 Hey, good afternoon everybody Tom Stewart here. I'm with Liz Trotter our guest today is Matt Donnelly and this is smart business moves Matt welcome to smart business moves. Thank you, Tom I'm I'm excited to be here and have been are after watching the show for a few years now So I'm very very excited you know Matt and I have become friends he is a very significant part of the maids franchise brand and has a really large branch up in New England several several locations actually all under the the maids flag and through Matt I've met some other folks from his organization is really a cool group of people and Matt does some really impressive things within industry and we're all going to learn something tonight We appreciate you taking some time this afternoon to be with us Thrilled to be here It's Tom said I mean I think you know one of the biggest things I think about scaling Whether we're going from zero to five hundred thousand or five to a million and a half or whatever those points are yep the biggest things networking and Getting out there and meeting people have been successful people that are positive have good vibes And in learning from them and so Tom might it's great to have had the opportunity to meet you Followed each other. I think a little bit over the years. We were both in the ionators, which is not an 80s pump and Back Remember the active eye line. Yep. I Keep one of these on the shelf actually This one is sober We remember we used to clean with these things and They were awesome, weren't they? Yeah It was a great great concept and you know one thing about Tom I've always admired about Tom is not only what we let's say the top three or five people ever in this industry But we'll in a trifling so none of them works for various reasons and that's okay Because we're not moving forward if we're not trying and we make mistakes sometimes And I know I'm preaching the choir probably to everybody that's on on this call today and Liz You and I have never met before or spoken But we almost did one time Okay, it was in a bar Okay That's not surprising go ahead No, no, it was lunchtime a few years back and I ssa show in Dallas And I walked in this restaurant with a couple friends Jim, you know what Tom, you know Jim Harris Jr. Oh, yeah Walked in for lunch during a break who was right at a pavilion across the street from the convention center And there were two ladies at the bar You came and started talking to them and you must have been working with them doing some consulting and they were so Excited to see you and they were telling up and down all the successes. They were having I was listening to this And I wanted to interrupt the tinctures myself. Well one. I was a little too shy and you're like a god out there God, yeah So I was a little too shy and then they was just so excited I was like, I'm not gonna burst. This is just moment for them. So so I'm gonna go so we were that close to meeting Dang it. Dang it. You know, you never know shift fast Ever meeting now. I'm excited But the industry is it's great for the industry to have you both and everything you're doing It then just benefits everybody and the added professionalism Whether somebody's on the franchise side or the independent side, we're all the same game We're all doing the same thing. There's enough customers for everybody So so what you've both been doing is absolutely fantastic and thank you On the part of anybody in this industry Much appreciated I pretty much wraps it up for This Okay, before we before we get into any more details Tom didn't a report come out today consumer price index numbers came out and I guess there's there's a top line number which has a whole bunch of stuff in it But then there's a core what they call a core number, which are the things that Actually can be affected by interest rates and it's the thing that the feds really trying to drive down and for the last I'm gonna say half a dozen months. Maybe more. It was like point four percent month over month, which if you extrapolate that out as What five percent a year or so well, it came up to be point two percent core inflation month over month today Which is half of what it used to be and there's a whole lot of people excited about that and I've been so dog I'm busy today. I haven't even looked at the stock market yet But I imagine it's doing a pretty pretty good. Yo, yeah Good day on the stock market. So what does all that mean? It means that the interest rates that the feds doing might not be Going up as much as quickly Other they're probably will still do another increase the next time they meet here in the next few weeks, but you know the whole idea of having a really bad economic outcome is looking a little bit better in terms of like a Recession or something because of that One silly number At least not as bad Right. Yeah, it was good news. It was good news. It's hard. It's hard to say with one one number one time So let's see what what but that's a big change. So Let's hope fingers crossed everybody fingers Hey, okay. So what else do we have anything else that we have to talk about before? We Cuz I know once we start talking to Matt We'll go by Oh my gosh, we're out of time again You want to talk about some some events in August that people might need to be aware of Definitely, we need to talk about that you we want to pull up the links and I'll remind people we have the Made Central live event that I know a lot of people know about are registered for already and I'm because it's a popular event I will say here see a side that look I caught myself. I assist a residential and Also for profit builders. We decided to bookend on That event so if you're going to the main central event, you might want to come in early for The ISSA residential event or stay late For our event that is how to lead and manage with the numbers. You don't learn all about these numbers and how to Manage your numbers at made central. Well, how about learn how to Manage the people that are working for you and lead your company by using that data That's a piece that gets dropped a lot I'm I'm sharing a link off of core profit builders that's Going to the arcs the event is that perfect? perfect, yeah, I Think there is also a Keep an eye out for this y'all there is a An assessment going out. It is 50 Questions We'd like to get as many people responding to that survey. It's in five different areas we'll be using some of that data and our My event