduling all that good stuff today. What is your model? Are you solos teams? Only teams only teams. Yeah I'm sorry, what size to two teams of three Teams of two is our minimum teams are two are the most profitable for us When we have to make the schedule work into three can work and so we will do that at times We don't want to see any of our cleaners clean more than six hours In a shift. So we've had massive jobs. We've sent six people on a job But but generally it's we aim for two So and the reason we wouldn't ever change is the stuff that we hire there are all Very social we get everybody from restaurants retail They they they wouldn't be happy if they worked by themselves Huh So yeah, I never thought of it that way. So I mean the idea of recruiting from hospitality and food service and so forth is Common, but they're used to working around other people. So having those Candidates work by themselves might not work well No, thanks. Everybody wants to work. Yeah, they want to work with their friends Yeah, we saw some turnover of people when we went to so those people that didn't Particularly love that model say I agree. That's probably true Especially if you're hiring for relationship And we find the dynamics our clients will comment all the time about the energy of two people coming in and they're laughing They're smiling They're hanging out with their friends while they're working Have you heard of that Liz like if you're if you have a solo model, maybe you shouldn't be You know recruiting from hospitality and retail food service. Yeah We're actually just talking about that today and then my groups that you know for solos everybody's got to be Recruiting from other places the CNA angle is still really good though so And and hotels are still really good You just don't want to be because those people are used to working by themselves. Yeah, a lot more landscaping people are You know, hey, no land. Oh lost Tom It's not common to lose Tom We're still why we didn't in the show Yeah, I mean Hey, one of the things One of the things you'll see in our job ad and it says happiness is happiness is finding a friend at work Nice so You know, it really works. Nobody wants to call and said because you're gonna hear about it from your partner Even if you were to leave Eventually So What we wanted to talk about this is scheduling production planning month for the most part We can go with us a lot of different ways that Anyway, we really want to go with it, but Matt, I know you and Sherry talked a little bit about doing a deep dive into some Some routing and scheduling techniques. Yeah I've seen it a couple from a couple other people now, and I'm not sure where it originated But I think Sherry does it well. It's basically a rainbow, right? Like where you use a visual tool Yeah, it might be do that's that's yeah, do you have a PDF version or something that we can Yeah But the general idea is Maybe put it up on the screen a little bit while I talk about it is is that that basically The zones that Sherry designed are all color-coded and they can quickly look at each zone and make scheduling decisions Just like that like that makes sense to them Like you would never schedule a purple job next to a green job because you've got across Looks like a lake or like a half way across like it's like a sea shape And you don't want to drive that part of time So you kind of visually by this by the rainbow is you have a center of the rainbow where that might be your office And then both sides of the gradients of the rainbow. Am I describing that right? Look, how will you tell the rest of the story? Absolutely because what happens is you'd have orange would be in between say yellow and red You would have your green in between yellow and blue. We just set it up. So it's just very logical So when you're looking at it very very quickly on the map You kind of know what goes with each other We also have it set up at stages as you go further away. So we have Like we have we call those slices and sections. So we have 1a 1b 1c as it goes out. So Anything that's an a is so close to the shop, they're interchangeable Because if you think about how it goes out, you can have a to see switch out with a 3c Because they're only one number off so a team could once they're out They can work their way as they're coming back and just kind of slide into the other slice And that's basically how we've set it all up and it made a huge difference for us Yeah, I love that. It's so nice and organized. I really like so the the rainbow hack isn't as intriguing to me as the A B C that is very that's that's a brand new idea that I've Yeah, so you're basically taking your zip codes, for example, you got six of them now We've got 18 because we're splitting them up so that you decide I like that that that's yeah That's really interesting Yeah, and then the other option that we tried to do is we tried to have everyone start as far out as possible So you're starting out from E and working your way back towards a So if the team were to run into trouble Other teams on their way back could potentially stop drop off somebody to help and things like that Yeah, because we're all kind of working toward the center just like you would clean a house Yes for this doubt and then coming closer to the door. Yeah, that makes a huge difference for us Do they drive so in the past? I know they did