 Good afternoon everybody, Tom Stewart here, smart business moves. I've got Liz Trotter with me. Hey Liz, how are you today? Hey y'all, I'm welcome. And we've got somebody who's really a friend of the family who's with us most days here, Leslie Fields from what part of California you in? I'm in Northern California now. I've lived in various places, but I've been in Northern California for 20 something years. What city, Leslie? I'm in Auburn. So I'm between Sacramento and Tahoe. Okay. We have an Auburn here in Washington, so that just made my brain go glitch. I get calls from you guys sometimes. Oh, that's funny. That's true. I've learned to ask, is this Auburn, California or, cause there's two other ones, Washington and I wanna say like, Well there's one in, Alabama or something? Yeah, it's like there's Auburn University is in Alabama. Yeah. I get calls from two guys. You know the weirdest thing. Tom knows the weirdest thing. How do you know where all the Auburns are? Why would that even be on your radar? That's so weird. I live in one and I don't even know that. Yeah, I mean, I understand Leslie knowing it, but how do you know? And again, I never cease to surprise you when I demonstrate that I don't know something that probably 98% of the population does. That happens every once in a while too. I gotta give you up. Ernie's here, Leslie. Oh, if you look on your screen, we'll see on the right hand side where it says private chat. There's another tab for you that says live comments. Is that what I wanna see? Okay. Yeah. Then you can see when people comment. All right. Hi Ernie. It's one time. I'm gonna put it on my phone because I can't comment and Tom's busy doing his thing over there. So I usually pull it up on my phone. Okay, let's see. Now, hey Ernie. Hey, thanks for the good stuff. I got my email today. Appreciate that. So we gotta wait for a few people to come on before we start talking Leslie, but Tom, maybe you could give us a quick. Yeah. We'll just kind of run down of what we're doing this week and next week. This was our schedule for this week and Leslie's with us today and we're gonna talk about round two of COVID and doing business in California and answering questions and who knows where we'll wind up. Tomorrow is on the spot with our secret guests. Liz, do you have a tip for us? A hint. I'm clueless this week. Can you give us a good one? Clueless, yeah. Wow. It's a dude. I know that. My cat, again, yes. All right, he sent me something. Let me pull it up and see what he told me. Okay, so one of the things that this man is known for is automation. He does a lot of work with automation, automating the company. So. That's a good hint. That's a fun one too. I have some ideas now. All right. You're gonna want to hear from him. He has insight that is unique and useful to anybody who's running and has aspirations of growing their cleaning business. That is for sure. So can I ask a question that's gonna lead to another hint? Of course. Because this is now a game for me. So. You might not answer that. True. Does he run a completely automated business? No, it is not completely automated. He has automated portions to his business. Okay, different person then. That was a good question. His cleaning professionals are live healing beings. That part is so human. Okay. We're ways away before one of those robots. I'm kidding. I understand your question. I'm being silly. Yes, yes you are. All right. So I finally got it. Liz, I got a question for you. In terms of next week schedule, did we decide that we really want to stop making our guest secret on the spot? Let people might get more value out of it. Do they know who it is? And. Yes. So starting next week, we're not going to keep it a secret anymore. Right. Do you like it being a secret? Yeah, I think it's fun. You do? Yeah. I think it's fun. Okay. So here was my, the reason why I was thinking that we wouldn't, Leslie, was I thought people know who it is. Maybe that will encourage them to come on and have an idea of what kind of questions they want to ask that specific person. But if we have really good hints, they'll have a maybe a decent idea anyway. But they're always good. So to me, it's like, you just want to be there on Friday or possibly Thursday moving forward. But you just want to be there because they're always good. So I think it just adds an element of fun and I kind of like the fun part of it. I always like the fun part of it too. That's how I end up with all this dumb stuff. It might not be fun. It might not be fun if you don't know, if you're not an ARCC member or if you haven't been around a bit, it might not be fun at all. Like what's with all these hints? I don't know, whatever. Sarah is saying that she would really want to know. Oh, but yeah. Oh, I see you already changed it. Good job, Tom. And Leslie, you could see Leslie had some insider information there. She dropped a little bombshell for us. Good job, Leslie. Yeah, she's our guest and if she wants it to be secret, it'll be secret for at least one other week. That's right, at least one more week. So, what have we got going on next week, Liz? You know what, Tom? That is a mistake. I have Sharon on for Wednesday and I accidentally put her on that Wednesday. She's supposed to be on the following Wednesday. I'm so sorry, Tom, I know you hate it when things aren't right. I do have another. Oh, we're gonna have two secrets now, you guys. So tomorrow you'll have to see who our guest is. Okay, so, okay. Well, this is kind of wrong. But we know who's gonna be here on Monday, right? We do. Yes, we do. Okay, well, let's approach it from what's right. All right, well, you invited Greg back. So why don't you talk about what Greg's gonna be talking about and I will. Last time Greg was here, when was that, a couple of weeks ago? He was doing his SEO, he was telling us, I mean, he's got two cleaning businesses and a really large market, Dallas, Texas. And he was two different brands, two different models. One is Dallas Maze and the other is, Emily's Maze, I believe. They both rank on the first page in a large city like Dallas, which is hard enough