no, not my event the ISSA residential event on my session. My session is Running your company that's sort of a to z so we're going to be talking about five different areas and Keep an eye out that should be coming in directly from ISSA And give us give us your your insight as to where you where you sit from that survey And you'll get a little score tell you sort of what you need to work on and what to pay attention to if you come into the ISSA event That was a lot. I said a lot there. I'm on that Liz. I'm gonna fill it out. I Want to make sure? We get that link. Well, we can share that a whole bunch of place Matt Wilson that will make sure you get it too awesome. I'm signed up for the event All right, excellent. Good. I'll be able to meet you in person. That's right. Nice All right, so bar No, I'm so I'm so rarely at bars that when somebody says that I'm like, oh, okay Well, when you're in Charleston, we'll drag you to at least one, you know that We always go to that one big. Is that a bar? No, it's a brewery. It's a brewery. So it's a bigger bar I do love levels All right, well, it's getting late and I don't want to waste any more time that we're we have to talk with Matt Matt how tell us a little bit about your story. How did you get involved in the house cleaning industry and just How did it all start? I? Got pushed Okay So I've been in the industry now since 1995 So it's been a while so my father was looking to invest in a bit in a different business and I was looking at some different things. We just started looking at franchises and looked at different industries and Landed on residential cleaning and it just seemed like the right fit It was recurring revenue scalable low capital Not something that at any point soon was going to get wiped out by some disruption or technology So we just checked off a lot of things on the list that made sense and jumped in and So I'd say and I was not an all-star out of the gates by any means Does probably one of the worst young owners of a resident or cleaning franchise and in back then and Is a franchise or some advantages, but in general the cleaning space was so much less mature than it is today The easy part is just thrown at and the yellow pages were good But overall it was it was a struggle the first few years. It was definitely a definitely a long learning curve to kind of figure it out it took a certainly took a lot of perseverance and listening and Bang head against the wall and slowly things started to go from there so we started not just north of Boston and a couple in probably half a dozen communities and slowly started growing the area we're serving and Started buying out some other franchise in the area that they decided to do other things And so through a combination of that over the last almost gosh almost 30 years now We now run most of Eastern Massachusetts keep including Cape Cod New Hampshire where I'm situated today Southern Maine we don't go to Rhode Island or Vermont So we have and we run we have Seven to eight offices. I think right now locations Okay, so Matt Are you saying that your your company is so large? You don't know how many offices? And you'll be glad about this I don't know how many teams we have You should Yeah, I do I do know our revenue Okay, I know our labor cost Okay, so those are some good numbers actually Tom I would love if you would dig into some of the numbers with Matt because you know our people do love to hear that data Let me some KPIs You know KPIs if you're if you're willing to share. So are you willing to share that information Matt? I'll share what I know off your number. I know off the top my head. Okay That's one that we can ask for All right, well tell us what you got what what would small businesses that are because we have a lot of people that are You know in that area that you were back in the day when you said you were a bad business owner A lot of our business owners are feeling like I'm a bad business owner You know, I'm how am I going to get there? How it doesn't seem possible. I was talking to a Three million dollar company last week that was saying I just don't see it I just don't see that it's possible Liz. Wow, and that's significant. That's a big that's a big company in our space Well, I mean small in comparison to you though, right less than half your size And so I think that you could be really inspirational to a lot of these companies that are feeling like It's I can't do it. It's not possible It's interesting. It's like anytime we've taken the jump whether it be from two million or three million or three million or four million It's we always try to get back to it Back to normal and in that jump is obviously more chaos than usual And but getting back to where it runs and feels like it did at the previous point Obviously it looks a little different But you know, I think about it today I don't think feel like we're that different than we were a three or four million We have relatively pretty much the same team in place. We have fantastic team I mean, which is office in a key they've been with us a long time and A lot of news came came out of the field and just really grew up in the business So it's it's kind of just always trying to get back and making things normalized again getting big Looking at the same KPIs we were looking at before having the same systems the same training and continuous training I guess one of the things early on and I think it's probably really relevant today for anybody Scaling up. I think the book email Excuse me the email revisited. I think it was just an essential learning piece for me early on But it talks about not having the business be about you and having systems in place and and how to go from A to B That was that was huge Really helpful. I would encourage anybody who's looking to scale at all. That's a great resource And when you say systems Matt, give us some examples of what you're you're talking about Let's start our training In early on we were probably this back in the early late 90s What a structured training in place for new team members is probably one of the earlier certification programs and Still to this day of a big believer of that I know and I know there's a lot of variations out there now And I think nothing is one that's perfect or better than the other I think the fact that there is that structure in place when a new team member comes in How their orientation is set up In that they feel like they're part