 Hey, good afternoon everybody. Time Stewart here, got Liz on the West Coast. Hey Liz. Yeah. And we've got a really awesome treat, Kareena Neff of MaxiMades and name your commercial division and- And commercial services. Thank you. She's got a very diversified business and she's gonna tell us how she got there and give us some hints and tips that may inspire some of us to do the same thing. But before we jump into that, we're going to do a little housekeeping that I should have done Friday, but somehow it just didn't open. I just put him off, y'all. I said, hey, it's time to go, let's all relax. I wanted to get out of the heat. That was the problem. Oh, dear God. Kareena, were you here Friday? No. I just had a medical emergency. Liz was like in her car trying to do this on her phone. Oh my gosh. And I think, I don't know, I think the heat index was like 120 or something. I don't know. It was hot enough that my phone turned off. I said, nope, not too hot. Thanks for question. Does your air conditioning in your automobile work? It does, but remember there was something wrong with the volume on my phone so I couldn't hear you guys and on the air conditioning. That's tragic. That was the problem. I know. It's for the show. Good for you. We won't be doing that again. Yeah, we won't be doing that again. It was a one-time only. And we had Olympia Washington emergency response like on speed dial with her address. Just one question went blank and we thought, oh my God, that's it. Yeah, this was down 9-1-1. Well, cause my phone literally turned off and then I couldn't get it sure back on and boy. Oh my gosh. Thanks for the question. Here we go. Here's what we didn't get to because Liz was wanting off the phone now. Take it serious, Liz. What are we gonna be doing this week? All right, so this week is, I love this week. So first off, we have Karina here, diversifying your service portfolio because she does both and in a really big way. So Karina's company's been around for a long time. You guys know that she is, what's your official RSC convention title, Karina? I am the chairwoman for the committee. The chairwoman for the committee. Okay, so she's getting everything running for us, you guys, she's still working hard at putting together the convention schedule. And everybody, we're all like fingers crossed, right? But you'd never be able to tell if you saw how Karina's just like grinding it out. So I mean, I really love that too. Tomorrow we have a part two with Alanto, Racism in America, three things that you can do. So we want to help people to recognize, yes, there is racism in America and how can we be part of some solution? How can we do something? How can we be helpful and not just all keep feeling like, ah, so I'm really looking forward to that. If you missed this last Tuesday, we started this discussion and we talked a lot about history and kind of how did it happen and why are we here? So we kind of set the stage and now the next step is now that we have a better understanding, what are we gonna do? So I'm really looking forward to tomorrow. You too. And then we have Chris Willett. Chris is in Colorado and he has been switching over his company from teams to solos. And he's got a lot of reasoning about why he's been doing this and he's just got a lot of insight into what's going on between the differences between teams and solos. And I thought it would be really interesting to have him on and talk with us about that stuff because I hear from people all the time, people that are solos that wanna switch to teams, people that are teams wanting to switch to solos or large teams to small teams. And he just has a lot of insight in this arena. So did you have something to say, Tom? About that? Yeah, before you move on, Amber has a comment. She says, nice haircut, Tom. That's a great comment. Good job, Amber. Good job. Tom always feels like he gets left out of the hair conversation. So good job, way to go. And I was complaining to Liz earlier today that it just won't act right. And you gave me some consolation that it's just not used to being short anymore. So. Right. It'll be fine. It looks fine. I have to work. One of our other partners was telling him he needed to put moose and product in his bag. I'm like, no, no you don't. You're gonna be fine. It looks fine. I can rock product, but I just need to have a reason. Yeah, you don't need to. You look fine. I think it's so, thank you, Amber. You're on my side. So she doesn't need anything in his hair. Okay, so. I don't know if a lot of people know Chris or not, but Chris is like a petroleum engineer and he's really smart and very analytic. And we like those analytic people. If you guys don't know Chris, you're gonna really want to catch him on Wednesday too. He's one of my favorites. He's one of our foundations graduates as well, alum. Yep. Yeah. He's a cool guy. You're gonna want to hear what he has to say. On Thursday, we have Bill Gelderman. And I think a lot of you deal with Bill. He does. Oh, what's the name of the number one thing that he. Oh my goodness. Orion. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. He sells the Orion and he believes in the Orion. He helps coach people on the Orion, but also discs. And he has just a wealth of knowledge around hiring really good people and how to make that happen. And getting rid of the bad people before they mess you up. Hey, Debbie. So Orion, for you guys that don't know, it's an assessment. I think it's like maybe 50 questions give or take. I mean, Bill will give you the skinny on all of this on Thursday, but it helps identify characteristics and tendencies in people if they have any proclivity to steal or to do drugs or to not follow safety procedures or bad customer service habits. And all this stuff was like scientifically, you know, statistically normalized and there's lots of statistical data that substantiates that there's what they call efficacy in these tests that they actually give useful insight. Bill's a really funny guy. He's been a friend of ours for a long time. Love Bill. Yay. Yeah. I love Bill too. He's awesome. You guys are gonna love him. And then Friday, we have our surprise guest and I'll just tell you that she is one of my favorite people. She has been in the business quite a long time and she is a rock