Hey Cleaning Nation- Ryan was awesome enough to provide a complete transcript of today’s episode, so listen, read, learn and enjoy!!

Intro:

Welcome to the Grow my Cleaning Company Podcast with your host Mike Campion. If you are passionate about the cleaning industry, you are in the right place. Love what you hear? Spread the word and tell the cleaning world this is the place to be. Want more? Check out www.GrowMyCleaningCompany.com for free online video training, free eBook downloads, free blog posts and, of course, all the podcast episodes. Everything you need to grow your cleaning company is at www.GrowMyCleaningCompany.com. And, now, on with the show.

Mike:

Welcome to the Grow my Cleaning Company Podcast, where I coach owners of cleaning companies every Monday, Wednesday, Friday on anything and everything related to growing and building cleaning companies. If you are committed to growing your cleaning company, of course you can check out www.GrowMyCleaningCompany.com and get a literal metric ton of crap to create the cleaning company you’ve always wanted. And, if you want to be a guest on the show, you can email our producer Natalie at nat@growmycleaningcompany.com. You can also give us a call at 480-648-5149. We’d love your feedback, your questions, your rude remarks, your suggestions, all that good stuff and I’m excited to hear from you, friends.

Alright, today we are chatting with Ryan Knoll from Tidy Casa. Ryan started just under a year ago and has already built up five teams. I’m dying to hear that story to share with you Cleaning Nation. Tidy Casa serves the Phoenix area with residential cleaning services and if you want to reach out to Ryan and his team, you can get a hold of them at tidycasa.com. That said, Ryan, say hello to Cleaning Nation.

Ryan: Hello Cleaning Nation! Good morning.

Mike: I’ve got to tell you, kind of a behind the scenes admission, usually one and a half minutes before we speak I have no clue who I’m going to talk to, what the scoop is. I just get on and we talk. That was the case here and then as soon as we started talking, I’m like, “Oh, my gosh. He’s in Phoenix. He’s been doing it for less than a year. You’re part-time so far. You’ve built five teams.” I’m getting more and more compelled by the moment. Tell us a little bit about how you got into it, from being an adult in the real world to owning a cleaning business and how you went from zero to five teams in just a year.

Ryan: I’ve always been a little bit of an entrepreneur at heart. I started my first business when I was 19 making videos for people. That didn’t work out. I got into marketing. Long story short, I eventually got to a point where I was looking at the cleaning market and I read some compelling case studies for cleaning businesses and the viability of them and essentially there being a lot of low-hanging fruit from a marketing standpoint, so I just decided to go after it. I built the website, did some testimonial videos, just started hustling and here I am.

Mike: Beautiful. And what made you decide to do residential over commercial?

Ryan: Well, in my past, I had done B2B-type businesses. There’s always a really long lead time between top of the funnel and when you’re actually closing the deal and that just wasn’t something that I was interested in. I’m sure that we could do it. I think a lot of times people are looking at commercial type businesses or B2B, it seems like it’s going to be a lot easier because you can target individuals directly, through your direct mail campaigns or LinkedIn advertising or whatever. But I’ve been finding just because of my history in marketing, B2C is a lot easier. You can go after things like Yelp and Google AdWords a little bit easier, I think. Facebook plays a bigger role. It just seems like it’s a lot cheaper to acquire a lead and then really all you have to do is be a great company and you can hang onto the customer. With commercial, you’re putting together SOWs and doing all this other stuff. I just wanted to see if I could avoid that for once.

Mike: There’s something to be said for going out on a sales call or sending one of your people out on a sales call and leaving with, ideally, a signed contract and $300 for the month prepaid and that’s it. Twenty-seven and a half minutes later, zero fuss, zero muss. Just getting business done.

Ryan: Yeah.

Mike: Alright, cool. Well, before we hit the lightning round because, again, you’re fascinating, I’m going to just hit you with a question I don’t hit most people with. I would kill me if I was Cleaning Nation going, “For crying out loud, ask him the question! I want to know!”

Ryan: Sure.

Mike: I get this is residential but half of our listeners are residential. What’s the number one client attraction method that you use that you can recommend to Cleaning Nation on the residential side?