of something and that they're trained from point A To point B to point C in a very structured way and that's communicated up front to them. So they understand the expectations In rolling that right into continuous training Big believer in our case we have weekly continuous training for all our teams and we break it down into short snippet topics so Not even dusting it would be something tiny within dusting say You know Left or right or whatever you want, whatever you want it to be a certain details And so that's structured training over the year is Technical skills such as that soft skills most customer service as well as safety training So we have a rotating schedule with our safety training. We try we make sure we take attendance and that's signed off Each time in case for our records at the workers comp or any trends or anything like that That pops up. We just want to make sure that we've got ourselves covered there So safety training might be a lot of things that are common in the industry now It's slips and falls walking on an icy surface going on the house in the winter Distracted driving So, you know When you talk about systems, I'm thinking about okay. Well, you need documentation You need to say what you do and do what you say, but yeah You know, you've got like Multiple branches and over a large geographic area a whole bunch of people working for you It's a lot more involved than just putting all this on a piece of paper. How do you make all that work? So It's gotten we've gotten At times and we've not as smoothly as we'd like it to be But our management team is pretty it's pretty they're good at Communicating with the branch managers and you know smaller branch might be that might be a senior team leader or a bigger branch might be You know more senior position all depends Where we're at in the size of that office But we try to stay in touch with them. So they have daily home calls with those folks Every day about their day what that's gonna look like how that what's happening in training. So the training itself Continuous training is set up pretty much they set it up in the beginning of the year and it runs for the year So everybody knows we do what's gonna happen They have a review call touch base on it in this and that takes a lot of different formats these days Obviously video is used more now There's a lot of different tools sometimes we'll do it as a zoom call if it's something we need bigger We want to make sure that message is precise And others you know show and tell or have Whose games and sometimes it's tests From like original certification tests will break those back out again and do some different things along those lines So so you do this is what I heard right that's weekly correct and so well 52 different topics and You're just run them through do you have 52 topics that you recycle yearly or is it? Pretty much well We have more than that and then the topics may change occasionally based on trends if we're seeing a Lot of issues for kitchen floors Maybe something like that and that's gonna jump way up and your safety training changed a lot over COVID. I'm sure oh Yes, yes a bunch of stuff in there Yeah, although I think you know is the more professional companies. I think you know what and there's you know a lot of them out there Shames less than we expected Is we looked at if we were doing a little bit more than wearing masks a lot of the things we were doing anyways It's just we didn't Really communicate it to the customers that often because any customers didn't care. Yeah All of a sudden it's like hey, we're prepared for this. We got this down Yeah, nice. Okay, so I think I think that is a good Example of an advantage like a systems a system that you might have in place You should get bigger that smaller companies don't have went a lot of the smaller companies were thrown for a loop They did not they did not have good strong safety systems in place Not only did they not have masks they a lot of them weren't using Gloves on a regular basis. They weren't they weren't disinfecting They didn't know the difference between cleaning and disinfecting sanitizing, you know There was a lot of confusion out there for a lot of companies So that is a really good example of how as you grow you create these systems that can manage I like that you said you really didn't have to make a lot of changes Some adapting and like like I said, what what are we and that was a big question at a time Where do we go with disinfecting? How far do we take it? It's all there was a lot of those conversations that everybody had at that time and What do you think good is that bad? But we try to have training systems in place early on when we were really small a lot of this stuff existed then And I think it allowed us to continue allowed us to scale because we weren't figuring out afterwards It some of it seems silly and overkill when we're really small to be doing these things But I think it was critical for instance How do you handle a complaint customer call a complaint when it comes in and so we had probably an overkill Standard operating procedure for that early on but it carried us a long time of how we how that got documented How that got handled a lot of things that made central has has built right into it That we we were very conscious of early on because we knew if we were running Two teams and we were gonna be running six or eight Then it was gonna become more complicated and you know million to a two million business might be twice the size But it's exponentially more complicated. So having those systems is critical And if you didn't have those systems you would never Had known how valuable they were I mean I'm working on a I'm working on a concept here and this is gonna be this is gonna be awesome when we do this It's I've had an epiphany list and epiphany that There's a difference between growth and scale okay a lot of times we use them interchangeably in In the past we've talked about we've written articles about Barriers to growth where you can grow to a certain point and then you just hit a wall and you can't can't get beyond it anymore and Typically, it's it's because you know you have a team issue You need another layer of management or something from a team standpoint that you don't have or there's some understanding You need from a financial standpoint in terms of your financial modeling that you haven't figured out or it's a technology issue You don't