 COVID-19 is the virus that changed house cleaning forever. We're going to talk about that today. Hi there, I'm Angela Brown and this is Ask a House Cleaner. This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question and I get to help you find an answer. Now, today's show is brought to us by House Call Pro, which is a software that house cleaning business owners use in order to remove a whole bunch of the admin tasks that they do every night when they get back to their office. This is keeping track of the clients, the customers, the schedules, the dispatching of the jobs, the jobs that were done, the details of the jobs, the upsells, the invoicing, the credit card processing, all that stuff. It's now automated on an app that runs off your smartphone. It's super cool. Check it out at housecallpro.com forward slash Angela and they'll take you on a demo and they'll show you all about how it works to see if it's right for your business. Housecallpro.com forward slash Angela. All right, on to today's show. We have a very special guest and this is interesting because COVID-19 is the virus that changed house cleaning forever. As business owners are getting ready to go back into the marketplace and the bands are being lifted and house cleaners are going back to work, it's very interesting because there has to be a new conversation and going into every home, do you want your home disinfected or is sanitization good enough? And so we're going to check in with Zaynep Mamedalu who is the owner of Maid Bright and it's a company that is out of Washington DC metro area. They've got a huge team of people there. They've been a family owned business for 16 years and they have some standards in place and she's going to share with us some of the interesting nuances of what has changed and what has stayed the same. Please help me welcome Zaynep Mamedalu. Hi Angela, I'm Zaynep from Maid Bright. We have a residential cleaning company in the DC metro area. We service Northern Virginia, Washington DC and parts of Maryland. We've been in business for about 16 years that started from the townhouse of my husband's basement and now we have about 50 crews and have been running a great business since 2004. Well, I'm so excited that you joined us today because you run such a massive cleaning empire and I know that right now during the coronavirus there are a lot of house cleaning companies that have had to change some of their procedures and some are ironically quite the same. So I was hoping that you would share with us some of just what's happening in your business and what it looks like for you guys moving forward. I know these are different times and we are facing a pandemic, you know, as a whole, whole world, you know, and it's changed some of our procedures. But when you think about it, you know, essentially, we are a cleaning company. So from the start, we've had to always have some protocols in place. So we're not transferring germs or bacteria from house to house. You know, we're disinfecting properly. We're using the proper tools and techniques. So some of the things that we've adopted from the start of our company are pretty much the same. So we've always used microfiber cloths. We've always used shoe covers in our client's home. We always use gloves when we clean. You know, those things haven't changed. We always have used the hospital grade neutral disinfectant that's registered with the EPA. And these things are important as a foundation to your proper cleaning technique and procedures. But what has changed, of course, is the number of people that are working at a time. So we rotate our teams now 25 at a time. We do adhere to a six-feet distancing rule as everyone is aware. And we're wearing masks and our crews are taking their temperatures each morning just so that we know that they don't have any symptoms that they can transfer or we don't want them to be sick and going out to the job site. So for those customers that still would like their homes cleaned. And so is this now new, a new policy that happens from now forever? Or is this just during the pandemic that they'll take the temperatures? I think flu season and pandemics. I think going forward because flu season was also very strong this year, it might be a good idea going forward to check your temperature during flu season. Is there anything that you have noticed? I mean, I know lots of the house cleaning businesses, even though they're still active and they're still working, a lot of the numbers are down. They don't have as many jobs. Is that also true for you guys? It is true for us too, Angela. We're about 60% down, but we are rotating our teams. And a great thing that we did and a huge shout out to all of our customers for participating in this is we set up a made bright relief fund. So our customers were able to donate if they wished, you know, if they weren't getting regular cleanings or put their cleanings on hold, they were able to donate to a made bright relief fund that our family matched up to $10,000. Oh, wow. So we were able to directly give that to our employees because they're the ones, you know, that are not working quite a normal schedule right now. So we thought it would be a great way to share that with our customers. You know, these people are every day coming, showing up, they're the asset of our business, and they do such a great job that we wanted to do everything we could to help them. And so, I mean, it was huge with the customers. So many of them contributed and helped out. Well, I love this because it's easy to be watching the news every day. Everybody being quarantined, and some people still working, but most people not. And then they're sitting there and watching the news and there's just this fear and this overwhelming world global, ah, you know, and I know it's so frustrating. How do you keep morale up during a time like this other than offering a relief fund? I think that showing up every day