star name that you will all have heard of. Ooh, nice. I have lots of, look at all that good stuff I gave. I can't wait to find out who it is. Did you forget already? Did I say average now? So, yeah, you know. Okay. Billy Goose. I'm looking forward to that. Yeah. Let's see if you can guess by the end of the week Tom. I'll figure it out. Yeah. Alrighty. So we took care of that and anything much happened over the weekend as it pertains to small business administration, PPP, any of that good stuff? I didn't see anything new but I did have somebody asked me, Tom, about, I think it was a couple of weeks ago now where we had delivered some information. Let's see, what was it? We did deliver some information about the new findings were around that it is mostly airborne, that it is most communicable by air, not by things that you touch. Do you remember that information? Yeah, I think I've got a number of articles that are on the resource page in the blogger out of some Northern University. Yeah. His name is Erin, right? Yeah. And... I thought it was a girl. Yeah, there's a bunch of information on there. Although over the last couple of days, yeah, that reminds me, there's been reports coming out of China that they're making claims that it's being transferred in food products like salmon coming out of Europe and now they're looking at chicken processing and... Oh, wow. Most of the authoritative voices in the Western world, U.S. and Europe are shaking their heads. There's no empirical evidence that there's any basis for that, but it's got some people looking at it. I'll be watching it and waiting and saying, but there's a lot of doubt that there's anything to that, but they're picking up the rhythm on expressing that concern about how food processing plants and so on and so forth are sharing the virus through sick workers in particular handling food and it's being conveyed on food. Again. Wow, okay. Well, you keep an eye out, Tom. Let us know if this becomes a real thing. I'm on it. If it's an actual concern. All right, we're not gonna worry about it until then. Maybe a second round of PPP, Marcia is saying. I had heard that a maybe thing, but I hadn't heard more than that. Did you guys hear something more? Is it a more legitimate thing? Say it again. It would be the third round, right? Because it was already first and second round. It would be the third round of PPPs. I think they were meaning a second round, like everybody who got PPP money already would maybe be getting a second round of PPP money. If you spent your initial tranche of PPP money, you could go back and ask for more, maybe? More, yeah. The second round of PPP, Sarah, you're like, I'm in. It seems like consensus like DC is that they're gonna need to do more to help small business and just to help the economy in general. Help unemployed, people that are unemployed, they're talking about taking the $600 a week that expires at the end of July and doing something additional after that. What that looks like exactly is still trying to be, there's a lot of discussion around that. So a lot of discussion about needing to put more money into local and state governments. That's just a lot of cities that need money. I mean, they're nowhere near done printing money and handing it out. And we just don't have enough money. I mean. That's right. They're putting all the money. I should go to the door and tell them we need more. I like that, Karina. Knock, knock. If it works, if you tell them I need some too. I will. Yes. I'm just in case. Share the wealth, share the wealth. So Karina, your business is located in Northern Virginia? Yeah. So we are about 15 miles from the White House and it's Northern Virginia, but metropolitan area, which means DC, Maryland, and DC. Not about that. That's great. So yeah, so those are the three regions we service. And how long have you guys been in business? So my mother started the business, which is Maxime, it's in 1989. And after I completed my degree in public relations, I went on to work for a PR firm in DC. And I did a lot of proposals and government contracting work. And then in 2013, 2011, 2012, I came on and I was doing some consulting work for my mom. And then I decided to come on board full-time in about 2013. She retired and I took over the brand completely. But my goal always was to really strengthen our commercial ties because of so much opportunities that we have in this area and all of the different opportunities that women in business have and minority in business have in this area specifically. So we set out to do that and we've been, it was a long road, but it looks like we're getting some real traction. And how much of your business is now commercial? So yeah, so we started about 80, 20 when I joined on and then this last October, really I was like laser focused on business development. And January, I landed two large, fairly large contracts. So right now it's about 50, 50 is commercial and 50 is residential. Nice. How did you land the contracts? Karina, what are you doing? Is this, as you're pushing on this or can you tell us more about that? So a lot of the things that I do are specific to the charities I'm associated with and associations. So the Hispanic community here has a lot of nonprofit organizations and different networking groups within those organizations. And I started to network and to really build relationships with people and to get out there and to everything in the commercial space is who you know and the relationships that you have. And so we were planting seeds and planting seeds and then it just started to develop and open doors. And so I always struggled with knowing the numbers of the commercial space because the residential is so different and I never really grasped that. And then like I said, in October I just kind of like dove in head first and I really got to understand better what the commercial industry was like to ISSA and ARCSI, all of the people that I was connected with Alonso, RJ, they all started to kind of mentor me and help me. And then it kind of just, it was just like one of those things like one door opens and then they all open. I think like that's always the way it is. Yeah. Yes. So how much do you think that your PR background has helped you Karina? How much do you use it in the business? So