have the technology and you don't even know what you don't know You don't know the counter argument is it's even holding you back until you have it then all of a sudden you're moving forward again So growth is what you do when it's working for you You're between these walls if you will but when you hit a wall It's not really a growth thing anymore. It's a scaling thing. You have to scale over the wall in order to It's a pretty good job, right? And it's the it's the things that you do that seems silly when you're small That give you the ability to scale over that wall and you don't even realize that at the time If you're doing it's only after the fact and you look back and say gee if I hadn't done that I would still be stuck at that wall back there, right? Yeah Yeah, yeah, it's up. There's a point. Oh, yeah. Hey, I can run the customers are run stuff on index cards But the earlier system is put in place Like I made central that just opens up so many opportunities for the growth It it really changes things It was in other things running clean books from early stage. I've seen so many people in this business or any business really They'll you know run their financials You know on a napkin or by the bank account and and they got this thing called QuickBooks out there and They don't want to touch it and they don't want to put anything in it or you know, maybe set up a chart of accounts You know what the account do that I'll get I'm too busy. I'll get to it later. Oh, we'll make him money I'll put stuff in there I got a shoebox with all this information and I'll give it to the account and let them figure it out Yeah, yeah, and that's another one. I think early on and using the recent Sony resources in our industry space now To learn how to do things and have templates set up that on the early of the better from day You know day one if it's not day one and it's not done then make it today I think that's one of those really really important foundational pieces So running one of these and to be will have a growth Really the books don't change that much over the years I mean as you both know the the your income statement a balance sheet the numbers may be bigger Some cases smaller But the concept in the complexity of the books really doesn't change that much So I have that in place day one and have it running for you I think it's really important and trying to play catch up and figure it out later All right, John. Don't worry. You haven't missed a ton, but you'll definitely want to go back and listen because You know they're when you're talking to somebody at max level all of the stuff that he says he's got lots of little Jewels in there that you want to be able to hear that sound just normal to him like to chat But for the rest of us are like, oh, yeah, okay, that's important We got a you know check mark make sure that we're doing that So one of it on a couple of things Tom. Did you have something you want to say before I start asking a bunch of my questions? No, you go Okay, so I made a few notes on those little jewel things that I'm talking about here Matt One of the things that you said was You have to have a good team. I think everybody that When we did foundation scale last year every presenter that came in that was talking about scale Just hammered on the idea of how important the team is and that you it's not just Like the individual people. It's the team itself everybody working together In the same vision And you who said that that team is really important But that you also pretty much have the same team that you had I think you said at three million, right? Yeah, for the most part. Yeah, it's evolved a little bit, but not yeah not a lot And it's interesting. We just brought back recently during coven a customer service rep who worked with us 20 years ago And it's now relocated to Florida and she works remotely But yeah, our management team has been with us quite a few years in different capacities and they've grown with it evolve with it and just really know the inside out so well and And it wasn't like any one individual went from a team member or team leader To a general manager or vice president overnight It's just it was just a journey. It just kind of happened. And so he's really just trying to involve people Slowly over time in different aspects and One thing I learned early on was putting the horse before the car. You know, it's like hey We're not big enough to hire somebody in the office Well, if we don't hire some in the office, we'll not get no we'll never get bigger So it was you know, it's but in early on that's a tough. That's a tough lead. Yeah That's always a hard one Sarah Sarah from Aims, Iowa. She has been a big proponent of this since forever that she wants to be Office heavy and she believes that if you don't have that workforce, you're not gonna be able to grow So you have to be able to invest in those people to that place All right, so you you your message is the same Okay, and when you say office in time people are I mean, it's The capacity to to do more work. It's a combination of people and technology and right with AI that's changing quickly, but In aggregate you need to to to have you know that the capacity to do more from a back room standpoint Physically in an office may be at home where there are a combination of Your right technologies key piece of that too and how what? Communication tools we use day-to-day and that's obviously involved and I think and the nice thing about that is you know Things like yeah, what is zoom for phones or ring central or whatever products are out there? They're cheap and attainable for everybody And they make just that's kind of it's a night and day thing compared to those old phone systems We used to have right For all of us oldies have been in business forever. Yeah, we had regular phones Put your finger in it I think Okay, so talk to me a little bit more about your team. What positions do you have what before we get into positions now? There's one thing I like to throw in before we lose this thought though in terms of staffing for where you want to go Madam sure you would agree that it's really important to understand your numbers though that you don't want to be spending money that you Don't have that right you need to make sure that you've got the cash flow to Support that. Yeah. Yeah, it might be a little tight in that period of time, but On each of those jumps, but absolutely. Yeah, the cash