drive your cars. Do they still drive your cars sherry? Yes. Yeah All right, so it because it doesn't make a difference about You know where they start based on where they're coming from they're coming from this or their home Yeah, and we pay travel time Yeah, so for us, it's especially important. Yeah, I Think well here in the States Everybody pays travel time. It's Not to how you pay it is up for grabs, but you have to pay if you have okay Please if you have independent contractors, you know Yeah, if people don't work for you, you don't have to pay them Good general statement, isn't it? You can just Right We do straight hourly as well no commission or anything like that Mostly because we are getting our staff from places like retail and and restaurants where it's hourly from the time you start to finish So, um, how do you manage? So you're paying hourly they come from this other Area where they get we're paying hourly, but they were getting a lot more in tips. So how do you manage that piece? Oh? We get our fair share of tips Okay Don't do all you Canada I don't know how many we're tipping before now that we're with made central the tips are coming through the roof Um, yeah, and so we're seeing them now, but everyone has given us feedback. It's they're definitely increased Do you know the num? Do you know the number because I was just looking at it today with with RJ and Gosha? And I was like please do you have you looked at yours lately and kind of know the number off the top your head? No, I don't I just look at each employee and I look and I'm thinking wow like Just the amount that they're getting in because made central shows it in there how much they're actually averaging per hour It's almost a temperate. It's almost a 10% raise or more. So we Just looking at last week. We generated over $1,300 in tips You know, it's not quite 10% last week, but It was basically almost a dollar 80 and higher last week for employee averaged out But it's significant so I've had some people push back on me on this a little bit And they're like well, then you're paying the credit card processing on that thousand dollars and I say don't like you wouldn't trade $30 to give your employees a thousand dollar raise you wouldn't make that trade and When they think of it that way It's it's so powerful because it would cost so much in sales to give them a thousand dollar raise to do that How much would that cost you in sales probably five thousand you have to make five thousand dollars in additional sales to do that same thing I'll take a $30 credit card processing fee to do that And the other pushback point is at least in the states is you have to play the poor your taxes on those tips as well But whoop-de-do it's still free money for your employees. It's true that cost me another seven percent. You are right It does cost me that too. Yeah, yeah So do you guys have to do that? Um, sherry also Yeah, we pay quite a bit. Yeah, it's still it's totally worth it. Like Matt says It's so worth it. I love it The response that Matt does so I'm gonna have to look at that made myself a little no I'll bet you sherry's is better than both of I'll bet you sherry's is better than mine because sherry's response rate on her surveys Last time I talked to her, maybe you can fill me out on this but it's it's through the roof We we used to sit about 87% nice And what are you now? Hi 70s I'm just working on our our template right now. I want to revamp it now that I've been with mid-central for a while and Get that up there Yeah, I think that I think anything above, you know In the survey industry if they would tell you anything above a 20% response rate would be phenomenal but You know 87% that's that's culturally your training employees. Yeah Maybe your customers to the way you're selling And I think it is probably the way we selling we almost sell it like they're buying into Almost like a club and it's part of being of our club Nice nice. So tell us a little bit more. What does that sound like sherry? How are you like telling them that it's a club? First of all, we tell them it's required If we go up because they didn't respond and we just tell them sorry it's all automated and Because we don't we don't What's the word omit anybody from it? Everybody gets it. It goes every single time. I mean come on. It takes what three seconds to do it And if you're not willing to do it, you're probably not a good fit for us because together You know, and it's also how we pay our staff. There's a lot based on on their discourse That's good. That's a good little selling point, too And we really help Yeah, go ahead. We help the clients understand that you benefit by the collective of everybody doing this Because that's how we keep our great staff and they get paid. Well Yeah, awesome. I have found that people are very receptive to this idea that it's mandatory As I oh We say we don't tell them it's mandatory, but the calls are gonna happen. So it's probably easier just a Three-second click Then it is stuff to deal with our phone calls. So you threaten them basically. Yeah I'm not really on saying that to you guys here, but we just you know It's basically it's going out automated and the people who are calling it's just because they're calling off a list of those Who didn't respond to our one second, you know Feedback email. It is really straightforward. I just I had