Ryan: What I use, 100%, is Yelp. I’m a search engine optimization person by background. I’ve done consulting for Fortune 500 companies and all kinds of stuff and I used to hate Yelp, the idea of Yelp and reviews and paying for reviews and whatever. I wasn’t a fan. But when I started using it for the cleaning business, it works out really, really well. 90% of the business is, even when we’re running Google AdWords and everything else, is from Yelp. The trick there, and what I’m seeing, is not only do we have to… We do a couple of things. We have this “200% Happiness Guarantee,” where if we go out and clean somebody’s house and they complain, which, let’s face it, people are going to complain, you can’t make everyone happy, then we’ll go back and re-clean it. Then, if they’re still not happy, we give them their money back. 200%.

What that does for us is that helps us avoid bad reviews. Essentially, all of our leads in cleanings come through our website. They’re put into a scheduler and the scheduler automatically sends follow up emails. We can cut that off at the pass, if there are bad reviews. If you look at our Yelp page right now, we’ve got twenty-five 5-star reviews and zero 4-star, 3-star, 2-star. They are all 5-stars. What we do is, with that feedback email, after we do a cleaning, it automatically goes out so we don’t have to think about it. We ask them, “How was your service? Good, okay, bad.” If it was “bad,” then I follow up with them. I can give them a call personally, see if I can talk about what went wrong, what I can do to make it right. We’re very, very adamant about making sure that whatever it was that we missed or messed up or we were late or whatever,

I can set the customer straight and make them feel good about us again. If it was “okay,” I might send them an email, “Hey, what could we have done better?” If it’s something serious, like we completely didn’t vacuum anything or whatever, we’ll send another team back to make it right. And, then, if it’s “good,” we send them a follow up email telling them how important Yelp is to us and if they wouldn’t mind sharing their experience, it would really mean a lot to us. A very sincere, honest email with a link to our Yelp page. From that, we get three or four really good reviews every couple of weeks on Yelp, from a very small Yelp budget. One of the tricks I found with Yelp, because people get scared because they ask you for a contract, you don’t have to have the contract. It’s all self-serve. When they call you saying, “Hey, sign up for $800 a month,” don’t do that. Start with whatever you can afford. I think I started with $50 a month with Yelp ad spend and then I got one or two calls. I said, “Hey, this is working,” and then I jumped it up and now I’m spending $400 a month with Yelp and we’re getting tons of calls from it. I just started with being very focused on getting those good reviews, being very focused on making people happy and spending a little bit of ad spend with Yelp and the phone keeps ringing.

Mike: Man, there are a couple things… I’ve got to hit you with some feedback. I’d appreciate that and then we’ll move on to the coaching. You’re doing such a good job giving Cleaning Nation love, I want to make sure I give you some value too. The two things I got: One, that’s a great system that you’ve got Ryan but I know Cleaning Nation. Before you guys all start blowing up his phone or his email, “Tell me exactly how you do it,” the key, the feedback I got is he understands the importance of reviews and you created a plan. Not to knock your plan or say it’s not a good plan, it sounds like a great plan, but I don’t want Cleaning Nation to get caught up in, “I need to do exactly what Ryan did.” I’d rather you guys get the concept of, “Hey, I understand reviews are important. I understand that if I have a baller guarantee,” which, congratulations, that’s what I recommend in my private coaching. “We’ve got to put together a really spectacular guarantee.”

Ryan: Right.

Mike: That’s huge. The underlying concept I would give Cleaning Nation to take home is Yelp sounds fine, not knocking it, not promoting it, just saying great. But the key is you understood that reviews are important and you understand that a guarantee is important instead of fighting the customers with, “Let me tell you why you’re wrong,” and “You suck.” You just create a system where, if they’re not happy, you say, “Hey, here’s your money back. Let’s disassociate,” so there’s zero fallout for you and, if they’re happy, you leverage that as opposed to just saying, “Hey, thanks for loving me,” and not doing anything. That’s the two cents I would give. Anything else Ryan before we move on?