flow has to be there On the same page I just want to dig in a little bit to the details you had said that you have seven offices six or seven or eight offices And you're doing about seven and a half I'm guessing on a run rate. Yeah, and I'm guessing it's not evenly distributed so you have like an office that is very large and Small like how how is that? Explain that just a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, they vary from very small because one is Is this very seasonal area and the labor market has just changed so much that it's been very very difficult to recruit We're trying to decide how we're going to manage that over time and things have changed as far as Visits and students coming over that were two tools we've used in the past So so we have something like very very small in a couple that are very big okay, so I'm guessing one of the main things that people do when they have a lot of offices is They have like one person that's doing a job for multiple offices I'm guessing that's your situation as far as oversight. Yeah, so yeah, there's some of that So depending on the size if it's I if it's big enough then there would be some one person that They're a branch manager or field manager overseeing all the teams the day-to-day operational functions of those teams the Probably skipping way ahead on this up now thinking about it scheduling a centralized HR is centralized all a major function sales is centralized So when we say a branch manager It's really more of an opera execution position on operation. So it's it's Hiring training quality more of those aspects Okay, get the teams out in the morning and hopefully they're smiling when they come back in the afternoon I Coming back in and out All right, do you have so this takes me to another place? Do you have offices at each one of the locations then that people are coming to in the morning and leaving or? We still do it's something we're evaluating and especially the big ones we do So we still have offices. They they really vary in size And so we're we're debating of some we should run differently. We've dabbled in some different ideas in the past like Storage facilities and stuff like that to be far further reaching places where people essentially work out of the house And then they'll pick up the stuff that either car All right So the the numbers piece that I wanted to get to was around this idea So you have a lot of offices you have like a team some things are centralized some things are Individual offices like your ops your ops manager execution manager So two things one is I'd love to know what all the different positions that you have and then With your numbers, how do you determine? Who's who's paying for what you do a percentage base does it change does it happen annually? How do you decide that you can afford it? Is it all just the revenue of like the whole entire company? Talk a little bit more about that It's far we try I try to budget on this something I learned from uh, David Senceman who had the longtime largest maid franchisee he was out of Birmingham and Recently retired a few years ago, and so we've tried we typically have a budget What we want to pay for overhead overhead staff and it'll run Between 9% to 11% of revenue for support staff And so it runs higher if we've acquired an office or in a growth mode and we tend to be heavier And and at those points it hits the bottom line a little harder And it's it's not always ideal, but it's kind of what we have to be And then time we're running, you know, it's a smoother growth period Like we're having this year and then that number is going to run later more like a nine nine percent So it's kind of working within there and then we look keep an eye on okay, what are workloads? I got my little kpi list over here If you tell us the things that you remembered so before we fill in all those numbers here I got this one 9 to 11 What what are the positions that you have now? So right now we have three top managers in the organization We have a vice president of operations and she oversees The day-to-day operations, but works very closely. They work in conjunction with each other very closely So she also handles oversight of our southern offices We kind of drew a line and then we have an operations director who oversees our more northern offices and then Christina is in office and she handles a lot of our back-end oversight of scheduling aspects like that and then between the three of them as far as execution of initiatives and major things going on Then we've got one two Two and a half of three customer service reps I'm handling phone sales day-to-day scheduling customer calls things like that So your salesperson and your customer service and scheduling is kind of one job. Yeah, I've always done I've always done it that way in over the years I've seen and watched people do a lot of different ways with super dedicated sales person or call center um It's ours has always been more of a mix and not overly specialized So people can jump in each other's seeds of need It's just something that's worked for us over the years It seems to be okay. So People might You know might learn something from you. All right. Yeah, that's where we're small It's kind of what we all had to do. Yeah, and it just kind of stayed it stayed with that. I think And everyone more attuned to the customers with that, but you're saying it still works at seven Right. Okay. So there's People know they have to change like we can't keep doing this This stuff the same way to be able to get to the next level. We're going to have to change But it doesn't sound like this is one of them. Yeah, I mean We've tried other things over the years don't get me wrong and it's fine. We always we tend to come back Um and we try things and why and it's just well, this doesn't feel right The organization just isn't isn't running the way it should be Um started smoother. We're not in the know and you know, obviously we can all tell a thing to fall into the cracks and if Customer complaint calls go up or customer frustrations or Our frontline staff frustrations grow. We know something we're not doing something right and I've always positioned at that Um anybody and whether they're overseeing an office or customer service rep or sales Or manager. We're all there to support our teams That's where that's our role of all of us. We've you know, probably seen some different responsibilities within there Um