I am excited to share this clip from the Solo Elite Membership! A few weeks ago, I ran my first Zoom call for the members to meet each other, dive into a topic, and ask questions. It was a great call. Afterwards, I pondered the idea of sharing a portion of the call with my podcast audience.

​The summer is finally here! This is both literal and figurative. We just celebrated Memorial Day as the weather is heating up. Just like the 4 seasons of nature, my business is entering a new season. After selling my 1st solo business in 2018, we moved to our hometown and stayed indoors. I tried everything in my power to build my coaching and consulting business in 2018 and early 2019. I stayed indoors as much as possible as I didn't want to clean. This was winter. Ultimately, I needed to get outside again and start planting seeds. I started this podcast and my aggressive networking plan in late 2019. This was the start of Spring. By the beginning of 2021, our new business was cranking and I was able to work on my consulting business again. My cleaning business was optimized and it was comfortable outside. Spring was coming to an end. But with anything, being comfortable is not a good place to be. I needed to get my hunger back and stretch myself. I need to put on my shorts, get outside and enjoy the weather. A New Freedom Vision was placed in my heart and we needed to enjoy this summer in the winter by spending a month in Florida in February. This would require me to scale my business beyond the comfort of Spring into the dog days of Summer. This will pay off because Fall represents the harvest of all seeds sown in the Spring. I am so excited to reach that season and earn my family's financial freedom!

​Let's continue the Control Series! My first episode was "You Must Let Go of Your Control", where I shared a few major breakthroughs in my recent ability to let go and trust others. It was an important therapy session. I continued this recently with another breakthrough about your business is not you and viewing trust and control like a rope. Check out part 2 of the series called "The Trust Rope". This is the 3rd part that goes the complete opposite direction! Are you ready?

I've broken a lot over 15 years, but it's all relative. I have two mindsets to discuss before I share my cleaning misdeeds.
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1. Your auto insurance company keeps actuarial tables and knows exactly how much an accident costs on average. These numbers are taken into account when you get and pay your annual insurance premium. In fact, it is designed to be a win-win. If you get into an accident or not, the insurance company still makes money. They win. Plus, your accident or claim is covered so you don't have to pay out of pocket. If you cost the insurance company too much money, they will raise your premium to ensure they make a profit and you can still be covered. Insurance is a product. We insure many things. One of those things is our business against general liability and bodily harm. Your business insurance company has the same actuarial tables and business model. I personally pay $550 per year in general liability and yes, I've had to use it once. The first mindset to take is this. You need insurance because things WILL break or get damaged!

2. I'm a former General Electric mechanical engineer and Six Sigma Green Belt. Six Sigma is a design system to minimize defects to 6 per million opportunities. It's an extremely difficult high bar in engineering design to achieve, that's why companies like GE and Motorola in the 90's and 2000's thrived. As a cleaner, I touch 500 things in each house or office. Over my 15 years, I've cleaned an average of 250 houses and 250 offices or 500 cleans per year. If you multiply the this out, I've created 3,750,000 opportunities to break or damage something. I call this a defect. Over this same 15 year mark, I have 75 defects. Continue the math and you'll conclude that my defect rate is 20 per million opportunities. 5 sigma is 233 defects per million opportunities. I've been cleaning for 15 years right on the cusp of 6 Sigma. In fact, I am literally a 6 Sigma Green Belt in my defect rate over the past 5 years as most of my 75 defects happened in the first 10 years. Therefore, my rate of damage or defect is as good as GE designs the airplane engines you fly with!
Side note: If you're struggling with breaking or damaging things, first evaluate your defect rate. Feel free to assume 500 opportunities per house or office. Secondly, if your defect rate is over 50 per year, you need to make changes in how you clean. A few simple system changes and routine can fix it.

Now that you have the proper perspective on my defect record, let's examine some of the 75 so you can see how I handled them.