I think for me, I am very focused on the way that we present ourselves, right? Not just for the Maximates brand, but for the MGN brand. So I would say the majority of my role as a leader has always been PR focused. And I'll be the example, we have our core values for MGN, our innovate, invest, empower and educate and all of that carried out through our entire branding. And one of the very first things I did for Maximates actually was a complete rebranding strategy for every, across the board. So to answer your question, PR is incredibly important. The content you're seeing, the logo, the look, the color, everything, it's the entire image is incredibly important. Do you find that to be true for the commercial as well as the residential? You know, that's a great question because the commercial space is very different. And I am using our PR spin, kind of like a unique selling proposition because I'm trying to disrupt the industry in that way because we're trying, and Maximates, we're a high-end brand. So we service a lot of Colorado road residents and that approach, that five-star approach, I've now transitioned it into the commercial which you generally don't see. And so it has helped a lot. And their thing, all the property management companies that I work with have been pleasantly surprised by that additional differentiator of what was residential now as a commercial but you're bringing in that extra level of service. And it's not anything crazy, it's just like the level of attention that I put on things. The way that we answer emails, my pleasure to assist you, things like that, is it goes a long way. Okay. So you mentioned property managers. So let's drill in just a little bit in terms of what type of commercial, we say residential is pretty much residential but commercial can mean so many different things. So what type of commercial work are you doing? Yeah, that's a really great question because we, so we work with two different ones but for example, we work with Cushman and Wakefield. Now Cushman and Wakefield is the property manager in a specific building. Their tenant is GSA, okay? And then their sub-tenant is the FBI. So our day porters are in these buildings and they are servicing FBI but our, my actual client is Cushman and Wakefield. I will say that because of that relationship, that kind of dynamic, it's allowed me to be connected with the government in a different way. So we recently got a RFQ, the request for a quote from the FBI because we were doing such good work with Cushman. And so they approached me directly and said, hey, would you be interested in doing XYZ? And so you, as you guys know, getting a sole source or getting something directly from the government is huge. And it builds up your portfolio because it builds up past performance. So then when you do try to go to government directly, you can say, hey, I did this before. I have experience. So that's such a huge thing. So yeah, so I work directly. My client is Cushman and there's the property management companies but the tenants are the federal government. So the FDA and FBI. That is awesome. The FDA, wow, okay. So a lot of background checks, a lot of security, I guess a lot of additional paperwork involved in services like those. Yes, there's a lot of regulations, rules, clearance associated with these things. And some buildings have higher clearance than others, obviously, and we've been really blessed in the fact that our employees had been in those buildings before. So when I took over the contract, they chose to stay in those buildings. So they already had the clearance. So you got the contract and wound up hiring a lot of the people that worked for the old contractor? Exactly, exactly. Which is awesome because these clearance take sometimes up to a year to get. They already have them. So it was just a transition from one company to the other. And nice for them too, easy for them. Because the day before the building relationships with the actual tenants, right? They're there with the FBI and FDA every single day and they like their work environment. They want to stay at the building. So they just can transfer over to a new management company basically. I am just checking in on the name of your company, Karina. Is it M-G-N? Oh, wait, hold on. It is, yep, I saw it, M-G-N, yep. Okay, so that's what I put. What does it stand for? So M is the founder, which is Maximades. And then Garcia is my mother's, or my maiden name. And then Neff is my last name. Oh, okay. So people were asking, can you see the comments on the right-hand side usually where it says live comments? Yes. Just so you know. Sometimes the people are gonna throw up some questions for you. Yeah, if you guys have any questions for Karina, let us know. I had another question and now I put myself on a whole different track here. Well, Friday we could write it off to the heat, but I don't know what. Yeah. Ah, boy, how I can come up with an excuse on a dime. Do you really need one? I could give you 10 if you need one. You're looking a lot better today. I'm not nearly as worried about what's going on. Yeah, I feel much better inside. Yeah, nice and cool in here. Christina Sam says she loves you. Oh, she's so sweet. Nice, yeah, you're awesome. I agree, she's awesome. I think we hear that a lot from people too. So that is awesome. So can you tell us a little bit, Karina, about you so you decided you were gonna do this intentionally. You had this residential business. You decided you wanted to come over to commercial. And it sounds like you wanted to do it. Actually, can you tell us a little bit more about what made you think, yeah, I really wanna do more commercial. I love working nights. I love those people that never show up for a work at night. I mean, I'm gonna have to go in. Yeah, I'm sure that that was all in your mind, right? So what taught me was so true. The commercial that I know is very different than that. So I don't have any night cleanings. It's Monday through Friday from seven to 4 p.m. So those are the contracts that I chose to pursue. So I don't have those. Well, I'm sure, I know they missed. Yeah, we didn't have any of those. And so the thinking behind going out for a commercial contract really was because of the enormous amount of growth that it offers. And based on