in the end of the day the way they support the teams and they take care of the customers So we've kind of kept that overriding philosophy forever Marry our way of looking at things Do you do you feel your current leadership team? Gives you additional growth capabilities either through organic with your current seven branches or by adding additional branches or Is there More resources you're thinking about adding in order to give you the ability to keep growing Good question. And we've been back and forth on that not necessarily with with our current core people That what else what other resources do we need? And we recently brought We had another resource doing a lot of our bookkeeping And we took a look at that and said wow, we can be actually Use technology better and do things a lot smarter and be leaner and tight up on that Which we did so rather than making it bigger. We made it smaller and we're running better Um And so you know books are much cleaner and we haven't but we did bring an outside person into reconciling books every month So we have a second set of eyes on on our books, but not necessarily doing the bookkeeping Um, as far as the management side, I think right now we do last year We grew the last year was by far a record our record with organic growth We grew about 1.3 million and 800 of that was organic growth that just happened And a lot of that was still come back real from um from kovat So last year we got back over 19 We had closed for eight weeks in 2020 and Up here So a lot of it was just kind of building things back up But it just it came to us and in the team handle it Remarkably well and they grew 800 back the year before And to so see the same team be able to do that just blew me away and right now things are running very smoothly. So I could see us hopefully Going probably 10 million without a lot of major changes. I think we need to have more changes than technology Um, so I don't think it's necessarily human capital. We need we need I think we've got good resources obviously With growth we'll have to plug in some you know pieces of you know more phone calls and things like that um But it's probably technology more than anything right now I think that that we would need to make that next leap towards technology Yeah, tell us a little bit more about the technology needs that you see yourselves needing Um, you're going back to handling a complaint a customer complaint Yeah Not rather than a piece of paper and plugging in the system and and having it lost into a system from there Something that it flows through like made central has In a really neat way of handling that where it goes Like service CEO used to years ago where a customer concern flows right to the employee File so you have that tracking on that side or a scoreboard over there And that it gets on the next schedule. It's it's uh highlighted In the past, I know what systems we've been using it's it can fall through the cracks We end up having a secondary calendar, you know, we're using a an accordion folder a google calendar our operating software It's like, okay. That's probably not the best way to operate movement forward. So that would be an example Oh, okay. That's it. That's a good streamline And so it you know, we wouldn't record so it would streamline so much that Like I said, it doesn't mean we have to bring on more people Because the system's gonna be better Well, well tom we talk about that a lot with made central. I'm telling people that constantly that Depending on the size of your business, of course But sort of the typical people that we see going in main central that you're probably going to eliminate a person Right, you'll have we'll we'll take the place of an entire body If you think about if you think about matt's doing and he's been doing this since the mid nineties Liz we can relate to that There was a time matt where you were printing out pieces of paper and giving them to your teams every day and they were writing notes on those pieces of paper and bringing them back at the office at the end of the day and somebody was collecting all those pieces of paper up and You know, how many extra people would you need working in your office? If you guys were still printing out pieces of paper and doing that more than what you currently have, right? And I know we're way we're still way too paper heavy um Yeah, I just I see that if once you all see like a Randomly see a bill for the toner cartridges. I'm like, wait a minute. Why are we printing that? What are we printing? Why are you having a bill for that toner cartridge? Yeah? All right. Well, I actually think we're behind the time though It's a our we're a little bit. We're behind on that. I would say that's something that's That we could be better and more efficient and help us grow better on that But we're all we're all more efficient from a back room standpoint than What we were a dozen years ago Regardless of what technology we're using. I don't think many people are printing out paper work orders and trying to Keep up with that if you're doing that on scale. That's a career for some people. Yeah Some people are still printing work orders. No, they're not. Yeah, Tom, you're just not You just don't know what's going on because you're in the main central world. It's I don't know any of those people Can't even imagine you do Yeah, unfortunately, it's uh It is definitely out. It's definitely there. Well, please call. Please call me. We can fix that. That's that's not a Permanent affliction that can that can be cured. That's not a chronic thing But we'll make sure that that gets All right, let's let's talk because look already we only have 14 minutes left. I'm like i'm stressing out I got a whole list of questions. All right, so matt i'm going to get back to kpi. So We you talked about um your admin being somewhere around 9 to 11 How about what your direct labor, uh, maybe either loaded or unloaded? What do you what are you trying to do for? Um not loaded direct labor including Including including wind windshield time Um, we've been running or run a little bit better now have been running heavy with all these wage Wages jumping uh last year. I think we were running around 41 and we're running like 38 to 39 right now Okay So that's that's uh direct. So that's in home and driving back and forth Going home to the office awesome and How about your um I hate it so many. Um, how about your do you know your lifetime value