 Hey, good afternoon. Tom Stewart here. I am with Buffy Trotter and our guest today is Olu August and this is smart businessmen He's just flipping them Now more people know the story. I think Buffy's awesome. It's funny to me now, but back in the day. It was not good I love you. Does your pickle have a Christmas hat on him? Yeah So just the pickle thing so if somebody like does it do everything they're supposed to do their pickle Yeah I see people spending more time on their pickles and what the time would take them to do what they're supposed to do Right Right. That's my point. Yeah, and the point is listen. You're a bit of a pickle You're wasting time doing things that you shouldn't be doing instead of doing the things that you should be doing Yeah, yeah, but I do enjoy seeing all the pickles though I mean Caleb Photoshopped the banana split with a pickle and I thought it was a real pickles ice cream. I'm like, that's disgusting. That's terrible If they spent half the time actually running their business as opposed to what they're putting in the pickles they Feel better shake, but anyway. Oh Look it up here. You see Linda. She's in the circle. Don't see a pickle on there. Nice Good job No pickle no pickle Okay Is there anything going out in the the world? We need to talk about Things that pertain to us. I heard there's another strain of uh, you know, what? A variant of something like that. So that or good or like what did you hear about it? You know, I tried to not pay attention to this anymore But it affected my stocks because China now has new regulations which made certain things go down So I so I know they change their regulations again, you know to some covid regulations, but that's all I know I've seen it. I'm like, you know what? It's out of my control. It's just left it alone. Not gonna worry about it All right, China is China's a pretty bad shape. They've been shutting down cities like Shanghai Who's our buddy? Who's our buddy in in shanghai? I'm drawing a blank uh Chris No, it's not chris. Uh, no kishua Oh, no, very very tate. Very very tate. Yes. Do you know peri-tate? I'm not I'm most familiar He's a he's incredible Yeah, he um, he's recently from australia He makes uh, water-fed poles and other equipment for the window washing world. Oh, nice. And um, I'm Got to know I'm a long time ago And he used to be a gust on smart business moves and he kind of gives the insights giving as to what was going on in china and how everybody had like an app on their phone that was either red or Green and if it was green you could go do whatever and if it was red that means you had some type of Exposure through contact tracing and It was crazy. It was really interesting Really, we're going through a lot. One of your neighbors would kind of get a little bit out of line and maybe just disappear Come on now. You're full of it. No Like for a period of time they would just be gone The CEO of alibaba he went to a re-education camp You know, he went missing for a little bit for speaking out against the government Yeah, so that's a thing. That's a thing. That's a very How well we have it sometimes. Oh, yeah, we got good. We got a good. We have our issues But I would uh, take our issues back over some of the other issues be web Do we have anything else going on with in the news that I haven't heard about uh Inflations a thing I think uh, the the consumer price index was eight point something and the producer price index came out this morning It was like 11 point Something year over year. I mean, this is this is getting crazy it was dorge, uh One of the german banks just was predicting This is the same time. I seem to be about china was predicting 2023 us recession Based on the rates. I mean even the feds can't even control it You know, they're just like bring it up higher. So We'll see, you know, see what happens It's the effects of printing money and giving it all out. I mean, this is bound to happen. I mean How how is it not going to happen, right? I'm not even calling this not to get that out Yeah Yeah And the stuff in china is getting, you know, they're starting to build hospitals again with temporary hospitals like the way they did in in luhan a couple years ago and Evidently, they didn't do a really good job of vaccinating their people and they've got a lot of senior living facilities where people are like kind of halfway vaccinated And they're using their vaccine by the way, which is not mRNA it's something that supposedly isn't as as efficacious and All of the all of the therapeutics that are now available. They don't have any of that and So there's there's some people that are speculating that china is going to get really bad and What that means to us is all these supply chain issues that we're having and all the stuff that you know people You know too many dollars chasing a few things that you know, the fed can keep raising interest rates and all that's really good but You know, until they get the supply chain thing fixed. That's uh, you know, that's that's part of it as well Yeah, so sure Well a lot of stuff around in the world right now So it's cleaning business owners Now is a really really good time to be looking at what you're charging to be thinking about value in your business and be thinking about how do you make money because There is a recession on the horizon But that's not here yet and there's a lot of people a lot of money looking to To to spend it on things to make their life easier like house cleaning And that kind of brings us into what we're going to be talking about today because all who's going to be sharing That his perspective and thoughts on things he does in his business and he works with other businesses and does some It's fair to say you do some some training and coaching as well, right? So with our marketing customers anytime they ask me for anything my books are open to them You know, I'll share anything that we're doing in our company So I'm always trying to give them value because if they have the marketing leads coming in But the sales is weak on one side or then again the people and you know, it doesn't work At the same time you're able to get a little bit of insight as to what they're doing So, you know, you're teaching and you're probably learning a little bit at the same time. Absolutely. Absolutely. Hopefully we all are right Hopefully we're learning as we're as we're teaching and growing at the same time. Hopefully Absolutely All right So I'm I'm looking forward to hearing although I know you were really you've got really prepared for We're the smart business moves episode today. Um, yeah To hear everything that you're gonna be sharing I know you have a list of questions as well You know, we can go through that later on if you guys stay stay on we're gonna be talking about basically three Three value strategy that you can use based off of organic growth reducing costs and acquisitions So we're