Ryan: I think that’s really it. I think a lot of times, too, when people are complaining, they don’t want anything from you. They just want to be heard. So if you open up that funnel to just have somebody… They go on Yelp and they leave bad reviews when they feel like nobody is listening and if you can just have somebody there to answer the phone and hear them out, then it makes a world of difference and you can avoid all those bad reviews just by paying attention to them and trying to understand where they’re coming from when they say, “Hey, the grout behind my sink didn’t get cleaned.”

Mike: I’m going to repeat that because it’s so important. A lot of times people aren’t even pissed off or don’t even want you to give them money or do anything, they just want to be heard and not argued with. “Hey, you did this. Your people were only here 23 minutes and I expected them to be here 45 minutes.” Your temptation is to go, “Well, I’ve got a time tracker that says they were actually there 37…” Just don’t. Just go, “Man, I am so sorry. Ryan, if you’re not happy with the cleaning, we’re going to fix it. If I was you, I’d be pissed. I can’t believe that you’re calling me being so sweet and kind to me. I’d be screaming. Thank you so much for helping me out.” Is there any chance, Ryan, you’re going to start screaming at me if I respond like that? No chance. But if I start explaining, “Hold on. You said 23 minutes,” you’re going to just get up and go, “Oh, you want a piece?” I’m going to lose that fight every time. That’s great, great feedback.

Ryan: Don’t put yourself on the defensive. Get on their side and work with them as if they’re on your team.

Mike: Cool. And the one bit of coaching I would give to you, almost unsolicited… You are on my show but you haven’t asked for specific coaching but I’m going to give it because I want Cleaning Nation to hear it.

Ryan: Give it to me. I need it. 

Mike: One big thing I heard that’s a red flag and, again, so much good stuff, 98% good. The one red flag I’ve got is Yelp’s the only thing you’re doing and that’s where 90% of your customers are coming from, I hate that. That just means Yelp could shut you down tomorrow. My encouragement is, if we were partnering together for some reason, is I would spend all of my time diversifying that and having seven Yelps as opposed to one so, if and when Yelp turns on me or some really powerful Yelp user just gets a burr in his butt and decides to burn me, or whatever the case may be, that’s one-seventh of my business as opposed to 80% or whatever it is. That said, now that I’ve given you the unsolicited coaching, let’s move to the solicited coaching. How can I actually help you, brother?

Ryan: Sure. With as much success as I’ve had in the past year, I don’t feel I’m quite making enough to go full-time. For listeners that might not know, I still have a day job. I work 9 to 5 in an office and do as much as I can during my office hours. I’m sure hoping my bosses don’t see this but I don’t think they know that I’m doing it.

Mike: Maybe they’ll help you go full-time quicker than you want. 

Ryan: Yeah, there you go. Who knows? Maybe a blessing in disguise. The question being, as an entrepreneur, and I’m sure if a lot of your listeners haven’t gone through this, maybe they’re thinking about going through it at some point, or have in the past, what’s the sign or what should I look for in my personal life and business to be comfortable making that jump from being employed and doing this on the side to doing this full-time and making this my main source of income and my main gig?

Mike: Such a good question. I would say 90% of the time we do this show, I give what I feel is correct advice. Like this is just the right way to do it. Like you can’t have one source of revenue, you need diversification. That’s just right. Other people can disagree. They’d be wrong. That’s fine, they’re allowed to do that. But 10%, I kind of wander into my opinion. I’m just going to put the big, fat disclaimer, this is not the right answer. This is my answer. It’s got to work for your life.

First and foremost, I would encourage anyone asking me this question and, certainly, you Ryan but Cleaning Nation as well, you’re the only one that’s going to be able to answer that definitively. As a coach, I can walk you through that path together but in the end, there’s going to be a “Y” and you’re going to walk left or you’re going to walk right and I can’t do it for you. And, there is no, “Left is the right answer,” “Right is the right answer.” The answer that you decide and commit to, that’s the right answer. Is that okay to have that foundation to build on?

Ryan: Perfect.