to rank one business, much less too. And he gave us a bunch of hints and he gave us some downloads, actually backlinks to his website that we put on our resource page to download, which is kind of cool. But through that discussion, he was talking about the talent that he uses to do some of the things he does and he's got people working for him all over the world. And he uses some of the freelance websites to recruit people and he started telling us some hints and it's like, you know what, why don't we just sit on that? We'll do a whole show on that. So he's coming back Monday to tell us, you know, if we're interested in getting some technical help, admin help, you know, help in a lot of different regards, how we can use tools that are available to us to recruit, interview and select and manage overseas talent. I'm excited about that. I am too. I'm really excited about it. All right, so Tuesday's guest was a little bit odd, you guys. So Tuesday's guest is my son, Beyonce. And she is a nursing student. And so she just has a different perspective on what she is seeing and how things are playing out. She has a lot of insider information about vaccines and what she was being done and that type of stuff that I thought would be interesting for us to talk about and find out about. She can tell you more about her what's going on, but she's in a medical family. Her mom is a veteran nurse. I don't know how many years, 20 years, 25 years and she's got other medical people in her family. So she's pretty plugged into what's going on. And I thought, hey, that'll be awesome to have somebody that can answer some of our medical questions from this other perspective, not just, so what are you doing? What are you doing? So I think it'll be fun. She's fun and she's always exciting and energetic. And I had such a good time having my daughter on that I thought, all right, we're getting passed on too. So that's what's going on there. And then we got nothing else to talk about for the schedule next week. Sorry, y'all, but we will tomorrow by Friday. We'll have a nice full schedule for you. Well, we got one more thing to talk about. Friday. Thursday is going to be on the spot and Friday is going to be an off day. That's a shift. Yeah. So we're looking at taking Fridays off for smart business moves moving forward and giving you guys sort of a three-day weekend for smart business moves. Are we nice? Do you love that we're giving you guys this three-day weekend? It doesn't have anything to do with me sitting in a 100-degree car on Friday. Isn't it all to do with that? No. So hopefully you guys will still like this. We know that we have a lot of people that are enjoying on the spot. Leslie, you said it was your favorite day. It is. So, yeah. So we don't want to get rid of on the spot. We're just going to move it up a day to Thursday. If you guys see any kind of a problem with this, let us know, but we're thinking that it should work out really well. I mean, yeah. And we can go back to five days a week if, Yeah. If the interest is that strong, I'm sure that I know that we'd be happy to do it. We'll just have to figure out, hopefully the weather will cool down soon. So we don't have to worry about Wes passing out in the car somewhere. Yeah. That's just another thing. It's just getting hot here, you guys. We are like 78. For us, it's like once we hit 80, it's like, wow, we're dying already. We're putting in about 98 right now. Outside? Yeah, no, we can't do that. No, we can't even function. When people see on the weather channel that it's going to be like in the 80s, I start getting calls from people. What are we going to do? How are we hydrating? Are we going to have poolers in the cars? What are we doing to be able to manage this excessive heat? I'm worried about heat stroke. I'll take on all of that, too, because we live in a pretty warm area. Yeah, that's awesome, Leslie. All right, I guess I lost my page again. Ernie's suggesting if unprecedented times dictate, we can definitely go back to five days a week. Very good. Absolutely, good job, Ernie. Yeah. Yeah, Sierra, 98 would be a cool day there. I know I have been to Phoenix enough times in not hot weather. I just don't even know how y'all function. Yeah, but- We're looking forward to 207. Yeah, we're looking forward to that. But it's not humid, it's not humid. The dry heat is much, much better. I have to agree. Yeah, I lived in Northern California for a while, and actually I lived in Southern California for a while, too. And so I am used to those warmer temps, but the drier heat is so much better than the moist heat. But before I get off the deck, I just wanna take a minute and recap what we did yesterday because it was an unprecedented event for smart business moves, the inaugural deal day with CBT. We did it with three vendors, just to kind of figure out how long it's really gonna take. And I think that we filled up an hour with three vendors, so we're kind of rethinking this as probably more than what we're gonna be able to buy it off. But we got a couple of weeks to dial that in, but it's a four-minute pitch and some pretty cool deals, I think for you guys who were here yesterday or have gone back and seen it. The offers expire into date tomorrow, though. So those offers are still out there. And if you're curious and wanna know what it is, just basically go to, I need to figure out how to copy that link, basically go to our Facebook page, the same page that you guys are watching us on now, scroll down a little bit and you will see what we did yesterday and watch it. You'll get turned on to an opportunity to save a bunch of money on clean team, speed cleaning, employee training system or AdVap Ladybug or the PHC training program. And I'll give you a hint, that's a bundle with a bunch of other cool stuff in it too. And again, these deals all go away into date tomorrow. So if you're interested in that, go to Facebook, check it out. And if it's something that you want, just make sure you do it before end of day tomorrow. I really wanna say just one thing real quick, Tom, and I know the call isn't about deal day, but I