my house clean the other day And I just I always do my surveys after my staff leave and it takes it just a moment and then You know the the next step where you can put some comments and that takes an extra couple seconds if you want to do if you Want to you know, give some more specific feedback, but just the clicking action is just opening your email Just, you know, if you can train you that you really create a lot of data a lot of data points just on on You know frequency of surveys Which which of your technicians are our game surveys and some that are falling below standard And obviously we want their surveys scored There's something to be said for that For that response rate to that they're actually following your processes Oh, wait, it's all about how it benefits them and we just communicate that to them I mean, I'm saying about how we're handling it, but no, it's it's all it's all about the clients and how it benefits them So the zones Scheduling Structure that you have where you've got the circles and the colors and I mean, I think that's really awesome so you use that to reduce down or drive time to Increase what we would call Efficiency out of the work day you want people to spend their time actually generating revenue as opposed to looking out of a windshield Have you measured your efficiency? Do you know how much of your team's day is spent cleaning a home versus driving around town I I'm gonna quickly look while we're here. So It's like, yes, I do have that track Yeah, I So Tom, I know that, you know, she does have this number cuz she's a softball That's the whole point I mean it's aesthetically pleasing it looks really awesome and I love the level of detail But the real benefit is you make more profit when you use tools like that to schedule your jobs So I'm just looking here. And yeah, we won't go under 80% Efficiency and those are for teams which is really hard to get a high efficiency With teams so how many homes does a team typically do a day? three We almost never do for Mentally just doing that fourth job. They're done But yeah Generally, that's very different in their work. They start at your office. Is that is that correct? Nine o'clock, so I'm trying to get my kids to school generally first. Yeah Does it end at your office as well? By five. Yes. Okay. So everybody You're counting your time at your office getting in a car going to your first job Drive to your second job clean a house drive to your third job clean a house then drive back To the office. That's a lot of drive time and being able to do all that Still have 80% or more of that day actually generating revenue Both people on the clock from the office to the first job Yes, everybody. Yeah, that is that's amazing. That is I honestly didn't know that so I'm pretty happy to hear this I didn't know how I compared Yeah Yeah, so I use 75% even though we do end up pushing closer to 80 with all the solos that I have For the revenue production planning that I used to do my sales We base that on 75% so the fact that you're getting 80% with teams I mean, even though you're using them a little bit differently than you're Still getting a lot you're slipping a lot out of people even in shorter periods of time. So that's That's really it's really good. So so one thing I have to question though is so do you have to pay benefits? So like is there would there be some benefit if they could work a little longer because don't you have to pay benefits in Canada regardless? Or is that kind of covered in the It's covered it's covered in the government. We do offer benefits after one year of employment with us. Okay. Um, but we also have our Our community Coordinator or sorry supervisor. She just got changed to supervisor So she oversees all of our training all of our new hires the orientation as well as quality She's basically the one she just drives around all day and goes from place to place And if anyone needs anything they're calling her if someone's locked out They're calling her so kind of like a field supervisor But she oversees mostly the quality and the um in the training Nice Sherry Robin has a question. He wants to know how many cleaning hours do you schedule for a Team with three houses So each of our cleaners can't clean more than six hours. That's our policy here So for a team of two you'd have 12 man hours So a loud hours would be 12 hours. Yes Yeah for a team of two. Yes Okay, so it could be a two hour home a two hour home a two hour home as a team of two or it could be A six hour and a six hour or no, sorry, uh, three hour and a three hour I'm going team back for I don't think that's super unusual I was thinking maybe you meant that they could just work six hours in a day max inside, but you're you met a lot of hours Yes. Yes. Sorry. So they're yeah No more than six hours physically cleaning and then you'll have your travel time works out to usually be about not eight hour day Yeah, I think that's great. Yeah so It seems to be perfect for the staff so I Think if you balance that out, I mean if they end up going over a day that You know if you balance it out in general, but yeah if you if you do push people Long cleaning days day after day just because it seems like they can do it sometimes they They do fizzle on you. So it seems like a good approach for long-term success. I do a lot of long-term employees You know sherry one of the uh