of of a client? That's I heard there's a software out there. That's really good at that Well, I just if you said you have some that you know off top of your head Yeah, that's one that we have a lot of data in there that we I don't have a means to get it out smoothly That's okay Tell tell me what things you think would be helpful for what kpi's people might want to be like might want to know see um Obviously we're always we're always looking at revenue and compare we compare revenue Every week to the same period last year because it's how the seasonality tends to be so consistent And we have some seasonality in our space in our area Whatever your holidays or Warm and cold seasons. So we're always looking at a week Well, obviously day week month and I tend to look at week and month And looking at how we're doing compared to last year and where our goals might be Uh, our team looks at it really on a they're looking at daily basis They're having a daily huddle on revenue. So they've got a goal set up Uh, and if they see the next day or next few days aren't hitting Then they're going to try to market to that And you know if we've got whether it be every four week customers on the next week or One-time work that this that's already scheduled and try to bump them up get them up closer Because that gives us five more days to sell that other spot If we pull the one in that day, then Yeah, that's something we've stressed a lot. I think we've done a much better job of that. It's made a big difference over time So not letting the schedule happen to us but getting out in front and controlling it You know, I'm always happy to give somebody a discount if I can get them to move up three days and fill a spot for us We get a chance to fill that out the spot for free That's a win-win a good way to A way to Grow your revenue without having to make any kind of really big changes. So exactly. Yeah All right. Um, you have any other KPIs that you want to share? I think Daily revenue per person Okay Think about 300 now that's been one that's been really interesting to watch change over the years Yeah, obviously with pricing and wages and Factors like that. I don't know for that much more efficient than it used to be Um, but the numbers changed customer attrition, you know, big Definitely customer attrition on a monthly basis. So looking at that as a percent of our base Um, the same numbers I've heard you guys talk about over the years I think you spot on um, that you know for four percent a month what might be an average but Four percent of a month, especially as you get bigger is a tough number to manage A lot of clients. Yeah So so when we're hitting four is we you know, we definitely don't want to be hitting four Sometimes we know after a busy season, you know, they fall off because of A peak in the summer because they're going to come right back the next year But I tend to shoot three or less Okay, in my view is a good number for us I thought we're telling people in our circles, too You start hitting four you want to start looking at that number Harder it pop pop it up as a concern instead of having Yeah, and that that figure really hasn't changed for us. I'd say even over the last 15 years It seems to be the same same percentages that we know like said if it's a four Uh-oh, we have we're gonna start digging in here. Look at that. How about how about your employee attrition? um We look at it. I feel it's a team member management or The uh, the team members. I forget what it is right now. It's getting better. I mean through covid It was so many ups and downs and oh my god, you see now. We had always been strong there Still traumatized No We um, but um when covid hit we hired almost exclusively single moms It was tough. It was a rough life Maybe shut down the daycares and it's like all righty then On the tough side. All right. Yeah more questions. So I can't I can't talk too much All right one point that you made That I want to just bring up again um, because I think that a lot of people Say the opposite of this. So I'm super I'm super intrigued to hear you say this that most of your office staff came from the field Yep, not exclusively you but yeah Yeah, not exclusively but you did say most And so that's interesting because we hear that once you hit a certain size Your your the people in the field just aren't the right people They're not going to be able to do that job, but you found that to be true So two of our top three managers Worked in the field And the third um, she came over from another residential cleaning company And had previously been a manager with walmart And then the other two yet came up right through and we happened to Really fortunate that we had really smart people Join our team. In fact, they both worked for other cleaning services We tend not to hire people from other cleaning services, but they were within our franchise system And that um ended up coming over and we bought the office Didn't work out that way Yeah, so Typically though as far as field staff we don't hire people that have been With other services It's always felt like we hire for attitude and work ethic Uh, and we can train the skill And so if somebody's with somebody else then one another system And the unlearning can be really tough Well, that that's great because we all preach that but I love hearing a company of your side saying yep us too Right If I can you know, we see somebody who's worked at a marriott or something like that great because then they've had to Have finished so many jobs over the course of a day Certain level of quality take instruction training uniforms They've got our service. Yeah, they've learned some stuff Good, you know It doesn't sound like this happened As an accident though, I mean you're on top of who you've got working for you and their experience and their skills and We all probably have people working in our cleaning businesses that have Skills and talents that maybe we aren't aware of yeah. Yep Yeah, very much so it's really good if max got two of his top three people Came out of the field chances are good. We've got some talent there that we is going unrecognized So that's that's a great little nugget there. All right now I got two big questions that I want to hit and I've only got five So, um, I'll tell you what they are and then you can decide how you want to spend the time on them The two questions are how do you set your goals for the year? Like what goals