talked to two people after our call yesterday that were reaching out to me about the speed cleaning the entire program. And I haven't seen the whole entire program, but everything that I have seen of it is not prescriptive. It will work in your company. And the thing that I wanted to say was if you're going back and forth and you don't know, I promise you that that price, you will get that amount of value out of it. It's inconceivable that you're not going to get, what is it, 450? Oh, I'm not supposed to talk about the deal. Okay, whatever that deal is. Whatever it is. It's inconceivable that you won't get that value out of that deal. It's not, you've seen the products, haven't you, Leslie? Is it possible to not, oh, you have the whole thing? Is it possible to not get that amount of value out of it? It's not possible, y'all. So if you're going back and forth, stop. Stop going back and forth. Get on there before end of day tomorrow. Just stop now. So I was just looking back on the stuff, Liz, is this is truly how I look at going to a convention or buying a program like that, or whatever. If you get one or two things out of that, if I get one or two things out of it that saves me steps, saves me time, saves me money, builds a better relationship, it pays for itself. So I don't, you may love the whole thing, but the truth is, if you just got a couple of things out of it that changed your game up, it's well, I mean, that's just not that much money in the big picture. Yeah, it really isn't. Back when I had a real job, I started off as an industrial engineer, the clipboard stopwatch kind, shop floor type stuff, and speed cleaning basically is that, it's an emotion, economy of motion type stuff where if you get more work done and fewer steps, and I mean, eliminating all of the stuff that all of the calories you burn that's not producing output and making, getting better outcomes and less time and less effort, and yeah, that transcends. It's really about efficiency. I don't like the name speed cleaning and when I train my employees, I tell them, it's called speed cleaning. All the professionals have been using it from the beginning of time, but I wish it were called efficiency because we're not here to train you how to be fast. Fast breaks things. It's efficiency. You take one lap around the room, one lap around the room, you're not running from the East wing to the West wing to go get toilet paper. You figure out how to be very efficient in your work. And I really think that's what it's about. And the other piece of that is efficiency equals profitability. Money. Not forgetting that piece. The reason why you want a better efficiency is that's where the money is, y'all, because there is not a huge profit margin in this industry and we have to eke out every little bit we can. Efficiency is, I don't know, I would hazard that it's the number one way to make impact on that profit margin there. Absolutely. And honestly, I have another equally as important point around that, and that is that I've had employees with me for years now and they're getting older and efficiency saves their body. I have employees that never wanna leave me, but they may just have to because their bodies are breaking down in their 40s. I've got a couple 40s, a couple 50s, lots of 20s, but we focus a lot on switch arms. You're gonna vacuum this room with this arm, vacuum the next room with that arm. If you're gonna go this way with this one, you're gonna go this way with this one. You have to try and wear your body down equally or be able to be up equally. So that breaks down at the same time. It's like rotating your tires is what you're telling us. I think it's exactly like rotating your tires. It's just wear them down evenly. Yeah. Well, it's not supposed to be about deal day today, but I really wanted to say that because I don't think that, especially since I had two people asking me about it, I'm like, gosh, it feels like such a no-brainer to me. If you're slightly interested, just do it. Hold a trigger on that. All right, I really wanna get to today's topic. I'm excited. We talk about return on human capital and how you look at all service industries and house cleaning, the amount of revenue you can generate off of a cleaning technician on a given day is about as low as any service industry you're gonna find. It's through training is how you attack that. And you're living in a world where, people are getting squeezed on the wage side and the expectations are that people need to be making more money and we as employers need to be paying more money. And the only way that you can pay people more money is for them to be more productive and for them to be worth more money. And we do that through training. And the better trained they are and the more skills they have and the more productive they can be and the more diverse things they know and having the understanding of, I'm not just doing the rote task because that's what they're told to do, but the deeper understanding of why they're doing it and the size behind it where they can make the more complex decisions, the more abstract thinking, if you will. Critical thinking is a term often applied to that. That's through training. And that's where it is going, people. We're gonna have to be able to pay people more and we can do that if they're able to do more and we do that through training. I gotta make one more point, I really want to shut up. Go ahead. I can talk about this all day, I love this topic. I know, but also along with what Tom is saying when people understand the why and the reasoning behind it, they can achieve a higher level of autonomy and autonomy is one of the top drivers of job satisfaction and job engagement. So, I would have added to what Tom said is that job satisfaction, culture, which everybody knows Liz is the queen of culture. I don't do what Liz does because that's not my personality, but our culture is very, very important to us. And that's kind of my job. I really work on creating loyalty and we pay well, there's a lot of things that we do and my employees don't leave. Everybody talks about turnover. I don't