themes you've heard a lot Here in the states is it's just really hard to hire team members hire cleaning professionals Um, what's it what's it like in canada? It's been we've been all pretty much about two weeks behind you guys so we It's been a real struggle here. It was near impossible a quality of our applicants just changed so much until last friday suddenly restaurants and The malls are open So everyone who was getting subsidized by the government suddenly can't get it anymore And uh, all of a sudden the quality of our applicants has just changed big time Oh, so yeah government is the one that's been the issue It's part of it for sure here too. Yeah It's there's so many there's so many moving pieces right now, but I will say I was skeptical that it would make a huge difference But Missouri was the first to open up and I mean we've hired 13 people in the last, you know 45 days. I mean It's been the flood the floodgates kind of opened up So nice All right, so that's what you have to look forward to and We're getting it now. It's it's good. It's good. It's just it's amazing to see how much it changed Well, you're ahead of actually a lot of america on that because um You know, it's kind of a divided america between the states that are required or still paying The extra unemployment and that'll go until september 1st if I remember, right? I think I think so on a national level So we still have about half the states here, you know friends of ours that are on the east coast most of those states You know are all probably paying extra unemployment and I know That probably I'll bet it is a tale of two countries right now as far as hiring and rehiring Well, think about it though for us our staff are coming from restaurants and from say the mall say a restaurant worker They've been laid off because they they're not open So why would they move to when they can collect up to 200 dollars or was it no is 500 dollars a week Why would they work for the same amount somewhere else? But now once the store like the restaurants the stores all open on friday their jobs are there again. They're not getting the subsidy And they're like wait, I've been where I've been home having dinner with my kids every day I've been have weekends off all the stuff, you know, I don't want to go back to that world So suddenly we're a little more appealing Through labor day is what robin is saying is that that's not maybe that might be when it is at the federal level That's what he's saying federal Yeah, the the channel tax credit is just starting to roll out now and that's uh additional funds as well not tied to unemployment, but it's still People more runway in terms of You know more choices in terms of do I really need a job or not? Yeah You know, I but this is a chance to look at all the way we do everything and pivot and There's going to be a lot of good ideas that come out of things just from us going through this The obstacle is the way I tell people that right now just as just look at your numbers and I and I just say look at look at a couple things is How much revenue are you doing now and how many less people are you doing it with? That's a good indication that you're actually you've improved some efficiencies in your business through covid A lot of a lot of companies are doing more with less. We're at 95 of pre-covid revenue with 75 of the employees Um, so we're getting more from our from our current employees. We've raised prices. We've done some other things, but um it's There is there's a lot of light at the end of the tunnel that we've actually Probably built more resilient businesses through this process. It sounds like you have Yeah, absolutely Yeah, I think the scheduling stuff that that you've done has been really interesting I think I see that a lot with with people that that like during covid they really took the time to do some of these projects to really Fix some of these internal things. Was that something that was like that wasn't as detailed or Was that a problem before covid or when did you fix this? We did it just before covid okay Or actually maybe I'm trying to think it's been so long ago Um, yeah, it was just around there and it was but it's been that much better since we moved over to made central because now We have the schedule efficiency and all that type of stuff that we're looking at I actually have Other the same colors as your zones and made central too. So you kind of can identify easily like visually We did we did yeah, and what I did my son is actually going to school for uh, like uh website design and things like that so Just for some extra Just some extra experience when we moved over to made central. We had him come and work a couple hours one day Like once a week he came in for about four hours and he just worked on his job was our schedule efficiency So all he had to do was look and say well if we could change this to this and we could do that to that and We were paying for him based just in the improvements we were doing And uh, and he was getting a feel for the software Yeah, that's great. Yeah, very nice. And then does he work for your company? Is this another one that works at your company too? It's a family business, right? Yeah, they don't want to be here though. He quit on me But he was only about four hours a week and uh, my other son is here right now as a cleaner. Um, But he won't be staying