do you set? How do you set them etc? And I know that's a kind of a big question and then the second one is what's your job? So those those are my two questions. Let's see. Um Goals, uh, we've done a lot of different methods over the years. We've done off-site meetings and Um, and we will do things like um, strength weaknesses opportunities, you know, we'll do swad analysis Um, it tends to be a little less formal now. I should say we were always basing it on a swad analysis. I think um, we've but we've done things like board disciplines of execution and We've scaled down I think a lot since then because I think we're we're in a good mode that we kind of retuned to stuff And we know we'll want to be year to year. So we're looking at okay. Hey, this is we want to be this year What's it going to take to get there? Uh, what changes do we need to make? We don't I don't do budgets I don't do financial budgets. I never have And just something I um, you know, we have we know what our p&l should look like and we're watching our numbers. Um But we don't we don't manage to budgets on financially Okay, it's just not something that I've ever felt was a good fit for us Okay, I love hearing that That's great. Um, all right, we'll do quarterly goals. We have initiatives. Yeah, different things we're working on throughout the air too So we'll finish with the uh, the best question. What's your job? My job stay out of the way Okay More and more every year stay out of the way. Uh, so I I would say, um Yeah, it's strategic vision um helping identify what systems we need or what gaps and and you know help fill those or resources to fill those um And I don't get a lot in the in the details anymore Yeah, they're good at it. And there's the like I can only screw it up Okay So, yeah, you're you're saying it with a final but you're serious. You try to Stay out of it and let them their jobs. Yeah, and that's and that's again It's something that's just evolved over the years as the business has evolved Um, certainly not something that was but it was something I've tried to empower people. I've always tried to empower people um and let people do their jobs and I've certainly not always been perfect at that Um, and you know, I certainly have evolved as a manager. I think a little bit too Big question there waiting for that one. Yeah, we do we work in teams with cars Teams and your cars, right? Yeah, our cars. Yep. We still have our cars Uh, can I do it? If I can do one more plug because we haven't really talked about hiring Uh, I'm a big fan of mel climb and stuff. I know you had you've got him on here Oh, yeah Well, he we've worked with him closely over the years and his book It was higher higher higher slow fire fast or something right it's a great road map so people you know struggling in that area and I've never been a fan of um Assessment tests the one he has is awesome And we use especially for uh support staff customer service staff And the only times it hasn't worked is because we didn't listen to it Oh It's really about hiring people that have the right values and work ethic and attitude Okay All right, I know oh good mel fuck there He's got a bunch of them actually, um Um But if you just go to amazon and you type in mel climb in you'll see his book He's got his interview questions here um 100 plus one top tips I don't see the higher fast fire. I think it's it's the blue one on top the higher. I think he rebranded it to higher tough manage easy Yep, I think that is the moment Because it looks the same. It's more it's probably more PC Yeah Something else that might be Interest of folks We um a couple years ago. I happened to be during covid wasn't playing that way We got involved with dementia friends and it's an organization called dementia friends usa.com And we became they have state chapters and so many of us are serving Um Customers that are are aging and our customers we had 20 years ago are 20 years older um So we became a dementia friends champion through this organization where we our managers Can train our frontline staff to be what they're called dementia friends And that's how to um And how to communicate how to identify Possibly somebody might have dementia how to communicate How to bring that to somebody else's attention that you might see something And where we're in people's homes so frequently we see them more than their families do in a lot of cases And I've seen it with customers where I've had forever. So That's something that um, and Whoops, it's a good logo to have on your websites facebook pages and so forth as well And I just have to throw this out here I'm so glad that you brought that up Matt because a lot of times Y'all struggle with when I'm saying your people need to have meaning in the work that they do look Matt donnelly bringing the meaning right here, right? He's saying hey, I need to say this thing before I get off this call Dementia friends. So, um, thank you so much Matt. I love that you brought that up We're in the business in the day. We're in the business helping people More so than quite here since we're at the top of the hour. I'll give another plug Come see Liz and myself and AJ and Gosha and a bunch of other Matt, yeah, I'll yeah matt's gonna be here. We're gonna be there on the 21st 21st of august. I'll drop this link again Matt, this is the first time you've done smart business moves, but I sure hope it's not going to be the last I'd love to come back. Oh my gosh, this would be amazing matt. I would love to have you back Like we're just gonna scratch on the service. I know I have I have so many more questions I just wanted to get the ones that I knew people were going to be bugging me for later, so Thank you so much matt really really appreciate it. Thank you Feel free to share share my contact information Okay That's a good point. What's the best way if somebody wants to continue the discussion What's the best way for them to reach you my email is matt d d Matt d at the maids ma.com So you don't want us to give them your personal cell number? Uh, that's six one seven Nine five three Oh My desk line is uh nine seven eight three five seven five five three five is my desk line Okay, all right y'all He's about helping he really is. Thank you matt. We'll do the voicemail. I check my vision. I go through visual voicemail Thank you guys Have an awesome week. We'll be back. Uh this time next week Five o'clock eastern uh until then take care. Bye. Bye