have turnover unless somebody's body can't do it anymore. That's when I lose somebody. So, I think culture not only does it make our jobs more meaningful, not to mention their jobs, it also saves a ton of money because we all know it costs at least $4,000 to acquire and train a new employee properly. By the time I pay my trainer and the trainee and the time it's gone into because I have a pretty extensive program that we wrote, it's very expensive. So, turnover is a real thing and it loses you clients as well. So, keeping your employees might just be the number one thing. In training, it's a key piece of that. People do not really fully appreciate how important training is. They need confidence. You're defining as an investment. You spend money on training, you're gonna make more money is I guess the long and the short of it. And really, here's the other piece of that too, is I hammer a lot on the main things that people need to be happy with and you never measure an accountability. And the thing about training is all four. Do you know how few things get all four of those means? Never meaning measure any other capabilities. It's just so few. I mean, you could do so much with training. Yes. Sarah is on there too. She says, oh, starting to get hot with that, almost 100 degrees over there, how much? Had to get that hair up. All right, let's talk about, and we can always come back to this topic because it is an evergreen topic. We're never gonna get sick of this topic, but I do wanna get to why we have less down here specifically because I really wanna hear more about what's going on down in California and you know, where are we going? And Leslie, I know that one great thing about you having been in business for forever is that you are able to go with the tide a little bit. As things are not great, you've been able to bounce back a lot and do more, you were telling us that you closed for six weeks, you said, right? Almost six weeks. I think so. Yeah, so I'd love to hear about actually all of that. So we didn't have to shut down, I chose to shut down. I chose to shut down because my employees were concerned. As you all know, there was a lot of questions in the beginning about how is this being spread? And you know, we just didn't know a lot. I mean, we still don't know a ton, but we know a little bit more. And so I felt like it was the responsible thing to do at the time. If I could go back, I might do that differently, but I can't. And I did the best I could with the information I had. It seemed pretty alarming and pandemic-like. So I shut down all my residential claim. So I waited until we started back up out of, I don't know, 250 clients, I think, because something you need to know about me is I'm not trying to be the million-dollar business. I'm 60 years old. I'm happy where I am. Stress is a huge factor for me. Like, I just don't want to stress out. I don't want asshole employees. I don't want asshole clients. I just don't. So I don't have either of those things. I just, I want to keep it really manageable. So I keep it at about 14 employees, about 250 clients is all I want. If I get it erupt, I don't think any of us want them, but you're disciplined enough to decide not to have them. Yeah. She made it happen. Yeah. I have no problem telling a client, you know, I'm sorry, we're not gonna be a good fit. You're asking for something that I can't produce and I don't think you're ever gonna be happy with us. So therefore you should probably move on. And my internal dialogue is to somebody new who's willing to promise you a lot of things that nobody can produce. So, you know, I really manage the quality of my life. Matters a lot to me. I'm pretty much out of, you know, I don't work in the office. I don't have office space in my office. I do work, as you well know. I work, but I work from our tent trailer in the mountains, which is where I'm headed tomorrow, where I've been for the last month. I came home because somebody's on vacation and I had to be here, but you know, I work from Belize. We have a little shack in Belize, so I work from there. So that's what I want. If I was 40, it would be a different deal. That's where I'm at at 60. Like this is the way I want it to be. So you need to know that right up front because I am not a gang buster, build my business, million dollar, blah, blah, blah. Push, push, push. You're not just driving hard on everyone, everybody. If I were younger, it would be. I respect that. I admire it. It's just not where I am. So I made the best decision I could at the time. Might have done it differently in retrospect because it's a little harder to get people back than I thought it would be. And our clients love us. I mean, love us. But it was still, it has still been more difficult to get them back because of apprehension. Nothing to do with us. So might have made a different decision, but I didn't. So here we are. Right now, our state is shutting back down. So restaurants can only do, I would call it a partial shutdown, but that depends on the industry we're in because my hairstylist, it's not a partial shutdown for her. She shut down. My nail gal shut down. I haven't had any of those things done since March. Well, they never came back then. No. They're in there, okay. No. They came back for what, two weeks? Not long enough for you today. I was up in the mountains. Not caring about those things. I don't think they had more than two weeks. So, and, you know, it's, I mean, I love my community. I'm a very big part of my business community. I've been a member of the chamber for 20 years. I know and love the business owners in my town. I have great love, compassion, support for my business community as they do for us. So, I feel bad for her because I think she's just gonna have to make a life change. She can't be on this roller coaster. She's a little younger than me. She really can't be on this roller coaster. So anyway, so things are partially shut down in California. So nails, hair out, massage out, restaurants, outdoor seating, pick up, take out. Is that the same thing? Pick up, take out, pick up delivery. My town is gracious