gonna be talking about those things that I've done in my business and how it's worked Well jump in. What do you want to talk about first? Are you with me? Just jump in Do you have any questions Liz? I do you want me to start with the questions? Yeah, let's start with your questions. Leave these for the end and we can just talk on them. Yeah Sure. Yeah. All right. Let's see that One of the things I wanted to know was just what are your thoughts? Providing value to increase profits. Like how do you feel about that? Yeah, so in terms of providing value to the customers, right to increase profits. Yeah Yeah, I think that's that's very important You know in our industry at least in the residential cleaning side the profit margins aren't large Aren't like, you know the craziest right? So if we can maximize the value we give to customers and especially that perceived value Then we can obviously maximize those profits as well. I remember I shared a story one time It was this guy. He came in to do my he came in to do my irrigation system So he quoted me for the front because everybody in my my neighborhood had a nice front lawn I'm like, well, I can't have this, you know, ripped up dirt anymore. So we're like, let's get this irrigation down I tried for three years by myself and they're like, you know, what's the watering? It's the watering. So he comes in and he quotes me $1,500 for my front yard. Now. I don't have a big property It's like a quarter acre. That's all it is, right? So 0.25 just for the front yard $1,500. I'm like, I'm not paying that. That's ridiculous So what does he do next? He he points out the fact that I have a garden in the back and he asked me how am I watering that garden? I'm like, well, we go in, you know Once a day and we water he's like, I understand you didn't want to get your backyard done How about I just put the entire property that way you don't have to do that Do the watering and all this so he's building this value in my head And I'm already seeing I don't have to water my garden anymore And he came back with a quote of $4,500. I didn't even blank. I said, let's do it Because the value to me of having the entire property done was way higher than the $1,500 You know, you wouldn't spend $1,500 when you struck your check for $4,500 and didn't think twice about it because it made sense You know So again, the $1,500 was for your neighbors the $4,500 was for you Exactly So I love that. That's a great story and that's a big upsell right there. That's a great way of adding value I see sometimes go ahead I think for a lot of us the initial reaction is Okay, $1,500 too much. How does $1,200 sound? That's exactly what you say Don't don't go there just a little more in and charge more Absolutely, you know price isn't real. Tiffany sells a paper clip for $3,000 a one paper clip Yeah, I wouldn't buy it, but I'm not that customer So, you know, this kind of reminds me of Carrie Knight. I know that that Olu you you know work with Carrie's and she talks about putting programs together to get higher frequency recurring customers and She'll never discount. She calls it d word. It's like what price is what the price is I'll throw more stuff and I'll paint your refrigerator and your oven and you know deep clean something and She'll add more stuff, but she'll never come down on the price Yeah, you know On that same topic with Carrie Knight with her program I mean I went from From a whole bunch of monthly customers and following her system bringing them to bi-weekly. I think I have about 20 if that monthly customers left because of that, you know, it's all about the value Yeah, it's a great system. I wish she was around more. We get hold of her Yeah, she's busy. She's working. She's working. She's working. I think she's rolling up some air bnb is the last I saw Nice All right I'm gonna grab up my next question here. I think So one thing is we're on the same page. We all agree Let's be adding in some value and a great way to increase profits So, oh, yeah, I like this question. So how do you define value? Man, you know, I I don't know. I don't know a definition I I that's a Question that I never thought about and I would even I don't know I guess to the story that I just said something that Enhances my life or it takes away something that I don't want to do So I guess that that's value right there, but I'm looking at it from the service side Maybe there's another definition that fits it better But anything that enhances my life or gives me my time back because time is like very important to me time and freedom Like I think you're hitting on it right there, you know in our businesses as well Right, we want we want things that are going to enhance our lives as customers We want things we're going to enhance our lives that are going to give us back our freedom our time That are going to make our lives easier. They're going to take away the stress that are They're going to basically they're going to improve our lives when we're thinking about value, right? Yes, you're giving me something that it's going to make things better And All right, so you guys took some pain point. Yeah. Oh, yeah, awesome fix in a pain point. Awesome Anything else about that Tom that we should be thinking about with value. I'm thinking that that Especially in our industry. Yeah Well, yeah Webster says is the importance worth or usefulness of something Importance use are worth. Yeah, and that's all perception In the context of what we're doing the prospect the person that you're trying to sell something to or provide service to Or the customer that you're trying to keep happening, you know, how much worth importance usefulness do they see and the service that you're offering and You know back to your earlier point Sometimes if you offer them more than what you initially offered at a higher price point, there's a lot more perceived value Yes, yeah Very very true And Liz I've heard you say this before in foundations This has come up before a lot of times you've got an unhappy customer. You need to charge them more So a bunch of stuff more into the service in charge of more and you can take somebody that's unhappy and make them happy Yeah, I would say more often you need to increase service versus decrease service or Versus decreasing the price that is rarely the answer But it's funny because how like when the irrigation guy first told you about the price the 1500 bucks You thought you wanted a cheaper price 100 percent. That was my initial thought like this was expensive. Yes I know it's been in that I need to cheer right which is so I love that because that's what our customers think I need a cheaper price. It's not the truth That's not they don't know Any time we are unhappy. We don't know what it is. We default to money If i'm not happy in my job, I just need more money. You pay me more. I'll be happy in my job How true is that it keeps you happy for this