Mike: Okay, cool. I’m going to do a little bit of more private coaching, which I don’t usually do. I usually speak really generally but the coaching I’m giving you is actually taking you through that process so I would like to show Cleaning Nation so they can ask themselves this question. Again, whatever Ryan and I arrive at, Cleaning Nation, don’t be like, “Oh, in that case, that’s for me.” What I’m trying to share is the process of how to get there. Let’s do that a little bit. Are you okay with me being a little personal?

Ryan: Let’s do it.

Mike: It just helps because it’s hard to give specific advice with general information. Married, single, kids, no kids? What are your financial obligations?

Ryan: Single. In a relationship but I’m very lucky in that no kids. I’ve got a cat. That’s about all my financial obligations.

Mike: But what could a cat cost? $300, $400 a month? They’re cheap. [laughter]

Ryan: Not even. I make my girlfriend buy the food for that.

Mike: Beautiful.

Ryan: Yeah, she takes care of that.

Mike: Cool. So that puts you in a different situation. If you’re married, got three kids, “I’ve got a mortgage and my wife stays home,” that’s a different conversation than “I’m a single guy, minimal financial obligations.”

Ryan: Right.

Mike: Okay, that’s great. The big things I’m looking for… I’m really looking for three things before I would coach someone to go full-time. First is a system to… Well, before I do that, I want to give you an encouragement and really give Cleaning Nation an encouragement. The beautiful thing I just heard Ryan say and, again, a lot of people come to me for help, “How do I grow my company?” but a lot of it is, “I’m working 60 hours a week and I’m dying. I can’t live like this.” The fact that you went from zero to five teams and you guys, Cleaning Nation, you’ve been there or you’re in the middle of that, and you did it part-time – I don’t want to say part-time, because maybe you spent 40 hours a week – but you certainly spent less than 80 or whatever a lot of my customers are. If you could do that with 9 to 5 blocked out, I just want to encourage Cleaning Nation, you can do it with 8 to 5. You do not have to work this insane 60 hours a week, on call, 24/7. That doesn’t have to be your life. The first step of changing that is accepting that, “This doesn’t have to be my life.” We’ve got living proof, on the phone, in video, right here with us.

Ryan: [laughter]

Mike: Alright, the three things I’m looking for before you go full-time. First, do you have a systematized way to attract clients? And it sounds like you do

Ryan: Yeah, we deal with it pretty consistent. We’re doing Yelp. We have a little bit of AdWords going, a little bit more expensive than we want to pay per customer, but we still have it. We get a couple leads through SEO. We’re still kind of climbing that ladder but, for the most part, we’re getting a pretty consistent 20 to 40 new customers a month. We had a couple of slow months but, for the most part, it’s been up and up.

Mike: Importantly, it’s systematized. It’s not you humping all day, every day. You’ve got a system.

Ryan: Not making phone calls and cold calling people. They’re coming in. We’ve got a sales funnel. It’s built and it’s working.

Mike: Gosh, dang. It pisses me off you’re not my customer. That’s exactly the person I go, “See, people! This is what I’m telling you!” It works whether you’re my customer or not. The concepts work, so that’s awesome, Ryan. Thank you for sharing that. Alright. That box is checked. Second box, do you have a scalable, repeatable way to bring in new help, whether it’s 1099 or employees, people that do the work? I’m not asking if you have a system that’s perfect. I’m asking if you have a system that works. And it’s a system, not you pumping.

Ryan: Yeah. That’s probably the biggest problem with the business, I think, is to find those good people. So far what we do, I don’t know if you can call it a system, but we post ads on Craigslist. We also have an ad with Indeed that we keep running around the clock. We’ve got a little web form for people applying for jobs that we used to filter out some of the bad seeds and, then, usually from that, I get a hundred people coming in. I get five or six good ones that I’ll call, go get coffee with, meet with. It’s been working. It’s a system but probably could be a little bit more refined but it’s what we’ve got for now.

Mike: Okay. So you do have a system. It is working and when I say working, not perfectly, just you’re attracting a lot of people.

Ryan: Yeah.

Mike: Two things on that. One, I hate Craigslist. I love Indeed. I would get away from Craigslist as quickly as possible. That’s a whole different episode so take that or not.