and they've shut off streets and put dining in the streets in our, we live, it's called Old Town because I live in this great little historic darling town. So our chamber is amazing and they're all working to try. And we've all made a commitment through the chamber that we will support a local business once a week, some way, somehow. So I don't get to dine out but we're gonna get Old Town Pizza delivered because Reese is my buddy and I want him to stay in business. So we're gonna get that delivered once a week, whatever. I don't care if I give it to a neighbor. We're just committed to using a service in my town once a week, whatever it is. So I'm very fortunate to be in a community that's so supportive. So when we did start back up, I guess if I have something to offer you all because I don't know how interesting all this is really, but I did send out, first off, I took the time when we were shut down. I probably have never worked harder in a long, long time. I got certified in probably seven different certifications. I just educated myself. I just stepped into this and I wanted to learn everything I could about how to clean properly for COVID cleaning. I got certified by GBAC, by ISSA, by OSHA. A, I knew those certificates were gonna look well and be good, look good and be good marketing material. And they are, they're in my advertising right now. But I also wanted to know what I was doing so that I could confidently tell my clients and my employees, this is what we're doing. So when we did start back up, I had this knowledge under my belt. Your guys's course was one of them, obviously. And I sent out an email, it was a long email. I started it with saying this is a long email. I've edited every word out of this I can. I'm asking you to read every word of it because it's important, there's no fluff in here. So let's go. And I just listed, like these are the protocols we're gonna be doing now. We've sanitized all our handles, you know, our caddy, brr, brr, brr, brr. Our technician is gonna come in to the nearest convenience sink. They're gonna wash their hands for two minutes. So everybody knew what to expect. They're gonna meet you at the door with a mask and for any discussion that might need to be taking place and then I'm gonna ask you to go to another room, go to the backyard, leave your house, whatever you need to do. We require social distancing because I'm not gonna ask my client, my employees, to work with a mask on in this kind of heat. It's just too laborious in my opinion. I know lots of people are working with masks. I'm not asking my gals to do that, my guys and gals. So I set up a whole thing like, this is what you can expect from us. So that built a lot of confidence in my clientele because it was obvious and I put links. We're using the who method of washing your hands. Here's the link. I linked a whole bunch of stuff like this is why we're doing this. We're sanitizing it. Here's the link in how we're doing that. So I feel like that built a lot of confidence. And also with my trust, and trust too. They feel like, okay, you're telling me all this stuff, then okay, I can trust you to be keeping me safe and to be thinking about what's good for your employees, especially in a little small community like that. I'm sure that the people are, that the whole community is worried that the employees are being treated well. It's not just about themselves. Oh yes, my clients love my employees and what they love even more is that I love my employees. So that's a huge thing. And I did have people pay. I had a whole fund that people that chose to pay for cleanings they didn't receive literally went into this virtual account and I distributed money to them every week. I just divided it all equally. The company took none of it and they could come in and pick up 80 bucks, whatever it was. So I felt really good about that. And so did my clients. They wanted to help. They know us, you know. So the other thing I did that was significant that perhaps you would benefit from knowing is I created a pretty good survey that I'm still giving my clients today. So I just sent one off a couple of hours ago. So you can't schedule it with us if you don't fill out our COVID survey. And it just lasts about your exposure and that kind of thing. It might be, I don't know, I didn't write it up. You said it every time you go to clean Leslie before every cleaning, do you send it out? No, I send it to every client for the first clean either returning or the first clean ever. It's probably not a bad idea to send it out every time. And I may wind up doing that because the climate's changing a bit here. Initially, I was just trying to get people back and this was, you know, right. Also, my employees take their temperature every single day and they have a time card they fill out online and there's a column. They have to put in their temperature every morning when they clock in. So we bought thermometers for everybody. We have one at the office. So everybody logs their temperature every day before they start work. So those are some of the things we're doing. You know, where this is gonna go? I don't really know, but I know this time, I'm not gonna shut down. We are considered essential. I think that's good in every state, I don't know. But in my state, we are considered essential, but we always were. I did it to be extra cautious. Probably shouldn't have. It's not like you made a lot of good, I don't know, Leslie, I know you're thinking that if you have to do it again and it looks like you might have that choice again, you might make a different decision, but it looks like your first decision might have been really good because you had the opportunity and the chance to make all those changes. Like you said, you worked so hard. You might not be in the position you are today to be able to stay open on this next one had you not shut down. That's actually true. The fact that I shut down allowed me to get all this education. You could have made it, I would argue you made a good decision when you decided to shut down and you very well might be making a good decision if you decide not