this long and then you're back to that same cycle Yeah, that's the exact same thing Yeah, all right, so I love this next question I think it can I think it sounds like a simple question, but then it cannot be too So do you agree that the value your service has in the marketplace is what determines the price that you're able to charge Yes and no So At least with our industry if somebody doesn't Know you from another company. We're viewed as a commodity Right. So if this cleaning is 100 bucks. Well, maybe the other person is going to be uh cheaper I can get it for cheaper or whatever it is. Yeah, so Your value does commute uh does command some uh kind of price But at the same time it's only what the market will bear Because you can get all the perceived value you want But somebody in a thousand square foot home, I can't charge them $10,000 Or maybe I can't because my limited belief maybe somebody out there is doing it if you are please DM me Yeah So it's it's what the market will bear. Um, and there's definitely different customers at different levels. I remember When first started out, I called them the craigslist customers, you know the group on and all that those were our customers and Right, I don't yeah, I don't need to be reminded. Yeah, we raised our rates significantly And the quality and caliber of customer change as well And it came from You know fighting for better prices to okay. I just want the service done. I don't want to think about it Uh, so there's there's different customers, but it's all about what the market will bear So I do think the value proposition does add to it, but it's not You're not gonna be able to sell 20 000 cleaning in the 2000s. Yeah, it's true. Yeah, but I don't know I think the I think you might be able to sell that 20 000 cleaning To the right person that really if you're able to hit on that, right? It's all about pain point. Yeah Obviously if they don't have the money you you can't I do think that the value is a huge huge chunk of that, but on the next to that is they have to know what the value is because Many people think just like you said commodity cleaning is cleaning is cleaning So why should I pay your company? 55 $65 an hour Susie Q over here She told me that she'll clean my house for 20 bucks an hour. You know what she does all this extra stuff I can ask her to I'm going sweep my back porch and pull a couple of weeds and she'll even start dinner for me Oh, yeah, and so she leaves a candle lawn and burns down the house or scratches a very expensive Thing then Susie's gone But the but the additional value perceived value needs to be there. Nobody wants to be ripped off You know, it's that it's the fear of loss It's kind of like You know if $10 falls out of your pocket, you know, there's a lot of people that will You know spend an hour walking around the grocery store looking for that $10 because they don't want to you know The fear of loss So it wasn't like it, you know, $1,500 wasn't the big deal. It was like you didn't think it was worth $1,500 But when he threw in the back yard, it's like you mean, I don't have to get out there and do This mess I'm doing in the garden every day. Let me tell you my tomatoes are huge Tom Yeah, you know, um, I actually have to take back my statement in terms of uh, well market would bear I stick by that but you can sell the $20,000 cleaning because I know somebody who has in a small place It's all about what the pain point is, right? Because uh, what my friends are talking about is he works for 24 trauma And I mean their cleanings is built are built out to insurance companies and they're sometimes I mean For something very tragic it would be in the 20,000. It's easy. Yeah Big money, huh? And under the circumstances it's like here's my wallet just take Exactly you are However much I have you can have it all just that pain is greater than the money that they have Yeah, absolutely Well way to bring down the show there. Oh, I just wanted to you know Correct myself Before somebody says well, you can you know, I know somebody that has to Yeah All right, so how about you? I like what are some of the things that you do to increase the value of your business or the perception of You know the value in your business Like personally, what do you do? You want me to go down my entire list? Oh, we got a I got a whole list I went through and I'm and I spoke to my wife to my manager I'm like, what are some things that we're doing? Uh, just so I can make sure I talk about it because I hate getting off of these calls or Finish speaking. I'm like, I should have told them about this. I should have told them about this You know, so I actually made a list and I kind of made I didn't make it all crazy And I put every single thing because I know we can go on forever, but You know organic cost reduction and acquisition You know on the organic side, I'll kind of start from the bottom and work my way to the top The the first thing we think about is price increase Right a lot of people are just too afraid to do price increases and I get it You know, you do lose customers and I know every time we did three price increases in one quarter so Yeah Customer the same Actually one customer got a price increase crisis And one of our letters Who told me this was like me or somebody was saying this in a joking way and I wrote We have good news for you. We're raising your rates Oh, no, we don't we have good news for you We're able to come clean next week, but because of raising costs. We have to raise our rates Well, one person replied. How is this good news? The rest were fine with it, you know, so Because we're still coming. Yeah, exactly You have your house clean. Yeah It wasn't a crazy amount of people. Um, but we do raise our rates from time to time. It's important that we look at that Um, you know, we've been on May central since September now, but I think after a year We're going to be able to see better like historical information, which is what I'm waiting for so we can know exactly. Okay. Now it's time Let's get in that rhythm. Let's just make it, you know, normal so Referral programs this was brought to my attention by my wife the other day So we had a referral program and the way we structure it You know, some people have like $50. We'll give you, you know, $50 The way we structure it is whatever our cost per acquisition is We'll give that to you in cleaning credit Or we'll give you a lesser value in like a visa gift card So if it costs us $350 to get one you recurring customer on google, well, why not give it to my customer? Right, so some people like oh $350 in credit, but it doesn't cost you $350 So now your cost per acquisition is it's way better and you have a better lead, you know from a friend Yeah, what happens though sometimes when you lose one you lose both But not all the time and my wife brought it up to me because when we put out that referral program We had eight