Ryan: Sure.

Mike: Again, I’m not saying cancel them. I’m just saying Yelp is a good foundation but you need to build. Craigslist is a terrible foundation and you need to build.

Ryan: [laughter] I understand.

Mike: I encourage other venues. So we’ve got that system. Creating systems and those two systems, in part, that’s really what the business owner should be doing. The encouragement I want to give you because, again, this is not coaching or advice. Those are different. Coaching and advice is, “I’ve done this for 20 years. This is the answer. Just do that.” This is not that. You’re asking for my opinion. I’m giving you my opinion. You can take it for what it’s worth. If we were working together one-on-one, I was coaching you, I would coach you, “As soon as possible, Ryan, quit. We need to change. You are absolutely ready.” The front-end of that coaching would be… I don’t know where you work. That’s another question I should have asked. I don’t need to know where you work but do you a job where you’re overcompensated for, where it’s like, “Oh, my God. I’m super lucky. I make $200,000 a year. I could never replace this job. It’s a super secret deal,” or is it just a regular job that you could replace?

Ryan: It’s a good job. It would take me a little while to find another like it. I’m not super overcompensated, making hundreds of thousands a year but, for me, where I am, no college degree, I’m doing really, really well.

Mike: If you’re making less than $100,000 a year and it’s not some sort of special, “This is a huge opportunity that will never come again and I might have to take 2 or 3 months to really find another job this good,” that’s fine. You can do that. Let’s just, worst case. Worst case, you quit. Everything goes to shit. Somehow, with all this extra time, you make zero extra money. I can’t imagine it getting worst, so let’s just say it stays the same and you make 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, some percent less than 100 but probably more than 50 than you’re making now and you go get another job. That’s absolute worst case. It’s not like you’re going to quit and you get cancer. I mean, maybe, but that would be totally unrelated.

Ryan: [laughter] Oh, boy.

Mike: Sorry. I couldn’t help myself.

Ryan: That’s okay.

Mike: Single dude having a good job but not an extraordinary job, having the success that you’ve made with those two systems in place that could be better – if you had more time, you could create better systems – I would quit yesterday. And give notice and be a professional and all that good stuff. Obviously, don’t treat your employer badly. When I say “quit yesterday,” I mean, I’d go to your employer and just say, “Hey, here’s the thing. I need to transition…” Whatever that looks like for you. I haven’t had any red flags in terms of you got one really big account that was a friend and you’re going to quit based on that, right?

Ryan: No.

Mike: You’ve got consistent ways to get customers. You’ve got consistent ways to get employees. You don’t have any financial things holding you back. Your job isn’t this, “If I quit, I’ll never get it back.” There’s a chance, if they like you and you quit the right way, in three months you can get that job back, if you really wanted to, right? Someone who went from zero to five part-time, I see no… Especially, I would keep investing. It sounds like some of the investing in knowledge and coaching, whether it’s me or anybody else or just a podcast, free or paid, it doesn’t matter, if you continue investing in your education and doing those things… I, again, I can’t coach you on this because we haven’t had enough time together but if I woke up in your shoes, with the information I have, I would talk to my boss today and say, “What’s it going to look like for me to transition out in a way that protects the company as best I can?”

Ryan: Cool.

Mike: That’s that. Any other questions? And, again, Cleaning Nation, that doesn’t mean I’m telling you to quit. I’m saying that that’s the process I would walk you through if I were coaching you personally on how to make that decision. Any questions or thoughts before we hit the lightning round, sir?

Ryan: Yeah. Would you mind unpacking that a little bit? What’s the key thing that you’re looking for there? Was it that I had a system? That I had some income? That I was able to grow part-time? For Cleaning Nation, what’s the big thing that was like, “Okay, maybe you can get away with this.”