to shut down the second time. Based on what we know now, that's where we are with it. We shut down Castle Keepers as well. We didn't know what we didn't know and then there was a concern about like overrunning hospitals and we've kind of got a lot of that figured out now and we've got much better data and the risk of spreading COVID or catching COVID doing house cleaning is really low compared to a lot of other occupations. So when you don't know anything, you can be cautious, but once you have better information, you can make better decisions. Right. And what we're learning now of course is, you know, this virus is, it's very small particulate. It's also very heavy in relation to its size. So we know that it's landing relatively quickly. I think that's good information. We also are learning that it doesn't sit on surfaces like we once thought like surfaces aren't really that big of a concern in terms of contracting this. It really is, and now they're saying it's not even droplets, it's simply airborne, just talking. So that's the whole mask argument, which I'm not gonna get into, but I wear a mask and I think- That also is a smart business move right there. Yeah. Whatever, it's your freedom thing, whatever. But I wear a mask, we're both 60 plus and have a lot we wanna do. So I'm just playing it safe, period. Our meetings, we're having meetings again. It took us a little while after we reopened to have meetings, actually have meetings, like in office, which nothing can compare to that. A Zoom meeting just doesn't compare when you're all in the same room. And my employees, their favorite part of the whole week is our meeting because they really like each other. It's nothing I do, I don't do anything special. They like being together. So we did start, and we weren't even wearing masks for a couple of weeks. Yesterday we all wore masks, like it's that way again. So that's kind of where we're at. I'm in a business that's essential. I have friends who aren't. I have restaurant people who went out and bought tens of thousands of dollars worth of beef and are looking at being shut down again. It just makes me so sad. It's so hard for everybody, you know? Yeah. Yeah, so hard. But I do love that your community is standing behind everybody and working to support everybody because if everybody just supports one business, that's a lot of support. Plus, if I'm, I don't know, for me, if I'm supporting one business, I'm going to be thinking about, every time I want to buy something, who else can I support? I'm getting into that mindset of how can we help each other, especially in those small communities. Yeah, going to our hardware store instead of going to Home Depot when I just need some basic little thing. But then you get in there and you're like, oh, we could use that for the camper or whatever. So, you know, we're trying to, we don't go out a whole ton, but we are really trying to ask ourselves with whatever we're purchasing, can we support a friend? Can we support a neighbor? Can we support a business in this, in whatever decision it is? I've been trying to order my PPE locally, even though it was more of a wait than going other places, right? I can get it faster and sometimes cheaper online, but trying to, when I needed to get some stuff quick, I had to go somewhere else, but I'm trying to order earlier so that I can support local. And let's think that this is not all altruistic. If you don't have your local hardware store, if you don't have your local, one of my best friends has a great piece of place here in town that everybody loves. You know, where are we all gonna be when we don't have these things? Like it's not all just virtuous. It's like, no, not only do I care about my friend and fellow business, I really care that our town is not completely vacant. Yeah. Property goes down, you know, and then we're not gonna have these great services. Like, these people can't afford to come back from that. And who are you gonna clean for? Who are you gonna clean for? If people don't have businesses, they don't have jobs. Right? They're not clean for cleaning. I mean, it's a whole circle, right? There is no, it starts or stops with one person. It's cyclical for sure. It's just the right thing to do. Whether it's for selfish reasons or altruistic reasons, it's just the right thing to do. For me. I am. We're gonna have a vaccine. They're doing therapeutics. I mean, we're going in a direction. I mean, we're, you know, we might be a year or more out, but the day's coming where we're not gonna be concerned about COVID nearer to the center or now. We're gonna be thinking about, you know, going out and going to restaurants and doing the things that we used to do back when things were more normal and is it gonna be there? Right. Are we gonna have brick and mortar or anything? I mean, restaurants I don't think are gonna go anywhere, but I don't know. I drove through our little area yesterday and I mean, everything is closed except for Bevmo. Bevmo was open and I kind of chuckled. What's Bevmo? Oh, it's where you go to buy, it's all alcohol. Oh, alcohol. It's like Bevmo. They're probably doing very well. They're like gin and lard. Yeah, I'm sure they're doing fine, but everybody else in there was, there was nothing. All of our pot shops are open and busy. Yeah. If you drive by a pot shop, you can guarantee that their parking lot is full. So when you, I think it's the pot shop. Well, you see a bunch of cars. You're like, oh, there must be a lot of cars up there. I didn't know that. Yeah, exactly. I think at least part of it is it's someplace you can go. Right? I can go there. It's better now. I mean, we're in a pause status here in my state. Our governor was opening in phases and so every two weeks was a new phase was opening. And so we have paused. We're not opening any more phases, but we're not going backwards, which is why I wanted to hear how what I wanted to hear from you is what you've been talking about, but also like with them starting to lock back down again, how is that impacting your clients? Are the customers that came back to, are they sticking or are