referrals eight people that became recurring customers in one week And then over time it just kind of died off a little bit And she brought it up. She's like did you know this customer didn't know we had a referral program So we weren't doing a good job at making sure we're keeping the message alive. Yeah Yeah, I had it going out every six months for a while But I felt like I was training them to forget about it, you know, so So that's that's not the one expanding geographically a lot of people don't think about this as well Sometimes you your market just you can't grow in that market anymore So you got to move up or move around a little bit. So we moved to We started targeting New Hampshire. I don't know what happened, but now we're like a 5050 split. We're in both states So which is pretty cool. So Selling selling after the sale The number one thing somebody wants to do after they buy is buy again And if we would just ask You know, we would we would get more sales. So it's kind of like the whole would you like fries with that? So we put that in the end of our script and he actually says would you like fries with that? So they know whatever the special of the month is like if we're doing extra ovens extra windows extra whatever it is to sell those Improving your sales system to increase your closing rate and last but not least marketing I you know, I hear people say that they've grown their company to x amount without marketing I understand that you can grow without marketing to whatever the number might be in your market Sometimes it's 200,000. Sometimes it's a million. Sometimes it's one five, but over time you can't outmarket your attrition Unless you have a crazy referral network. So yeah That's their organic sign. I'll let you ask questions and we'll we'll go back to the other so Those those are really good. I like all of them. Let's see. They always come back to me always Yeah, caterina I got it So caterina says that She finds that she sends people over to when they want a lower price that she sends them a cheap option To like thumbtack care.com, etc. They go there and then they're like, okay, never mind Now I understand why the price is more and they just go back Yeah, people don't really value Their money as much as they think they do But some people really do some people it really is a Melinda says that she's taking notes. Yeah Hey Melinda long time no see Uh, but sometimes they really do uh, so here's an example We have a question in our company if somebody wants like a single clean gun Or if they want like a for whatever reason just they live in their house They just want it clean mother-in-laws come in whatever or they're they're moving We ask them do you care more about the quality or do you care more about the price? And then the majority of the time they'll say I care more about the price And then we say okay great So what's the price that you would like to spend and we will stick that And even if we can't get the quality where you initially like we'll make sure that we don't go over that price Then they say oh But I want all of the work done So the quality is more important than the price Well, I do care about the price though. Okay Well, let's just figure out what you want to have done And then we'll make sure we can get you the best price possible and get all of the work done Because what you don't want to have happen Is you don't want to hire a company and tell them that you don't want to spend the amount of money That it's actually going to cost to get your house clean Absolutely You know and that happens If you think my price is too high But this is how much it really costs to get your house clean you go somewhere else You will pay that amount of money But you won't get all the work done This is how much you cost We went back to what you said earlier about Making the paying go away. You know if It's like having a headache and you know, I'm just only want to buy half an aspirin Well, that's really not going to make my paying go away. I'll pay Whatever I need to pay to get, you know, two aspirin to make my That's a good one Tom. I like that one. I've never heard you use that one before but that is good. I like that Me too. I'm gonna be using that one moving forward Only what was the third thing on your list? It was expanding geographically. Oh, yeah So I want to talk about expanding geographically because That one is a tricky one. Oh, we talked about that a lot of different ways And are you when you're expanding geographically? Are you expanding like tell us about that? How how is that working? How? absolutely two offices So right now we have one office and we were contemplating getting into the office And so are you are you familiar with the ford operating base? I don't think so. So the military would have like one key base. So let's say for example, we just invaded Massachusetts, all right, we want to We want to start a clean company in Massachusetts. All right. So we have our main office Where it's going to be everything like every all the heavy equipment and all of this Then we're going to have little cells that feeds these little offices One thing that we've done in order to expand in other locations is we had a storage unit Right a heated storage unit where we would have supplies Because our we don't have cars our team members only comes to the office when they need to top up So it allowed us to recruit people from those areas So now let's say for example, we wanted to move to metro boston Well, we can hire people in metro boston if we had this little cell That we would just resupply from the main office and the people there would just top up there And we've we have like probably 10 people paying with um Cash or check actually one cash and like nine checks left. So we're eliminating that entirely My goal is to make the company as remote as possible To to not have people having to come to an office for no reason The only reason I use my office is one I want a good presence whenever we're hiring so my higher manager can have like Not meeting somebody in a Starbucks or Wherever it is. So we want to look like a professional company. The other part is I struggle to work at home So one space one used for me so All right, I like that. I have never heard of that before So i'm gonna be remembering it All right A couple a couple of the keys to that I heard was making the payments thing go away You want to be doing electronic payments? Absolutely Yeah, you don't have somebody come into the office drop off a check Or you know say hey, can you drop the make a deposit to the it's just it's such a headache I mean, we got rid of keys too. Unfortunately. Yeah, I was getting ready to ask you. Did you guys do keys at one time? Yeah, we did keys. Oh my goodness. It was like It was horrible And somebody forgets a key and it's like I have to drive back this way or you know what don't worry We'll run out and bring you the keys