Mike: I like my guest. You’re helping me out. That was solid Ryan. “Hold on! Let’s see. Cleaning Nation might have questions.” What a guy! It wasn’t one specific thing, like if you have ‘x,’ quit your job. If it was, I would have told you. It’s more, there are four or five deal killers or red flags that I would say, “Hey, either you’re not ready or, more likely, we need more conversation.” I would expect this to be even a longer conversation but I couldn’t get any red flags in terms of, “I know how to get customers. I know how to get people. I don’t have a financial commitment that I’m whatever. I’m a young guy. My job’s not making $300,000 a year and if I went into the workforce I’d make $50,000 a year. This is irreplaceable.” I couldn’t find any red flags and you’ve got success. A final red flag would be, “I’ve been doing this part-time for a year and I haven’t got any traction. I’ve had the same four accounts since I stated, the same two employees and I’m plateaued.” That doesn’t seem to be the case. To answer your question, there’s no single, “You had ‘a’ therefore you can quit.” It was, “Here are the three or four red flags I’m looking for.” I couldn’t even find a yellow flag, frankly, which, a yellow flag would be, “We need to talk more.” It just means I need more information.

Ryan: That’s great to hear. Essentially, we have a system, we have momentum, so we can ride the momentum.

Mike: Yeah. I’d say, honestly, it’s 50% your business and it’s 50% your personal life. If you’re like, “I’m married. I got three kids. I make $150,000 a year. We spend $150,000 a year. I’ve got a mortgage. My wife doesn’t work,” I’d be a lot more cautious. Again, it’s probably 50% what’s going on in your life personally and 50% how’s the business faring. And you need both. Even if you were in the situation you are personally but your business, you hadn’t figured it out yet, I’d probably hold back. If you were doing as well as you are but you had all these financial commitments and obligations, I would have a lot more conversations around exactly what that’s going to look like.

Ryan: Great.

Mike: Cool. Alright. Well, shoot! Let’s hit the lightning round. This has been solid so far but I don’t want to take up too much of your time. Three quick questions. I have full confidence you’re going to give three rock star answers. Question one: What’s the best piece of advice you ever received?

Ryan: The best advice I’ve ever received… When I was talking to a gentleman named Kevin Spidel at one of my last jobs, he has this amazing track record for hiring really, really good people.One of the things that I asked him was, “How do you do it? Everybody you bring in are these awesome, world-changing people.” He would hire them as interns and, next thing you know, I hear they’re working at Amazon or Google. He just found a way to get these people really, really early and did a really great job with it. The advice that he gave me was just to follow your gut. I think a lot of the times when we’re trying to figure out, “How do we hire really good people? We have to ask them this question, they give us this answer,” or “Do they have this many years of college” or whatever, there’s kind of a feeling that I get when I’m talking to people and when I’m hiring where I just know it’s right or I know that it’s not. If I go against that ever, like, “Okay, this person kind of gave me this weird feeling but they said everything right, maybe I should just give them a chance and see how they do,” it never works out. I don’t know why that is. I don’t know what micro emotion I’m feeling or seeing that they’re doing that’s causing that trigger, but every time I’ve had a little feeling that maybe this isn’t going to work out, I just don’t go for it. The couple of times that I went against that, it never worked out for me. The advice was follow your gut and it was really good advice.

Mike: Honestly, that works for employees that you’ve got. I’ve had many, many, many a time where, in my heart of hearts, something happened and that relationship broke and I’m like, “I should fire them.” 100% of the time that I didn’t fire them, whether it took a week or a month or a couple of months, zero of the dozens of times that’s happened where there’s been a delay when I fired them, did I go, “I’m really glad I held onto them for that extra day, week, month.” I always, 100% of the time, go, “I wish I’d listened to myself. I knew what was right then. I didn’t man up and do it. This last three and a half weeks has kicked my company in the balls.” I couldn’t agree more.

Ryan: Hard lessons to learn.

Mike: I’m excited to hear this because you’re such a new guy in the cleaning business. What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made so far that we can all learn from?