my experience in the PR space, I really wanted to take advantage of the relationship that I had built in the federal government and start answering the RFPs and start going after more of the FedBiz opportunities. And so that really was, as soon as I came on to Maximize, I told my mom that was my goal was to grow the commercial space and really kind of take it from there. The residential, she just set such a great foundation, the work that she did. While I run it still, I feel like it was really her baby and it was, it just is everything about that brand. It speaks to her. And so when I came on, I really wanted to first give the time and respect to that brand and help it. For instance, when I came on, the platform that they were using, that we were using, which is Service CEO, was Service CEO, they were using it at about 10% so they were just storing the names and they were printing out the sheets. So then my goal was to maximize it at 100%. So we started doing batch credit card process, we started doing email confirmation, running the route. So, and then we got mobile devices. So it was a lot of that at first. Then again, I did the rebranding. But so while I gave time then, I always knew that my commercial passion was kind of in that, I'm the back burner, if you will. Yeah, waiting until you were ready to go. So you showed earlier that they're like 50-50 in terms of where your business is now between the commercial and the residential. In terms of your time and attention, how is that split between those two sides of the business? Yeah, so we had, when I was in October, I was running the Maximades brand with my right hand and she and I were splitting 150, 50. Well, I was 100, Maximade doesn't work so much time. But then as the, as MGN started to really take off, I had to invest much more time into MGN. So now I'm so proud of everything that she's done. And so I've promoted her to the president of Maximades and I've moved on to run MGN. So I check in, once a week we do, actually we do weekly calls at 12 o'clock to go over numbers and things like that. She really is running the brand. So it gives me the opportunity to focus on business development because like I mentioned earlier, the business development and the commercial space for my experience, you plant seeds and it takes a long time to foster into something. So something that I did in January, February, probably won't result until July, August, September. So I really have to be deliberate about the business development and constantly be at it. So we're really blessed to have those large contracts now but we can't just depend on that. We have to keep pushing and keep pushing. So I would say probably 90% I'm in MGN right now and 10% Maximades. Okay, yeah, it's, I imagine you appreciate having the residential side of the business if nothing else just for cash flow, you know, you've got the money coming in and you know, if you lose a residential client, I mean, that's disappointing, but you know, you have a hard time finding that in your bank account. We're on the commercial side, you know, big accounts are great when you get them but it hurts when you lose them. Absolutely, absolutely. Here it could not be more right. Yeah, so the residential really was such an amazing foundation for us for MGN and it was a rock solid jumping off point. And for a long time it helped us get to where we were and where we are, right? So all of that cost of equipment that you have to incur, the large equipment that you're buying, you know, auto scrubbers and the buffers and the burners, you know, it's like there's a lot of material or equipment and supplies that you have to purchase. So it definitely helped with that. So yeah, so residential will always be very, very important in this formula. Well, can you share, Karina? What are like your, what's your five year goal when we're talking about the number of like, what's your percentage of the business commercial to residential? Where do you hope to be in five years? Sure, yeah, so in 2000 and so this February I actually split the divisions along completely. So now MGN it's completely different entity. And so our goal, our first year goal for MGN is $2 million. And then in three years, it's about five and a half. And then I think we did five years, $10 million. So we're, it's one of those things that like I, knowing where we started and knowing how far we've come I kind of have to pinch myself a little bit because we've had so much luck. And I don't know if that's luck or if it's the hard work that we've put in, but I feel incredibly lucky. I feel incredibly blessed to have the opportunity to service the clients that we do in the commercial space. And my, I've always wanted to have this large commercial brand. And so I think we're, we're on track for that. What's the saying? Luck is when preparation meets opportunity. Yeah, I love that. Somehow feeling that you're making your luck. Thank you. Thank you. I have so much to learn and I'm so grateful for so many people that I meet along the way that can I just try to be a sponge and absorb as much as I can. And so I always try to stay humble too and try to say, you know, I don't know the answer to that, but I'll get it for you. And I'll research and I'll figure it out. Like for instance, I had this one of our clients, the floor got destroyed by a previous vendor. And they asked me, you know, the specifics about what kind of floor and this and this and that and how can we fix them? And I said, listen, I'm not a floor expert, but I know somebody that is and I have this association that I'm a part of, which is ISSA that I can tap into and I can figure it out. So I contacted ISSA and I said, I need help. And Brant put me in touch with Mark who Mark put me in touch with this person. And then I reached out to the floor manufacturer and I said, listen, I'm having a problem. Can you help me? They gave me all this data and then I came back and I presented it in a report form and they were like, okay, this makes sense. So while I don't know the answer, I could still, I could get it. Yeah, nice. Yeah, you have the contact. So that's a huge value to people more than just, you don't have to have all of the information in your brain, but as long as you can get the information that makes you a valuable resource