and then you know, it's just it's Unnecessary chaos Lose a key we've all been there So we lost a key once. Oh my goodness. We lost a key. This is back in 2015. We lost the key and a check Together because we had these bags. So now if somebody found that here's the key to your house and the address to your house We call the customer. She's You're checking account number two. Oh everything Yeah, so we call the customer apologize told her what happened pay for locksmith to change the locks She's still with us by the way. She still uses us So we put a policies after that if we had keys we'd make two copies of the keys One for the office and one for I remember doing that too Not oh my goodness. Yeah, no more keys except for the commercial properties We unfortunately haven't been able to find a way to do that And you can't make double duplicates of those Yeah Yeah Can't make double duplicates All right, no more residential keys. All right. Let me let me hit my next question here. We don't What time is it? Oh time is flying. Okay. Oh it is. Yeah Um, what are some things you do to increase? Oh, so we were talking about the difference between increasing value and also the perception of value And do you think that there's a difference in like, you know, how do you think about that? I think it's one of those beauties in the eyes of the beholder type questions because Somebody you can say I'm increasing value by adding more things Right, but that person doesn't see that as valuable unless it's something that they need it So it's value in the eyes of what the customer needs. That's why some points understand that pain points You know one of the things that we ask in our script And I share this with you Liz if we could do two things just two things to make your house Happy I should well, we were asking one thing you shared the two things, right? Yeah, so we were asking what's one thing we could do to make you happy You said two things so now we have that and we have it as a pain point Two things that could make you happy during this clean. So now we know this is what it is and Maybe it's cleaning them underneath the mats or making the beds And then we say well, why are these things important to you because now we understand their pain point Now, why is the mat so important to you? Well, because You know, whatever the reason might be So it's understanding that pain point so you can actually build that value and to that customer So now you know what you need to focus on Right because it's not always just that one thing the pain point can spread to other things as well Right. So our question is a little bit different ours is What are the two things you can't wait to not have to do again? Now we have to do That's our question And I want to know too because I want to be able to see the connection Like if they say showers and floors, all right, they really don't want to be scrubbing a lot They don't want hard work, right? So I know That anything that's going to require a lot of like physical labor Probably and when we say, okay, is it because of the scrubbing? They're like, yes, or I don't have time They take so long for me to get my shower clean. It takes me an hour. All right now We know super picky. Yeah, I think it's important to ask that why yeah, very true Absolutely. Yeah, because that's that's where sort of that that perception comes into you And I really believe that that perception is more important If you don't know what the if you don't understand the perception It's a fool's game. You're just wasting money. You're just putting stuff on that's not really going to have any impact at all So, you know This made me think of another story with me because So I I consider myself cheap, but you know, maybe I'm not I don't know I always end up buying something cheaper not anymore But I would buy something cheaper and then my wife and I would laugh about it And we say isn't it better to pay a little bit more and get much more than paid a little bit less and get much less Because I used to work for the consulting company. That was our closing line So she uses it on me now But it was 2016 no 2017 we moved into our first house and At this point I have never purchased a television in my life I don't watch much tv if I do I'm gonna watch something like about binge it and I'm gonna be done because I feel really guilty so She wanted a new tv because you know a new house and members purchases You know, they come in threes and I got a new house You got a new french and new tv and I would not buy this tv So mother's day is rolling around. I see like this walmart special $300 for this tv 55 inch I'm literally cringing at the thought of spending $300 on a freaking tv So i'm going to walmart and i'm buying this i'm giving it to her as a gift with like all this pain in my heart Well, you fast forward I love art every time I go to another country. I'll go to art gallery I'll collect something Well, we had all these art pieces and we couldn't we didn't have them framed because we're in apartment Well, it cost me like $150 just to frame them and i'm like, yeah, let's do it But the tv to me had no value, you know, so All right, there's there's another thing about value that is really I love this story. I don't think I've told it here before ma we My mother-in-law lives on my property She has a little house on our property and one year we had a huge garage sale both houses together And my mother-in-law had a whole bunch. You reminded me of this. She had a whole bunch of art She is currently I think 97 years old And so this was a while ago, but she was elderly at that time and her art was also elderly art and it was local art And but she knew how much she had spent on it and she had decided that with inflation this art Should be worth this amount of money and art doesn't go down in price. It goes up So at our garage sale, she had her cowboy picture out for $212 and she had her, you know, all of her art for all of these prices That were crazy for garage sales. Nobody sees the value of that art at a garage sale period Yes But the twist on the story was She didn't sell any of it. She didn't look she didn't lower her price because that's how much they were worth And because she didn't have room in her house that she she had been downsizing from her big home into her little house that lives on our property She put them out in her carport And all of these thousands of dollars worth of art rotted She would rather the art rot Than sell it for less money. I get that. Yeah, and she's still to this day. She's like they didn't deserve it They didn't appreciate that 100% I know I know, you know what? I agree with her I have a truck right now for sale and people are offering me like $500 more and I don't have been replying Because I'm like, yeah, if it doesn't sell I'll just keep I'd rather her rather So it's an interesting thing about value, you know, we have a lot of emotion