long. He's going back to school. I put my kids to work I haven't go to the office on on the weekend and and do some towels and do some other things just to um Make them understand what we do and that it's not all that they just get to Get nice things because we get paid. So it's nice to put My kids when they were little they got fired so many times That's awesome. I think about firing my son every day. We joke we joke about how many times my kids have been fired I mean now that he's a cleaner. He's the same as everybody else. I didn't even hire a mother's dad He had to do his police check apply the whole the whole thing But when they were little and they were doing the class and certain laundry and all that stuff. Yeah, they were fired every week Were they upset did they cry did they care? That's why they got fired Okay Mom was mean Some chairs about money and so it like I tell them it's not going in your college fund this week. You didn't do enough hours I'm not putting it on your payroll next week. You know, there's no there's not going to be a college fund So you're going to be doing this job for the rest of your life Earlier on you were talking about um paying for drive time Do you pay the same rate for drive? all right, we do Go ahead. So just just the same I think as everybody we does for their clients Do you want to remove all the obstacles you want to make it as simple as possible? You know, we kind of do the same we always take the same approach to our client our staff I mean, I look at them as they are there are clients too in a way just the same thing we want to market to them and You know to help them see the value and even once we've hired them not forget about them But same thing. It's time you start to time you finish. This is how much you get paid simple Yay, excellent and that I was wondering about that because of your Efficiency and holding them to the six hours eight hour day never going over So I was wondering how that drive time might play into that One more thing if they are If you have a situation So they never work past five you said and they never work more than six hours What do you do if there's like it's going to be six hours and 15 minutes does somebody come and help? or Six hours and 15 minutes would be okay Providing it's not taking them past five o'clock five o'clock is a big deal for us because we we market ourselves as that Family-friendly company you need to be home and have dinner with your kids And so that's something that we're committed to And so what happens if you get to I mean, I'm sure that your company's like the rest of ours where you get to that single clean That vacant clean that everybody thought was going to take 10 hours and now it's taking 16 Do you do schedule it for the next day? Do you generally we can do it with all hands on deck So everybody would be coming it's going to be a less profitable day for us because other teams now we're going to be going They'll lose an efficiency because they're not following where they're supposed to be and yeah, we'll do all hands on deck Oh, you don't leave any man behind kind of thing But uh, yeah, we generally can get it done in In the time. All right. I I do know another company that's in texas that Nope when the time hits And they they're done They're off the clock and if they have to go back the next day for 15 minutes Then they go back the next day for 15 minutes. That's it. Oh, they're wow. Yeah, you know, we're we're pretty good with that and I think also, um Our times seem to be pretty good Our staff we encourage them. You never rush. You don't have the deadline. You ever need extra time. You just call and let us know but we keep an eye And again, I keep saying this but we've made central, you know, we can see, you know The rate increases and things like that the rate adjustments. They're fantastic Because we can see what homes were consistently adding extra time to and they get the rate increase Into how often do you guys look at at that report? Whether or not you need to adjust your schedule Do you do that daily weekly monthly? We try to do weekly We try to do weekly. Yeah Yeah A lot about people doing Daily and weekly where I think back in the day before made central came along. I think people did that annually Right. Oh, if ever if ever Good point. Good point. Sure. Right. Yeah Have you used the rate increase tool the report? Have you looked at that recently? Yeah, have you used that tool? Oh, I absolutely I have the shortcut on my on my browser Yeah, so the summary I love the summary of it that tells you how much that Price increase is going to make you in a year Five years, but I also like how it tells you how much it's already generated you So I did that price increase in april And you know, it's it's it's generating about 46,000 dollars annually about I don't I think it was like 250,000 over Over five years something like that and But I've already captured $10,000 from it. Do you know Have you looked at yours and seen how much you already made from that last price increase? I'm looking at it right now and we have done in april It we were looking at about $30,000 And how much have you captured already? How much has already been On the summary. How much have you already collected of that 30,000? Is that the actual additional revenue? Um, I think it's I think so I don't have mine open. I can look at yeah, so