for sure. Right. So it looks like your plan is to really grow that commercial space so that it's going to be the dominant force with your company. And what are you planning on doing much with residential just growing it at kind of the same rate because it's been around for years and years and years and it takes a lot longer to grow residential cleaning that's not too to that side. So my mom in 2008, I think it was, she hit that one million mark. And she, and I was involved in this brand at that point, but when she hit it, it was a big deal. And she was just, like I said, her passion's always been the residential space. And so she just guns flaring. But when I came on, I'll be honest with you, I hit that 1.5 and I just couldn't go past it. And I saw it was like, hey, I can do other things. I can do other things. And for me, I couldn't go past the 1.5. Think of my best year was 1.75. But so I felt like I tapped out at that. Now I will say my area, you have Maid Bright, who's doing six million, seven million, it's like, they're incredible over there. I mean, they're like Maid Gods. My only friends are in the residential space that are doing 1.5, $2 million. And it's absolutely commendable. So while I'm sure there is much more potential for growth from Action Aids, for me personally, I felt like I had capped by residential. But some say I still don't give it love. And we still do a lot of stuff for our clients that are constantly finding different ways to service them. But for the growth for, and this is now, maybe in five years I'll say, let's go give it a go again. But right now I think that I capped for the residential brand. Yeah. Okay, so I guess the reason why I ask that question too is I just really want everyone to hear that there are so many different ways that you can go in business. Just because you have set yourself up to do one thing, doesn't mean that that has to be your only path forever. You can change paths. And sometimes your new path might even be better than your old path. Yeah. And honestly, a lot of the opportunities too in the commercial space, I do believe it came from the residential. The residential, our customers were referring us to their property management companies. To the amount of contacts that I gained from the residential space was incredible. Because we are in DC, a lot of our residents, we work for the federal government. So it's a no-brainer for them to say, hey, Karina, I've been working with Karina for five years. Absolutely here. Who do you need? What contracting officer do you need? And that's how it happened. I was in the commercial, in the residential space and doors started opening because of the relationships that I build in the residential space. So it's definitely a thing, diversifying, we talked about this Liz, diversifying your portfolio is really important. And for the residential, we do offer so many different types of services that I also developed on. From laundry to in-house managers to the deep detail cleaning, the light or clean, so all of that stuff. And that goes back to PR, the verbiage was really important for that. So I think the residential, the commercial wouldn't have been without residential. It really wouldn't. It wouldn't have been able to jump without maximates. That's an interesting pivot, if you will. We've heard the word pivot a lot during this unprecedented time. And obviously you started doing the commercial before COVID, but we've got a lot of people on this Facebook Live who are in the house cleaning business and are probably asking themselves, what would be my next move if I wanted to diversify and get into some form of commercial cleaning? He kind of gave us a hint, leverage the relationships you have with your own residential clients. Are there other things you've learned that would be useful to the folks joining us today? Yeah, so number one is don't be intimidated by the commercial space. I think as a residential owner or cleaner, you sometimes have this misconception of what commercial is. While they are completely different, different is not bad, and different is not impossible. So my first advice would be, don't be intimidated by it and ask questions and get to know the industry. Here would be the relationships that I've built have been incredibly powerful. So if you're really looking to build a commercial space, kind of map out what it looks like for you. And something that I've done and one of my mentors has helped me do is when you have a prospect list or you have a business development list and you're going through all those people, rate them, so A, B and C. And target your A and be more specific about the people that you're gonna talk to and say, okay, these are my A's. These are the people that I know will help me. So if it's Ms. Smith that you are servicing and Ms. Smith works at United Bank or Bank of America, and you know that Locuch has 12 branches and you need to find that contract, reach out to Ms. Smith and say, hi, Ms. Smith, we're developing this commercial brand and I'm really, I'm hoping that you would connect me with the right person. Nine times out of two and they're like, oh my gosh, yes, absolutely. Who do you need? You know, they're excited for you. If you're doing a good job, they're excited for you and they want to help you. So leveraging, leveraging contacts is definitely gonna be that second thing. And then you said you did some networking too, right, Karina? Like did you do local networking like B&I or? So I'm a part of the Women's Presidents Organization which is WPO and the DC chapter we meet once a month has been incredible. They are the reason, a huge reason to things that the opportunities that have come my way. One of our president, and this is kind of how it all happened, I think, one of the president, the president of our chapter, she was connected with Latina Style Magazine and they were doing a conference and they were looking for speakers. And so they reached out to our chapter and said, you know, do you know anybody? And so my president said, oh my gosh, yes, I do. I know Karina. So from that referral, I got connected with all of those associations. So ASE, Mujeres de ASE, Prospanica and my network started to grow exponentially. And so my number one, I guess, advice, I feel like I have so many, but network