they, are you beginning to drop off again? Not yet, but the announcement came out on Sunday evening, so Monday, everything shut. So far, so good, but you know, it's Friday of Thursday of the first week. Diane's making a point here that she had employees that needed to home, school, because you know, the schools were being closed. What are the plans for schools in California going into the fall? Well, my husband's a teacher if you don't know that. I'm a grade-high member. Yeah, he's a seventh grade algebra teacher. And there's been a lot of, right now it's really up in the air. So there was a plan for him to go back to school. And then a couple of just, because the numbers here are just, they're insane right now. I mean, every day, eight to 10,000 new, people say, well, they're testing more, okay. But hospital beds are filling up. So that to me is maybe a different thing, who knows. But we thought we had a plan for him. And now it looks like there's a few big districts around us that are not opening up. They're doing all virtual. So I'd be very surprised if his school opened. Are they now, I mean, all virtual for a month or two, for, you know, the bounce of this year for the school year? Are they giving up? I don't think anybody knows. I don't think anybody knows. It's really expensive right now to open up schools because of all the restrictions, the PPE, the distancing. You know, you take into account that a lot of teachers may have some health issues or live with a parent that has health issues or a child that has health issues. So not all teachers can even go into this situation. We're not one of those, but still. You know, they only want what, I don't know, 15 kids in a classroom at a time and he's used to having 30 plus. So I would not want to be tasked with trying to figure out how to educate people in this environment. I have no idea. I know that my husband went, you know, when everything shut down and he was teaching from home, you know, he learned a lot of cool stuff. We're both on a learning thing. You know, he learned a lot of really cool stuff. He found some programs that are great that he's probably going to use even moving forward in a regular environment if we're ever in it. But doing that for a couple of months to bridge a gap is different than Edgy Normal who's depending on this information to move forward in their scholastic education in the future. It's different, you know, to try and bridge that gap for a couple of months with I think his school did an amazing job. I don't know what's going to happen. I think kids are going to get screwed up because there's, you know, especially seventh grade. Well, all school, like social is really important to these kids. In fact, it's probably the most important thing to these kids, but- Especially middle school. I would say especially middle school. Yeah. That is really critical. So I don't know how you solve that problem. I mean, you can't solve the problem. This is a pandemic and I don't know how you solve that problem. Like right now you just can't do that, babe, sorry. You get a vaccine. I mean, yeah, we work on vaccines and we try to get past that, yeah. Yeah, Tee, what area are you in? She says homeschooling is going to impact how much and work outside of home. Absolutely. That's so true. Teresa's just telling me, right? I feel like- Teresa, aren't you in like Vacaville or Fairfield or Solana or something? I think she's really close to me. While we're waiting for that answer, I want to go back to Liz's day because I have to find out Grass Valley has a few schools open but only the small ones. I have two questions for you, Liz. Hi, Liz. Where is Grass Valley and how far is it from Festus? Grass Valley's right north of me. My daughter lives in Calvary. I like the name. I mean, that's kind of- It's 20 minutes off the hill for me. Liz, are you in Grass Valley? Are we neighbors? Because we're really close. Do they have a lot of head shops there or what's the- Oh yeah. Yeah, okay. So we are on half of the world is Nevada County. Seriously, that's why they call it Grass Valley? No. I don't think so. It's a coincidence. She says she is in Grass Valley, Leslie. Well, we should have lunch. Yeah, y'all should have lunch. Yes. So Leslie, everybody's talking about pivoting and what are you doing to pivot? What is your thought on pivoting and I see that part of what your pivot was more around communication, communicating this new message and what you're doing as far as residential and how you're pivoting in your service. Is there anything else that you can tell us about that? Anything else that you're doing that we can maybe learn from or moving forward that we might learn from? Well, education. I mean, I always want to be the authority where I live when it comes to cleaning and the science of cleaning, which is my tagline and always has been. And it's very fitting for me. The science part of cleaning is the thing that I enjoy the most. You've been waiting for years for this pandemic to come. Your time is now. You're so right about that. It's really, I mean, I don't wish this on anybody, but this is the kind of thing that gets me kind of going because I really wanted to learn about how this virus behaves and how I could best remediate this and rectify these problems for my clients. So it really does, it really kind of is my thing. So it's a bigger opportunity for you than for people that are fighting it more for you with the science of cleaning being like your tag, your whole reason of being. Our tagline is science to clean for health. That's been our tagline for 18 years or something. But so yeah, I felt, I hate to say a little bit invigorated by this situation because it prompted me to go figure out how this virus ticks and what I can do about it. So moving forward, honestly, I just don't get too caught up in fear. I can only do what I can do in a given day. I take good care of my employees. I communicate well with my clients. It's all about relationships, which I happen to enjoy and I'm decent at. So that is good. I think it's much harder if you're somebody who doesn't like to communicate, I'm