tied into into value It's not just a thought exercise I I think that's an important piece that sometimes says business owners Well, if we add this on it only costs us this amount of money and we look at the numbers and it makes sense because of this It's not an economic thing. It's not an economic decision. It's an emotional decision Absolutely, which is why it's so much trickier, right? If it was just an economic decision, it'd be So much simpler I think there you go. It should be easier because it's an emotional decision Because we're just we're emotional creatures. I mean we can think logically but at the end of the day We typically defer to our emotions, you know, so understanding that we should be able to behave that way in order to But maybe maybe it's not just any emotions and I know I know I know fluid Oh my god I feel hot just talking about All right, so my next question here is So you and actually Tom, I want to know your answer to this too because I don't know your answer about this either So in in your companies like in tom, especially like with made central I know you have done this like how do you to determine and I Swap this question around just a little bit all those so I'm I hope it doesn't throw you for a loop here But how do you determine when to change your value your value prop and how often and like Like when you think about it, how do you think about it? What what happens that makes you decide? I need a new value proposition here. I need I need to change up how people think about our company. I'm curious Oh You want to take a shot at that? Yeah, I'll I'll say this. I'm not that innovative You know People will think that I am sometimes I'm not that innovative. So I'm not always looking at like let's let's you know change this and let's do this And I guess what what has provoked change? Mainly not seeing growth that has provoked change, you know inspiration and desperation usually makes you change so I guess That it's usually when I'm inspired or desperate. So I come from a conference and I hear something I'm like, this is awesome. Let me take it and try to make it better So I'm inspired by that or I'm like, why are we not growing? What's going on? Let's get something, you know better in place of inspiration and desperation There's never a set timeline when I'm looking at it I'm looking at it. There probably should be maybe a better system to that But um, I just shoot from the hip with that So basically it's an it's an outside factor something. Yeah, it's typically an outside factor And I I hate that saying if they even broke don't fix it because I I hate that and I always tell my team the only thing I promise you is change But when it comes to cash flow if it is Working really well You know, let's not let's not disrupt it too much. Yeah, that's where I look at it I do love continuous improvement. Oh, I get it to a fault sometimes though. I like I like to improve things but Sometimes I I do have the mindset of Listen, this is actually working. So I don't want to mess with it too much Well, I think I work more on like improving like my team more than like, okay How do we increase the value proposition for clients? Which it's just I mean it's a kind of a dichotomy because in reality You know, well the customer something happens until you know, we get a sale But well chicken egg chicken egg chicken egg. Yeah. Yeah, I focus a lot on my team though. So yeah, yeah How about you Tom? you know We like this business model a sort of quality model that looks at quality and quality being defined as expectations and perception So on the value side, it's really Getting everybody an alignment on expectations and if somebody is expecting service to be at some level some lower level for instance and expecting it to Be at a lower price point Understanding what those expectations are gives you an opportunity to shift them You mentioned made central, you know, we um Got a lot of feedback when we first started offering made central to the larger, you know House cleaning community because we had a unique pricing model that was perceived to be expensive but At the same time we knew that if we could reestablish the expectation that you know There's software can do a ton more for your business than What you currently Assumed that it can do and if we can have the discussion You know, you know, we will we will we will charge more Which you're going to get that back a bunch of times over and You know, that was an example of taking expectation and perception and putting in the context up here. Let me shift your expectation to create more quality and people who are using made central actually see you know I don't want to say that they're excited about spending more money But you know people are certainly willing to do it because they realize they have more money in the bank at the end of the month Doing that than what they would with their next best alternative And we wouldn't be able to do it if we didn't charge what we charge because it costs a lot to do what we do So I don't think you're going to use that example, tom I like that you use that example I I thought you're going to use your most more recent example of how you You sort of shifted because you recognize the idea of um, you know The the thing that's biggest problem going back to pain point Is people don't love their companies and they don't want to not love their Software, they don't want one more thing that they don't love And your and your thing was If they understand the software, they're gonna love their company And I love Yeah, that was an epiphany for for the longest time. Oh, Lou You know, I thought our charge was to build this black box that would spit money out And it's like if you just take this and plug it in your business, you're going to be more profitable Don't worry about what you what you're paying for you're going to be more profitable And for a lot of people You know, you're the art example. Yeah, I want to make money. That's kind of you know, that's that's a consideration But it's not all about the money It's about Loving their business and making the stress and the drama go away in some regards being able to apply their own Creativity and twist to it. You know, I think of it as everybody wants to paint their own masterpiece, right? Yes Yes, so You know, it's it's so much Making money is necessary as they say, but it's not sufficient Hmm I like that saying I know I do too And I loved when you made that when you when you decided, you know what this is what people really really want This is where the pain is. This is what I'm going to You actually that's that was the impetus for The made central conferences and right you got three three events and really people that I'm talking to So much happier They are absolutely So I'm like, I I love that And we're happier. I mean, it's a hard not to like happy, right? It is. Yeah, when people are happy, it's you know, it's