and network and network but really be deliberate about your networking because I know sometimes when we do network we get frustrated because we're like, it's an exchange. Like here's my car, people in our car and we feel like it's not really intentional and we don't get anything out of it. So think about where you're going. The WPO really resulted from me, all of the nonprofit organizations that I'm a part of and that I am, oh, that's another one. So when I started to reach out to these nonprofit organizations, I started to sponsor events for them from Maximates. And sometimes it was $250, other times it's $1,000 depending on the event but our brands started to get exposure. So any cocktail hour that they were doing, any lunch and learn, my brand was out there. And so they constantly would see what was happening while the residential may not have gotten that customer, those people who work in the government started to see Maximate and started to see the brands constantly popping up. So those sponsorship opportunities, is that something that they were looking to sell or did you initiate that? So the relationships that I built from these folks, I started to, they had them already. So they would say, we're doing a lunch and learn, would you wanna be a sponsor? And a lot of these things too was my desire to give back to the Hispanic community. Because I am Peruvian, I really wanted to mentor women, Hispanic women in small business. And I was trying to reach out to organizations that did that or did that in some capacity. And I put that out there, I put that out there in that space saying, you guys need anything, I really wanna get involved in my community. And I wanna get involved specifically with Hispanic women in business. And so it just started kind of happening. And then I got an award in July for Persponica DC, which recognizes Hispanic leaders in DC that are doing just that, are helping the Hispanic community. So through that, I want to mention. Thanks. I love the idea of being intentional in your networking because networking can be painful. So do you have any other tips or strategies in terms of making it a productive exercise? All alone. I know that go alone, go to alone to be alone. Because my very first one, I was really scared. I may not seem like it, but I was very, very nervous because I didn't know what they were gonna ask me or what they were gonna do. And the speaking engagement specifically, I pushed myself to that. I've never done a speaking engagement with over 300 people. I made sure that I pushed myself well past my comfortable point. And I started meeting people and going up to people and talking to them. And I just am not that person, I was never that person. So if you really wanna be successful, you have to push yourself well beyond your comfort zone. And you have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. And I did that and it really resulted in it because before I would go with my right hand to these networking events and we were just talked to each other the whole time. And I'm like, not working. Not working. You need to be comfortable, you need to be uncomfortable about that. Yes, yes, so. Good job. Thanks. All right, so that's actually a great question. So if you're not uncomfortable, then well, maybe you're the kind of person that's very comfortable networking, right? But, and that's great too. But you still probably need to push yourself farther and to be doing more than what you're doing. Yes. So whoever you are, right? I need to be doing more than I would normally do. Whenever I'm thinking to myself, yeah, but I just don't wanna do that. I don't like to do that. Those are probably things, the things that you should be doing, I should be doing, we should be doing, right? Exactly. We should be pushing ourselves. You should sort of do stuff with likening to people too. So another thing that I heard from you, oh, I'm sorry, Tom. Did you have something to say to us? I was gonna go in a different direction, you got it. I'm kind of going a little bit different direction but also kind of the same. So talking a lot about networking, you're also talking about like women-owned businesses and trying to help women and earlier you were talking about some of your mentors who are men, right? So RJ and Alonso and so how all of this stuff all ties together is kind of interesting to me. You're getting information from men about how to grow this women-owned kind of idea. How did that all come about? Did you just see an opportunity or what happened there? The women that I have surrounded myself with and have kind of formed this circle of woman power, I don't know, it's a unique situation because we all are in different industries. So there's lawyers, there's accountants, there's government contracting, there's IT, there's HR. We've been just so incredibly supportive of each other. So those, well, everything I think I believe started there, they encouraged me to get out of my comfort zone. And one of the things I remember, I saw the, because of my desire to give back and my desire to help others has always been a driving force. I remember seeing the email about ARCSI looking for new council members. And again, I was really, I would never have done this two, three years ago. Karina would never have even thought of this. But I emailed Alonzo directly and I called him and I said, I'm gonna apply and I wanted me included. And he was like, who are you? I'm sorry, what? What's your name? Where'd you come from? So I forced myself into that situation. And I said, I'm not, I know I can help people and I want to help people and I'm genuine. So give me this opportunity. And so that relationship started forming organically because I started to really push myself and say, hey, what can I do? How can we do it? And my energy for anything that's ARCSI, like I generally care for others and I generally want to see other women and even men succeed in this space. So that was really a huge point where Alonzo and I's relationship has developed the last six or seven months. And I'll call him and I'll ask him. A lot of things. And he probably is like, did I decline? Just kidding. Yeah, I doubt it. He's been really great. RJ has been really great. The relationships that I formed through that committee has been really