that's looking at 57 5700 So you already captured $5700 extra since since april since april. Yeah That that's what I really love about that report because it's not just like the prediction Then it goes back and tells you how well you executed on that and how well you You know that was based on keeping those customers, too. So it's You know, it's uh, it's a very valuable like look back tool as well. So not just look forward But look back how you're doing on it. Yeah, well, I think too what happens is just by looking at that It's not even just the money it makes everything run smoother because we're able to identify homes that weren't priced properly We're able to properly communicate to the clients The staff aren't feeling the pressure that they were feeling so then the staff are enjoying their job better I mean the whole thing Everything just runs smooth I was never that good at this at this particular aspect So what I always was been really good about was like I'm just a really good sales guy I could just top line revenue We could just grow grow grow and I always thought I could outrow outgrow my problems But yeah, it is so critical to like be looking at every day, especially in this last year We're like, oh, I can't just sell 10 more houses this week. We need to actually Make more money off what we're doing. So Yeah, like I've heard Tom say it to you know, this way before is that you'd be better off not cleaning certain homes, right? There's houses that you go to and you're just like you'd be you'd be better off not Cleaning that house collecting that money because at the end of the day You've lost money and I actually identified Seven or eight houses that were just like we are paying these people That was that was one of the first lessons I ever learned and Liz I think you can probably appreciate this GCA global cleaning association. You don't want all the jobs. You want the good ones That's very very true So and you know sherry you said something earlier that we kind of glossed over but I think is super impactful for people to hear That it doesn't matter if you're using made central It I know we talk a lot about made central because we all use made central But for those of you that are not using made central what you said Is what makes a difference sherry the reason why you're doing it now and doing it that way and doing it weekly Not annually or whatever is because everything runs more smoothly your your company looks more professional and Actually runs more professionally when you're managing this stuff on a regular basis not Waiting until there's a problem jumping in fixing it and then let it go fixing some other problem You know, that's that's what we see too much in our industry people just like talking from problem to problem to problem Yeah, it feels like it feels like like that money that we were making that extra money from those rate increases That's just the byproduct Yeah, I mean it sounds really silly, but There we need it just yeah It doesn't sound silly. It sounds like the just rewards not to the price increase But to the professionalism that you're creating in your company and the balance that you're creating And you make your company more attractive and it makes it easier for people to stay at your company Yeah, I think that's a good point the best companies that I've ever seen run have been doing this for years Like whether there was software behind the scenes or they were You know running this with a ledger and looking at every single job like you know looking at a loud hours I have to agree the very most professional companies that I've ever Visited talk to always track their loud hours To their to their actual hours and they know the story of every job Um, I talked about Kathy gauge last week on Wednesday. There's other people that I know that did this Just as religiously with paper and pencil And and ran really tight ships and the value in that is is that when you're ready to sell your business Even if it's not on whatever software You have a much more valuable product because you can you can prove your profit margins on on every job It's it is just an incredibly important thing to do whether You know whatever software you're doing this on whether you're doing it with paper and pencil I mean people that are running very successful businesses through their sheer will power and quick books It's it's possible. It's hard, but it's possible I want to swing back around for a minute to where we started with the Zoning that sherry does and the efficiency factor, which is like north of of 80 percent and for And the typical company with a business model of everybody meeting at the office in the morning and again In the afternoon and two or three person teams An efficiency factor of 70 percent in my experience is considered to be pretty good Yeah, um the difference between 70 percent and 80 percent. I'm going to do some quick math here. That's 10 percent But that's like 10 percent extra Home cleaning you're getting revenue that you're generating without having to pay any additional salaries for that So looking at it in another way If you've got like a team of like 10 cleaning professionals and you can increase efficiency 10 percent You can get the same amount of work done with like nine people as opposed to 10 Or if you've got a team of like 20 cleaning professionals and you can increase