contagious for sure So, you know making we're gonna we're gonna make you profitable You know, we're all about being profitable, but we're gonna be profitable in the context of loving your business So yes, I love that up and then to be that only the hero as well Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I love that too All right, so my next question here is Um, who do you consider your competitors? And how do you consider that? So the first time we shot our competitors in years was a few months ago because we were getting too many yeses I'm like and then and then I kept on hearing you guys are cheap, but I'm like, no You keep buying Yeah, like what's going on? So we started shopping our competitors. Uh, who are our competitors? Um, Man, I would have to have to ask Christina who she uh shot Uh, I don't know if you I don't know if you saw her show last week The great shepherd was on and he was like playing around with his quoting tool live Yeah, he saw what he was charging and he was like, oh god, I need to be charging more At the time we were done, there's like three things he found he had like a broken link to his like lead marketing base Yeah, no last words You know, sometimes you're working on other things that you're not even thinking about these right and you get so far detached over time So, yeah, no, that's that's very easy to do He was like desperate to get off of smart business notes. He's like Now like what seven more minutes Okay You never want to hear that you're cheaper than your competitors. I know absolutely not and then uh, yeah So it was it's actually a franchise too. So uh mother maids those molly maids that they said that we were cheaper than And um, I'm like, no, we can't have that This won't do. Um, who else we shopped, um We shopped one person on one name So So what I'm hearing though is that when you think about your competitors And the thing that you think about is price. That's how you determine who your competitors are I Hate to say that I don't focus on my competitors because it sounds arrogant because I think you can learn Uh from your competitors. I mean, uh, I mean, I've had lunch with My competitors before and we've shared numbers before names because now everybody's gonna know I'll say I've had lunch with ryan, you know, and we that's not the one I shopped though. I already knew his prices Um, so and we were sharing numbers just because we you know, every Pocket in this country tends to have like their own thing. For example, you go to certain places You can scale rapidly with with facebook before you dump a dime into your marketing and some places It's like they were waiting for you to open another cleaning company And in the northeast it's not viewed like that it's viewed as a luxury And it's not like oh, I have a cleaning service because I need this right So I'm like, what is our industry norm? So I try to connect with With people that I meet through industry events that are from around here to kind of get those Those norms that are more in our area But I don't focus too much on what they're doing I I do want to know the numbers so I can track that because I think that's very important to manage the company by so, um Not in terms of like, hey, what are they doing? What are they sending out or oh, I see them driving down the street? You know, I'm not saying I'm against it I'll do it if it came down to it, but I'd rather focus on my team internally. So All right, so I'm thinking that you have a couple more things on your list there that you wanted to talk about and at least one Was about that. Why don't you share a little bit? Yeah, so, uh, the three principal girl that I was sharing was yeah What do we have left? Oh, wow. I'll go fast Organic cost reduction acquisition we talked about the organic growth Oh, one thing I didn't mention the organic growth is preferred days. We just rolled this out We've noticed that every monday and tuesday were super weak and then on fridays people just always wanted the thursday and friday slots Well, now we have a preferred price, uh, preferred time slot So it's an extra 25 dollars and we're evaluating it in real time to see what we're going to charge If you want a friday appointment, it's going to be x amount on a recurring basis It's going to be way more who could say hey monday and tuesday is this price, you know So some people will pay it if they pay it cool. We, um, we have more profits, right? Uh more revenue coming in and if they don't take it well those mondays and tuesday that that are typically Weak we can fill those up and make sure that our team is optimized across the board and not just like a A week monday and then friday. It's like, oh my god, like this day is never gonna end, right? So we're trying to really spread the love a little bit So that's Balanced balance is so nice. Yeah, I know something like this Ah, correct me if i'm wrong because i'm not going to get this exactly right but you used to do something with apartments where you gave a price, um, but then you instead of Increasing for for the popular day Didn't you say but and get your discount on tuesdays? Didn't you do something like that? Wasn't that you? tom i'm sure you were talking I almost answered. I'm like, I think this is for tom So remember remember earlier when he said it was going to go down so you don't get pop Yeah, I was You know Yeah, we we we've done some things with uh, you know Discount days and like if you lived in a particular community, we we called it, uh crowd cleaning Yes If you get everybody and we actually had a website crowd cleaning dot com and we kind of played around with it And I think I mean it's a viable idea if it's executed well but You know, I have I have this like Affliction that I'll wind up doing 15 things at once and some of them really need focus in order to work I I think it could work in a big way. I mean, I'd be glad to give you a little more details about what we learned from that You'd want to pursue it But we have like a marketing program that went after like big, you know buildings and you know apartment communities So forth and um, if you would share that with me, that'd be awesome Yeah, there's some things that we do in main central that can can make it easier to execute that too. Yes, please. Please. That's awesome I love it. I wrote it down crowd cleaning Now you're gonna get like 10 emails from me after this. Hey, tom just waiting on that crowd cleaning All right, what else do you have? For cost reduction, uh, we don't do this as often as we should but we do try to do it. Um And again, it's like when we see the price is getting way ridiculous. So shopping our suppliers Yeah, you know shopping your insurance rates. I've had people tell me. Hey you using the Hartford I can't even beat that price. So I accepted that two years ago and I still haven't shopped it But that's one that's one company. I got to shop because those rates