Ryan: The biggest mistake that I made was probably trying to pay people too quick. We do everything through credit cards and I didn’t realize going into it… I thought, “Okay. If I was somebody that was cleaning houses, I would really like to get paid the day of if I can, if not the week of, doing the cleaning.” Most of these people are used to getting cash in hand or having a check handed to them after they clean the house so that they have the money right then. From a cash flow perspective, for a lot for them, it’s important. I was trying to, if you clean the house on Wednesday, then you get paid on Friday. What I found out is it’s really, really hard to do that and there’s a reason that every other business I’ve ever worked for paid me the week after, because credit cards have to process and, even if we do it as quick as we can, it takes me five days to get something from a customer’s account into mine and then into my employee’s. That was a hard lesson to learn because after working with people for three months, then being like, “Why do I not have any money in the bank? Something’s wrong with my cash flow,” and then realizing I was trying to pay people too quick, that was rough. Because then I’ve got to sit there and tell everybody, “Okay. Well, I’m going to start pushing off your payments a couple of days” or just have a hard stop and say, “You’re not getting paid this week.” Kind of a difficult conversation to have and I was lucky I kept a couple of the teams through that time. That was a little rough lesson to learn in the beginning.

Mike: Cleaning Nation, unintended consequence of that is you attract the wrong people. The people that need to get paid today because they can’t make rent tomorrow are not the people that you want on your team. Not that you’ll never get them but you don’t want to put a big neon sign saying, “People that can’t control cash flow and want to make your cash problems my cash problems, come here!” You want to discourage that, not encourage it.

Ryan: Oh, yeah. Ran into that, too. If somebody really, really needs money, I don’t know what it is, but even if they need money, as long as they don’t let me know that they’re really in need, it kind of sounds bad to say, but they’re always a lot more disorganized. They just have all kinds of other issues that seep into their work life.

Mike: It doesn’t seem bad to say. The fact that an employee doesn’t get that boundary between boss and employee, doesn’t see you as, “Man, this is someone that’s important and I need to respect and I need him to respect me therefore I’m not going to have that conversation,” there’s a lot of unintended things where you maybe don’t know the psychology behind it but, yeah. That would have been one of the things, had we talked six months ago, I would have said, “This isn’t my opinion. That’s a wrong thing. Don’t do it. We can get into the 20 reasons why or you can just listen and not do it.” Thanks for sharing that. There’s one cleaner out there thinking, “I’m going to pay everybody right away because they’re going to love me.” They may, but they won’t. they’ll hate you and you’ll hate you. Last question: What one idea can Cleaning Nation put into practice that will make their lives or their business better?

Ryan: Lives or business better? Are you talking about just a general idea or a cleaning business idea?

Mike: The floor is yours, my friend. Personal, business, cleaning business, whatever you got, how to maintain your cat… Whatever you want to share that’s going to improve our lives, we’re listening, brother.

Ryan: This is a rough one. I wasn’t ready for this one. The first thing that comes to mind, and it’s a little bit of a plug so I apologize if that’s not kosher…

Mike: If it’s not then I’ll edit you out.

Ryan: Perfect. Good to know. Then I’m safe. I started using some software called Launch 27. That is what I used to schedule all my cleanings and bill everything and pay everything. If you can, take a look at that. It changed the way I was doing everything from the start.

Mike: Cool. Hey, as long as you’re not an owner in that or an affiliate and that’s just something that you got value out of, we’ll leave it in, bro. That’s what I’m looking for.

Ryan: Just an evangelist and I like it. It made a big difference for me.

Mike: You can evangelize on this show all the live long day if it’ll bring value to the listeners. Alright, brother. Thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate you sharing your story and you’ve got a good one to tell. I know that I appreciate you. I know Cleaning Nation appreciates you. If you guys want to check out Ryan’s show notes page and get links and an overview of everything we did, go to www.GrowMyCleaningCompany.com and, again, leave your questions, your comments, your rude remarks and I will see you there.

Outro: Congratulations. You are now 16% smarter. Still can’t get enough cleaning goodness? Go to www.GrowMyCleaningCompany.com for more of the good stuff. Ever want to be rich and famous? Owners of cleaning companies, as well as industry experts, can apply to be featured on the show by emailing our producer Natalie at support@growmycleaningcompany.com. Until then, don’t miss out on all the latest cleaning industry loving at www.GrowMyCleaningCompany.com. Check it out now!