great. Liz, I've met you and I've connected with you in a foreign relationship because of that as well. So it's been such an incredible opportunity for me. But again, I had to push myself and I had to get uncomfortable. And it wasn't fun at first, but it worked out. I really like what you're saying too is you reach out to people that you thought could be helpful to you, that you could help get you where you wanted to go. First, you decided what you wanted, how you were gonna get it, and then you just reached out to those people and you didn't really worry yourself with whether or not you're gonna get shut down or whether you just didn't worry about that stuff. You just reached out. And I mean, I think ARCSI is a great example of how people are always, businesses, business owners, want to help other business owners and build each other up. And it's not really a lot to be afraid of within our industry. The people are so uplifting. Yeah, I'm sure every once in a while you're gonna run into somebody that's not gonna have time for you or whatever, but they're gonna be few and far between. So just making yourself do it. I mean, I think it's excellent advice. I'm wondering from the people that are watching this Facebook Live, how many of you are thinking right now, I couldn't do that. I couldn't do that because Karina couldn't do it either, two years ago, but she did anyway. Yeah. And I guess if you do it and you find out that it wasn't as bad as you thought it would be, it gets a little bit easier? Exactly, it does. And don't get me wrong. There's times where I have put myself out there and it did work and it was like, oh, that wasn't fun. No one's gonna give you anything. No one's gonna hand you a business and it just doesn't work that way. So if you want something, you have to go get it. You have to be bold. But isn't that just another level of growth? Getting to the point where you understand I do something if it doesn't work, I can survive that too. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. We had this situation where I had gotten the opportunity to bid on $34 million contract. This was March, no, February March. I think you can imagine, I was like, what do I do? You know, I've never really done this. So I started working on my network and I started to do like a joint venture with, not joint venture, a teaming agreement. So this massive proposal, this was like 34 walkthroughs. It was just like, it was over 8 million square feet. It's a huge portfolio. Long story short, I made four deals before the proposal was due. My then partner, the person that the company that I chose to partner with decided to, it wasn't gonna work. They wanted to walk out. So I was like, oh my God, they didn't want to give me all of the price. We had divided the proposal because I'm so good at writing. I was gonna write and they were gonna do the pricing sheet. So I was left with no pricing sheet. So I had to do all the pricing sheets. So I rallied, okay, I'm gonna do this and we'll do this. I reached out to my network trying to find another partner. One came in, that's not through. Another came in, this is now 24 hours before I'm supposed to submit this thing. And I'm like, wow, gosh, I don't know what I'm gonna do. Should I just fold? Should I just say, like I'm sorry, I don't know what to do. So I said, you know what, I'm just gonna do, I'm gonna do it by myself and it is what it is. So I submitted, I drove out and you had to do a written proposal. You had to do copies. It was due at 430 and I stayed up until probably six AM the night before writing this thing out, doing the pricing. I turned in at 425, it's due at 430. Oh gosh. Then I have to get in front of a room of about 12 people and present this proposal. And at that point I was like, okay, this is the stuff that makes you, right? This is like, I gotta do it. So I got up and I presented it and I was by myself and they looked at me and they were like, you missing someone? I was like, no, just me, just me. And they were like, okay, all right. And I did it. And that contract actually they postponed everything because of the coronavirus stuff. But it was one of those like, I cannot believe I just did that. Like that. Was that contract not been awarded yet? No, it hasn't. Are you still a candidate? Yeah, I'm still a candidate for that. Wow. I tell people, you know, people ask you, how do I get large contracts? How do I win large contracts? And it's like, well, you have to start by bidding and losing large contracts. Right. And the more you do that, the closer you're getting to winning large contracts. Right. So you mentioned COVID kind of derailed that or postponed it. That was my question. I'm wondering how the whole pandemic has affected your business, what challenges, what opportunities has your business on both sides of the equation retail and commercial? How have things changed over the last few months? In the residential space, we were hit pretty hard. So we had about 60% revenue loss because of this whole thing. Slowly we're climbing back up but the numbers still aren't great. Better, but not great. The commercial space is completely different. So while we have those set contracts, so we have day quarters in all those buildings, they're now asking for additional services and increased services. And so now what's happening is the tenants, there's another property management company that I work with that has various tenants in these buildings. So a doctor's office, a dentist's office, various different people. So their tenants have actually started to approach us and ask for disinfecting services. So our portfolio is even growing more in that sense. We have always been, I've always been really conscious of our employees. And like I said, our core values for MGM have always been to empower, invest and innovate and educate. And so when this whole thing happened, I really wanted to take the opportunity to make sure that the employees are protected and they were safe and that we were polishing up all of our procedures and protocols that we made them know what we were doing. So everybody was safe. I had to pull employees that were over the age of 65. That was a hard conversation for them because they thought that they were losing their job but it wasn't that case. We still paid them. I