comfortable, I'm lucky, that part's easy for me. So I'm not gonna do anything drastic at this moment. I'm just gonna kinda do this one day at a time, as they say. And for me, I just do the next right thing and assume that everything is gonna fall into place. I've been through 2008, 2009, 2010, the whole market here just dropped out from underneath it. I survived that. If only did I survive it. I actually survived it pretty well. So I've been through other hard times, so I have some confidence that I'm able to get through some hard times. Yeah, that confidence matters too. Yeah, oh, confidence. I'm not talking about arrogance. I'm talking about just confidence in your knowledge, in your skill. I'm not good at a bajillion things, but I'm really good at this. I'm really good at this. Leslie, if you were arrogant, you wouldn't have taken all that training. Right, there would have been no need for you to take seven different trainings, right? Yeah, I have a lot to learn. But confidence is different than arrogance. Confidence is just like, I can honestly say to my clients, if I were you, I would not call anybody but us. I really wouldn't, because we do know what we're doing. Yeah, I feel 100% confident in that. Leslie, you can be confident and humble at the same time, and it's obvious you're above. Yes, so obvious. I'm looking at it. It's one of the things that I've always admired about you, Leslie, it's always, yeah. And a lot of times people, you know, been around for a long time, they do tend to get a little arrogant, but that word does not describe you in any way, shape, or form. I'm a flawed person, so I have many, many flaws, but I am passionate about this work. I love science, I love people, I like helping people. I have just the right perfect story to be good at what I do. It's not gonna change the big world, but it's what I'm good at. Being a flawed person doesn't make you unique on this show, believe me. Oh, I know, Tom. Hey, well, I'm sure you do. Hey, we're getting close to the top of the hour here. Let me ask you, Leslie, though, the next time you come back, maybe you could do this on your phone, and maybe walk us around your house and show some of your paintings. Oh, yeah. Okay, so I do wanna pull down Penelope and show everybody so they can see her up close because they can't really see her. I love her. I do love her. I know. Me too. I really do love her. I can't get her too close. Let's see. It's your little headdress that is amazing. Yeah, so I know you guys can't really see. I wish you could. But this is all paper that has been torn and put together to make her headdress. These are little, these are little... You can't believe that, Leslie. Oh, gosh darn her. I think she just really loves Penelope as well. These are like little skipper type things that are on there. All of this, this is paper. More paper. These are like musical notes. You can't see it there. But all of this stuff, this is all detail work on here. There's a lot of paint, obviously, too, but there's a lot more there than paint. Anyway, I talk about her all the time because I just love her. And I just felt so grateful to you for sending her to me. That just came to me out of the blue, you guys. Yeah, Diane, you've always loved it. I know. So imagine, you guys, that you love this painting and you see it, and then all of a sudden one day you get this huge package in the mail. You're like, what the heck is it? And it's Penelope. Can you imagine such a wonderful feeling? Anyway, I have a rule that I don't sell my artwork. A, I don't know if it's so worthy, but I just don't sell it. I give it away to people who love it and you loved that. I love her. There we go. I love her, I love her. Yep, she makes me happy every day. I'm glad. Yeah, you too. Awesome. Ah, yeah. We are over, over time, but we're cleaning business today. You know. Talk to you, it goes fast, Leslie. Go fast. For one of our steps, download still works, but we shortened it to SBM, it's supposed to be SMB, well, get that fixed. No, after this BM, that's my smart businessmen. It's nevermindresources.com. I get this way around six o'clock. It's late for you. We'll cut you slack, Tom. And it's got a lot of resources here. The World Health Organization Handwashing Procedure. Leslie, you mentioned that. If you haven't watched it, it's an awesome video. It will show you how to wash your hands in a way that I think few people wash their hands. So it's important. Remember, we've got like one more day, like 24 hours plus to take advantage of the deal day. Deals that we announced yesterday. You've got an offer from Debbie Sardone with her Speak Clean program. AdVap's got a discount. They don't normally do discounts, but we got a discount on ladybugs. And we've got a bundle with discount pricing plus additional stuff. And I'm not going to tell you anymore. You're going to have to go to the deal day, Facebook Live yesterday to get the details, but go watch it. And if you see stuff there and you recognize you got a deal that you're not going to get anywhere else, you need to buy it in 24 hours. Leslie, you are so much fun. Thank you for joining us today. It's a pleasure. Thank you so much. Anytime. Well, I'm thinking that we should bring Leslie back for on the spot. Yes. Because it's been around for forever, right? I would love on the spot. I have an answer. You can count on it. You're in. And it's going to be a Thursday. But we're not telling anybody when, because I'm thinking that we're still going to keep our surprise. And I'm just going to give good hints. Sounds fun. Real quick before we go, Liz, I just looked you up on Facebook and I didn't see you. So look for me, Leslie's Cleaning Services, and let's have lunch. I think that'd be fun. Kaya, Liz, did you hear that? Liz Day, she's talking to you, not me. Oh, yeah, yeah. Liz Day. Yeah. I love that name, by the way. I wish my name was Liz Day. What a great name now. That would be so fun. I would be having Liz Day like once a month guaranteed. It would be. We are five over. Apologies. Sorry. We will see you guys tomorrow at 5 o'clock. Bye-bye. Bye, everybody. Thank you. Bye-bye.