efficiency 10 percent Then you can get it done with 18 as opposed to 20 So if you think about you know, what am I playing a cleaning professional and You know, probably more than 500 dollars a week, but just to keep the math simple You know, it's like a thousand dollars a week of bottom line profit that you'd be making with you know the team of 20 Just by getting that efficiency up 10 percent. So Sometimes I feel that we talk about, you know, some of these metrics, you know productivity efficiency, so on and so forth And yeah, that sounds nice When you translate it into real dollars on the bottom line into profit, though, that's uh, Where it really gets interesting. So you're making more money scheduling that way Then what the typical house cleaning company would be without being that diligent and that efficient And it's really hard. It's really hard to make those twings too like a 10 percent swing in efficiency It sounds like just 10 but that's huge I mean, it's almost a logarithmic scale of difficulty to get from 70 To 75 like it's like 10 times harder than you think to make those improvements Um, so, you know, 10 it might as well be a hundred percent harder to get that kind of improvement There's just so many things you have to be executing on To do that. So it's not probably just this. Is there anything else that might be um I think I get teased a lot. Um, I'm thinking of somebody in philadelphia in particular Um, like that I'm like militant on on certain things, you know, like when my staff go in I can tell you even the left handed they're cleaning one direction. They're right handed they're cleaning another direction like every single thing is There's a flow. There's a routine and It's okay and it seems to work for us because we follow we hire rule followers You know the people who it's like no, no, no, this is the way I'm supposed to do it I want to do it that way and uh, you know, we say trust us trust us. It's stuff like, um We always say it like a like a baker, you know, we're baking at home and we're just I don't know using however much flour we're supposed to use Whereas a bakery they're measuring it and they're doing it different someone who's truly a professional at what they do Is going to do it the proper way and there's a reason because then you can multiply that and we want it So that if one person's not going to be in one day and somebody else is going to be filling in that spot They're cleaning the exact same home the exact same way every single time It's so much more predictable. Yeah I'm playing cars. I did it for the same reason. I wanted all the wiper switches to be in the same place I wanted the drive. I wanted all the shifts I want I do want that consistency as well and how we Like the ergonomics of equipment and things like that Predictability is important. I think even down to what you're describing of of changing the hands If you're a left hand as you go a different direction and And right, I've never thought about that before But and we explain it to like for our staff It's always two what's in it for you Well, when you're cleaning exactly the same way every single time and you want to take that time off Because you wanted to go on this the school trip with your son You can't easy peasy because somebody else is going to fit in and the client's going to be happy Everything's going to be done exactly the same way your partner's already going to know how to work with you. So It's just sort of how you sell it to them and help them see what's in it for them Yeah, I think that's that's awesome Yeah Well, we we know it's working too. I mean how do you know that can tout 80 efficiency with I do have to say I do have to say it does get a little difficult though when you're down on revenue Because now suddenly we're trying to cover a wider area And you do have a little bit more criss-crossing, but yeah Yeah, as you as you grow things do Tighten up your efficiency can tighten up. Absolutely. Yeah, we have more houses in a dense area So of course that sense, especially with teams of two, but you want to grow that efficiency You don't want to grow an inefficiency So you want to get it while it's small So sherry, do you do anything? Like we were talking with I think we were talking with chris will it last week And we're talking with somebody else too that said that uh twice a year They go in and they sort of do like an efficiency check and they make adjustments and changes Based on things that have sort of gotten out of whack periodically like Like you have a customer that's every two weeks They skip a cleaning and they say just have me go from this week forward That's a different a different rotation a different location, right? So do you guys have to do anything like that too? Or do we just do it? We just do it We ask them do you want to change your whole rotation? We can't guarantee the same team the same time slot Or do you want to just pick up where you left off? And so you never have to go in and like optimize your schedule Just get everything back in order and where it's supposed to be again We do we do but that's the business in my opinion. I mean, yeah, it's just I'm wondering how often that was my question. Oh, sorry. How often again, we try to do once a week We'll sit down and go through the master schedule Oh, okay. So yeah, that's why so we're almost the same We're almost the same way