1. Knick-Knacks - In my first year, I had a client with a LOT of knick-knacks, especially in the kitchen. I decided early on to be a full surface cleaner, so I would move everything in order to clean under it. This house made me change my policy. I had to move close to 100 items to clean the kitchen every 2 weeks. It's no surprise that I broke 3 of them. I would slide them or bump them and it would crack or break. I told the owner each time. After my second break, she held back $20 from my cleaning check and fired me on the third.
2. Coffee Pot - What happens when you attempt to clean a thin glass coffee pot in a slippery wet hand over a hard granite kitchen counter? The answer is a broken coffee pot. I told the homeowner. He ordered a new one and I asked him to dock the amount from my next cleaning. It cost $25.
3. Microwave Plate - Do you know how brittle these plates are? I was cleaning one about 10 years ago and it bumped the granite counter and chipped! I told the owner right away and offered to pay for it. It cost $75 for a new one. She told me not to worry about it, although I offered to replace it many times. By the way, I've cleaned thousands of these glass plates and only broke one.
4. Toaster Oven Tray - I was going the extra mile for a client and cleaned an entire toaster oven including the metal tray. Unfortunately, I used a cleaning product that was alkaline and damaged the surface finish of the tray. It was clean, but damaged. I told the homeowner right away and offered to pay for it. She wanted me to do the leg work. I found the part online, ordered it, and took it to her. Then I discovered I ordered the wrong part. The tray was too big. I re-ordered it and got to keep the first one. Oh well. Problem solved for $50.  
5. Storm Glass & Window Screens - I've done window cleaning for 15 years and have broken a few storm windows and screens. This usually happened when I was removing old parts to clean. This was an easy fix. I found a glass dealer & repair shop to partner. Then I'd tell the client that I need to take the broken part to the shop for repair. I'd drop it off, pay between $20 - $40 to repair, and re-install in the home. The client was always happy.
6. Blinds - I was wrapping up a post-construction cleaning for a client moving into their new home. My detail was exquisite down to vacuuming out ducts. Unfortunately, three blinds cracked or broke while I cleaned them. They were not high quality. I should have recognized that prior to cleaning them. I told the homeowner and we decided to handle this through a partial reimbursement of her online payment. I refunded her $60 and she took care of the rest.
7. End table - This is the only damage claim that was not small. I use a backpack vacuum cleaner. These machines have a large footprint and you must be spacially aware. I was at the same house that I broke the coffee pot. While vacuuming the dining room, I was pushing in the chairs and backing up. That's when I heard a crash. A heavy lamp fell over on the end table. The lamp was fine, but the table had a 2 inch scratch. I immediately told the owner. He was not happy. This end table was a Stickly Audi end table worth $2,000! I felt terrible because the process took several hours for the homeowner to deal with. My insurance policy had a $500 deductible. I've always paid damages out of pocket unless it was over $500. This was the first and only time in 15 years. I gave my insurance information to my client. He called and had an adjuster come to see the damage. They were trying to get the table resurfaced, but the manufacturer was not able to do this. Thus, the adjuster had to provide my client with a replacement table. They chose a really nice one. I paid the $500 deductible. For the rest of my decade of cleaning for this family, they had a beautiful new end table and the old scratched one in the same room.

​This month's Freedom Report starts with a clip from a call with Coach Josh. I had accomplished a lot in December as you heard in the last report, adding 5 new buildings and 1 new team member. The 5 buildings added $3,800 per month of new revenue and brought us to 13 buildings and 5 houses to delegate. The new team member would take 3 of the buildings, leaving a lot more still to delegate. I felt confident at the end of December that I could shift focus from marketing & sales to hiring. The #1 priority had to be working my way out of a job!

​I ended the November Freedom Report with peace. We had brought our plan to go to Florida to God and asked Him to show us the way. We had over 20 job applications come in with no new hires. I personally connected and made initial connection to 240 local office cleaning prospects and followed up with close to 100 phone calls to find out if they had a cleaner in house or outsourced and if they were happy. This lead to 7 interested prospects and 4 proposals sent. But the net result of all of this effort was 0 new team members and $0 in new revenue with 65 days left before Florida. Josh gave me a challenge. "1 & 1 and we're having fun." Can I add 1 new office and 1 new team member by the end of November. I recorded the November Freedom Report just prior to month end. Let me just say this. God answered our prayers and broke the dam loose! A lot has changed in 30 days!

I recorded "A New Freedom Vision" in May, just 6 months ago. It was a bold proclamation. I could not go to Florida for a month, while scheduled to clean 2 days per week. I had to grow a team. I interviewed Josh Melton for my podcast in June ("The Cleaning Road to Nineveh with Josh Melton") and immediately asked him to coach me. I was ready for the challenge and I was ready to show you all that I could do it. Let me cut right to it. It's 6 months later and we have 0 new clients and 0 new employees. In fact, we have at least $1,000 per month less in cash flow because our expenses went up as we've been building to scale. There are 3 topics to discuss on this episode and unfortunately, I don't have a clip from Coach Josh. His best stuff was on the final coaching call before Thanksgiving and it wasn't recorded. His call-out was tough and I'll share that first.