with a smile, you know, you have to keep a smile. You have to keep your composure and be the positive force in your business, you know, at home with your family or at work. It doesn't matter. You know, you can have your moments, you know, where you do feel down, you do feel scared, you do feel panicked, but try not to let that affect your employees. You know, if you're strong, if you're confident that we're going to pass this, you know, we're going to get back to normal. There are hiccups sometimes in life. There are changes that we do need to adhere to sometimes, but everything's going to go back, you know, we're going to prosper, we're going to do well. And if you have that feeling reflect onto everybody else, I think it helps morale. Is this something like maybe you would offer your individual employees like a Zoom chat or something like that? If they needed to talk to you one-on-one, have you been available for them? If they needed to just vent or get something off their chest? Yeah, yeah. I mean, they can at all times come and talk to us, call us Zoom chat or like even in the office, if we're adhering to like a distancing rule, then we are able to talk to them. And they've been so positive during this whole experience, you know, as always going out, doing the hardest work they can do and coming back with smiles. Well, and I love all the different steps that you're taking because it is a very difficult time. And I know that there are house cleaners everywhere, afraid. As you move into the new tomorrow, what does that look like? And what are we supposed to do differently? What will you guys do differently than what you did in the past? I think be more diligent about illness. You know, if somebody is sick, you know, make sure that we are maybe going in with masks, you know, if a customer is sick or maybe asking them to reschedule their cleanings, you know, going forward. Because this is such a different time. We're going to be scared of, you know, every little thing that comes our way. So maybe taking more of those precautions going forward. And I think that's really important because I think the world has changed. I know it's a pandemic. There is a whole new level of clean that people are now aware of. Now everybody knows about the difference between disinfecting and sanitizing. Right. The whole entire world is now aware of personal protective equipment. Where two months ago, people were saying, am I going to look weird if I show up at a customer's house and I'm wearing a face mask? Right. Right. And now that's expected. You know, if you don't have one, it's like, where is their mask? You know, so those things are extremely important. It's extremely important to make sure even the shoe covers, you're not bringing outside dirt and grime into the customer's home. So these are things, like I said, we've been doing all along. But now I think that they're being really noticed. Well, and it's funny that you say that because we've always followed the same precautions and we've been made fun of. Like, well, you know, what are you trying to prove here? Well, it's not we're trying to prove anything. It's just we don't believe in cross-contamination at a very serious level. And we take it seriously so that you don't have to. Right. Make fun of us all you want. It's part of our uniform. We just we just wear it. You know, yeah, we're trying to keep your home safe. And also, sometimes the customer will ask, like, your ladies came in and they're spraying everything down. Like, yeah, because they have to let it sit, you know, a disinfectant works only if you let it sit for the appropriate amount of time that it's designed for. You don't just spray it and wipe it off. It doesn't do much that way. So now, like they're also aware of that and they're also aware because we've made this available by email. And also, if you look at our website, it's now at the top of our website, the precaution taking and any updates that we have for the customers. I love that you've taken the extra initiative to educate the customers as well so that there are no surprises and so that they don't think, oh, well, you know, they're they're acting weird now. They're doing something different, you know, it just it gives them a sense of peace and a sense of, oh, they're educated. They know exactly what's going on and it doesn't. It makes the consumers and the customers feel safe. Yeah, that was our goal from the start. You know, how can we approach this without eliciting more fear, more panic, you know, because they're you're going to ask, what are you doing to keep me safe and also keep your employees safe, too? These are questions that we've had by email. You know, what what are you guys doing? So at this point, like we were like, well, we have to put like regular updates out there by email and on our website, too, for anybody that might be interested in a service right now, because I know that it can get difficult to clean your own house while your kids are at home. You might have other family members quarantining with you. We've had move in, move out cleanings, you know, people are moving so they need their house cleaned. So these are all questions that we've had to face. And the most appropriate way, I think, was to put it right there on the website so that everyone's informed at the same time. Well, speaking of your website, where do our listeners go to find you? www.madebrite.com. Alrighty, thank you so much, Zana Mamedalu, for joining us today. That was super helpful information and I know it gives us some great ideas as house cleaners as we move back into the new tomorrow. I'm going to leave links in the show notes to her company so that you guys can check her out and all the stuff that they're doing. All right, if you found this helpful, please pass it on to a friend. And if you found this valuable, please give us a thumbs up. And until we meet again, leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.