Liz we look at that master schedule once a week and then adjust it like Hey, how did this house end up here? Oh, they must have asked for a rotation change, but we didn't really think this through very well We we identified a couple yesterday That were like, you know on opposite sides of town on the same team and it was coming up. So yeah, we look at that regularly too Good info for everybody on this call I know a lot of people Well, we had two guests this month that said that they go in the optimizer schedule either quarterly or twice a year, so maybe Kick that up and not y'all Weekly weekly is a big kick up there. I had to do it more frequently I don't think it takes as much work. It's kind of like doing price increases when you're doing a rolling price increase Like you're not doing all 700. So 700 problems didn't creep up You only have to fix a few problems if you're doing it weekly Only one or two problems have crept up since the last time you looked at it. So Um, if you wait perfect sense to me Yeah, if you wait every month or every quarter You probably have 30 things you've got to fix instead of one or two Another thing we do try to do is when we're bringing clients on we use the tags What is their preference of days? Sometimes they'll be like Tuesdays or Thursdays or Mondays or Wednesdays and we try to get that in there Um, so when we're booking the man and say I'm like, oh, we're all the way out in this area on this day I'd really love to be able to find another home that goes in there. I could do a search filter, you know bi-weekly client in this zone with a tag of Tuesday Tuesday or whatever day and I mean it sounds like it's a lot of work, but that really isn't Yeah, it doesn't sound like a lot of work to me at all So Sherry, will you give me a favorite email me that that visual that you had that could put that in the academy for people? I will yeah, all right So I will have that uploaded for people that want that download They can they can thank Sherry for saving them Tens of thousands of dollars in scheduling efficiency. Yeah, no kidding Because we generally do 30 minutes from any Like from our location or 30 30 kilometers 30 miles So we are approaching the top of the hour um Got a minute or two. Are there any last? Last pointers or a thought Sherry that we'd want to touch on before we run out of time today You don't want all the coins. You just want the good ones. Just the good ones It's the 820 rule, right There's a couple that we all have or you know, if we don't watch we'll wind up with them That we'll have more money in the bank at the end of the month if we didn't have them Exactly, especially right now y'all Right now while clients are plentiful You can be picky, right? Choosing mothers choose jiff choosing Owners choose good clients Oh, yeah We're going to be back Monday at five o'clock eastern and our guest is going to be Katie Lambert And I think that we're basically going to be kind of picking up on this theme again on monday, aren't we? In a little bit different way. Um, but yes Katie's going to share how the master schedule works. Um, but Not from the maid central perspective a shocker Just be giving a Um, sort of a low tech version how anybody can do this is um based on the Kathy gauge model Yeah, this has been around since white words and and uh and post it notes This is it's just put in software. You can do this however you run your business At the end of the day, you just want to be mindful that you want your cleaning professionals to be spending as much of their day as possible generating revenue Yeah, and and that's the objective and You know, we've got some calculators if sometime this month we can kind of dust them out and play a little You know what if analysis and show How much more profitable you can be if you can appreciate Improve your efficiency from some lower number to some higher number and it's free money. I mean, it's truly Like free money. Yeah Yeah, you're probably going to get hit up by a million people now sharing wanting to know what Hey Denny Wang was useful Tom dust off those calculators for next week and let's try and Really, can we do that next week? Can we can we please mom? This is awesome Thanks, so I'll be doing this week again Yeah Sherry this is this was really good. Thank you. You're sharing with us and You know, congratulations on the success you're having especially in the face of All the challenges for these unprecedented events. We've been dealing with you know through covet I can't wait to see your rainbow too So we'll get that rainbow. Oh, right. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. Yeah Can you guys like people go in and out of Canada now or is that still kind of restricted? I think august night this way August 21st for the us has pushed it back a little bit. But yeah, are you gonna are you going to be coming to convention this year? Oh heck. Yeah, I gotta get out of here Awesome. Okay. I look forward to seeing you there Um, I think we're done for the week We're done. Um, thanks for joining us again. Sherry. Thank you for your help Very good stuff. We'll be back Monday. Katie Lambert. We're going to be talking about Um, some some the basics on on how to do your schedule to get the results that Sherry was sharing with us today. So you guys take care. Have a good rest of your week and we'll see you Monday. Bye. Bye. Thank you