just chose to take them out of those buildings and have them stay home for their safety. So that was a very hard situation because it was my decision to do that. Now looking back, I think I made the right decision because now that employee has more trust in me, right? I told him he was not gonna lose his job and he didn't. He now is back again. What else? The COVID-19 now we're seeing a completely different shift in re-entering the workspace and what that looks like for everybody, what we're doing, the modification of scope of work for COVID-19, there's so much more interest in the details behind commercial. So what products you're using, what equipment you're using, how often are you disinfecting the employees that are there, are they safe? So there's a lot more involvement with property management companies just to make sure that everybody is safe, everybody is doing what they're supposed to be doing. Also, we are getting close to the top of the hour and our commitment of trying to keep the trains running on time, wanna show you guys cleaning business today. If you haven't subscribed over here to the right, really easy email, first name, last name, doesn't cost you anything. You get our newsletter, keeps you up to date on all of the breaking developments and the house cleaning space. If you go to coronavirus.downloads, here are a lot of the downloads, resources, articles that we've had over, I guess, since we've been fighting the crisis during this unprecedented event. I'll carry on, just to account. Do for one there, Tom. Here's our friend, Aaron Brown, which I think you were asking earlier. And this guy has an awesome blog and he talks about the coronavirus in a lot of different ways, but he does a lot of research and he lists all of his reference material in this article, but explains how the disease is spread and is primarily an airborne thing and you have to get another significant dose of it I'm in an extended period of time. That's why being outside, you're fairly safe. It's a good article, if you haven't read that, please do. Modern cleaning, PHC course, class seven is now live. It's a epic class on tools and very comprehensive. I'm particularly proud of that class out of the whole program. Final exam will be launched within the next 24 hours and we're gonna be done with that phase of the project. So for everybody who signed up and got their people involved, please go ahead and jump in and have at it. There's a lot of fun to be had there. I did want to talk about cleaning business tonight. When I was doing my research and stuff and any question that I have or I do always go there. I try to go there and see if I can find my answer and it somehow always, there's something there that can help me. So definitely a resource as well that I use often. So thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Did you post the super secret link? No. I'm doing it every day for... I feel like those people think that they can just go to any Facebook live and get it. They're gonna pop up this one and they're gonna be like, it's not there. My bad, I'm getting... It's not there, yeah. And it's only Monday. My gosh, where do you think we're gonna be by the end of the week? It's gonna be better, Tom. We're trying to take our annual phone smart business moves. Yeah, I mean, I feel like Karina, you really just upped our game a lot right here. I really did not intend that you would be so inspirational. I mean, I know that you're an inspiration because you do. We're okay with that though, that's good. But I'm sure that the people on this call are feeling very much inspired, like, wow, okay. Because you really made something that is so big that make a lot of people feel like I could never do that, I can't do that. I feel like you can do it, you just have to do the hard stuff. Yeah. I think it's too hard, it's not too hard. You just gotta do it. Right, absolutely. Yeah, that was really, really inspirational. I really appreciate that whole message. I know a lot of people, you know, when you're talking to them, you know what you have to do, but then you don't do it. Right. Really, that's the key right there. Doing the things that you know you should do. Yeah, and sometimes it's, we can all do it. I truly believe that, you have to push yourself. And sometimes I had this really, I had a big fear about the commercial space. I was very hesitant, not hesitant because I always wanted to, but I was fearful that I wouldn't know 90% of the things. And I don't know still a lot of stuff, but I can learn it and I'm not scared of it anymore. And I have a network that will help me get the right answers. So if there's anyone that's really less thinking, like, oh, you know, I wish I could do it, but you can do it, you really can. You just have to start. That's really huge. You don't have to pretend you know stuff that you don't know, just explain that. You know, I've got people who specialize in that and I'll get you an answer. And you know, I'm the talent that kind of keeps everything tied together. That's, you know, I don't have any answers, but I've got a bunch of people that do. I'm hanging around with smart folk. That's my ammo. I'm glad that I'm gonna add you to that list, Karina, because you definitely are a talent. You're gonna get you being with us today and hopefully you'll be coming back in the not too distant future. This was fun. Thank you so much. So. I also add really quickly, I'm so excited about the Alonzo show tomorrow. I was on last week and I caught that one. It was awesome. I really appreciated how you guys were so honest and vulnerable and you guys, you could tell that you were trying so hard to be respectful, but you also wanted to share stuff and it just came across so sincere and so genuine. And so from a place of you really wanting to learn. So I loved it. I applaud you both for that. And I'm so excited to do it, to watch tomorrow. Thanks so much. Thank you. Yeah, please, if at all possible, try to join us tomorrow at five. We're doing something important and it's for a lot of reasons. It's for all of our benefit and we'll be taking questions and it's gonna be awesome. So Karina, thank you again. You guys have a great rest of your day and we'll see you tomorrow at five Eastern. Thank you so much Karina. You're welcome. Bye bye.