are getting ridiculous decreasing overhead Through automations, right? So when I when I talk about overhead, I'm not talking about necessarily just any overhead expense overhead walks on two legs So what can be automated in your company that can be done? You know, uh from from software one of the things that we were doing was last year We were having the the office was open on Saturdays and I got this idea from Don Williams We noticed that a lot of leads were coming on in on Saturdays and comes Monday Well, they're not even answering their phones and we couldn't get them So we started opening on Saturdays. It cost us more money But we were able to book those cleanings or what's one way you can solve that online booking, right? The main issue that I have with online booking is It's hard to build value. It's hard to build value there and you're just a commodity There's ways you can do it, but it's it's definitely a challenge But it works if somebody can book on a Saturday and we have one extra book on the on the books. Let's go That's outsourcing makes sense, you know, maybe you're outsourcing some of your Your task. I'm not talking about that. I what is it called that? I I see model Yeah Yeah, I'm not talking about like the cleaning aspect because I really want to be able to control that aspect, but if you hire a VA company to handle your phones, right? You don't have to pay any kind of payroll taxes You don't have to pay any of that you just pay the VA service So you're I mean a $45,000 employee cost me $50,000 $51,000 with everything fully loaded, right? So there's savings in there Monthly expense trim expense trimming if you guys know me, I love profit first and I follow it religiously It's like literally my company we went three years. I couldn't even freaking pay myself It was miserable and we followed profit first. It was like overnight. I'm like, oh There is money Like we can you know, we can save money But one of the things that he talks about is a trimming your expenses printing out your What's it called your um PDF that the bank is yet the end of the month. I forget what's called the statements And yeah and going through what don't you need? Just be careful with that because I've removed some things that I thought I didn't need and they were automation pieces And I'm like, wait, let's put this back You got to really observe how one part of the system works with another before you start taking away things Okay, guess what we have two minutes. Oh I want my last one acquisitions. I want to talk about this, but I want to make it very clear to anybody watching this I have not done any acquisitions myself. So I'm not going to talk about it extensively I'm just going to say what I understand. I've taken the courses, but nothing substitutes actually doing um So the baby boomer generation the sets of you one of the America's richest generations that own the most On the most businesses. Well, a lot of people are retiring right now And their kids don't want to take over their business because they sent their kids to prestigious schools and their kids like I don't want to run a cleaning company. I don't want to, you know, be a contractor Whatever it is. So there's opportunity there There's opportunity to somebody that wants to see their legacy maintained So what I would recommend everyone do and we've done we've done this and although we haven't had any acquisitions But we're building relationships with some of our competitors. So I'll let it So I'll let it to all your competitors introducing yourself saying. Hey, how you doing? Here's I'm this person and I'm looking to do this in the long term looking to Acquire some companies. I'd like to purchase your company or just get a have a conversation going and they might say I don't want to sell my company. You know what don't worry about if you don't want to sell your company it's just me for lunch and You you position yourself down the road when they're thinking about retiring Hey, this person that I've maintained this relationship with I'm ready to transition Maybe this is a good time to talk to him versus having now you get off market deals, right? So Acquisition is a great part of building and that's how these big companies actually built. It's through acquisition. It's not through organic growth so At any point in time 10% of the businesses out there are ready to sell You just got to catch them at the right time Absolutely, and if it's not the right time then it'll be the right time sometime and you want to be be top of mind that One quick question here about conferences and all kinds of stuff just happened here Oh, I didn't notice that. Oh, thank you. All right. We got we got Really what happened? I'm adding him back It's kicked me out We were so afraid Okay recommendation from lockbox is for commercial, you know dom's telling us he gets two keys for commercial That's good advice And who's our buddy at filthy bucket? What's your name? Whitney? Whitney. Yes. Yes. Yes wants to know Conferences that you recommend So I say any industry conferences are great ones and because it's not just about the what you're learning It's about the who you're meeting So a lot of people focus so much on I'm going to go to this conference I'm going to sit down in every class. I could tell you I skip a lot of classes when I go to conferences I'll probably like I only can I got to find three things that I'm going to take away and do So once I find those three things that I'm going to execute on I'll skip like every class because I don't want to get Overloaded, but I'll make those connections. So there's a lot of great conferences out there Yes, totally true. And yeah, everybody who goes to conferences knows That you're going to get some good ideas, but it's the Yeah, I mean the biggest one is uh artsy as I say, you know, that's the the big one You're gonna meet so many people and that's gonna open doors to you're gonna hear about other conferences You're like, oh, let me try this one out and yeah, it's it's the who it's really different opportunities You just solve so many things Which got here, Tom We have a calendar for smart business moves and um Victoria's dropped the link in chat, but this is what it looks like And if you want to see what's coming up in smart business moves in future dates You can see it here and you can click on follow the calendar And it'll actually update your calendar what's going on smart business moves. So you don't have to worry about ever forgetting uh when to get ready for smart business moves It looks like we have your buddy Dom coming in here real soon We do I think he's queued up. We've got some other folks lined up here for for the next few weeks Although this was awesome Thank you very much for having me on I appreciate it. Yeah, I love you make you make it easy to love smart business moves Yeah You really do you make it super easy All right, thanks y'all Take care