I originally started this podcast for solo cleaners because I was a solo cleaner. I was the solo cleaner's champion to show that you don't have to scale to win. I had optimized 2 solo cleaning companies to $60,000 profit on 2 cleaning days per week without employees. I was also mainly in the residential cleaning world. At the time of this episode, I was growing my second company and really felt that the vision of moms helping moms helping moms would connect with so many women in the industry. But Ken, you're not a woman. That's quite obvious. But I was in an industry dominated by women, so I wanted to relate more. I have been married for 20 years. I have a daughter and 3 sisters. I'm not totally clueless.

Would you like to talk about anything in your business. I am here to help. Book a free coaching call on the Smart Cleaning School website at www.smartcleaningschool.com. Make sure to check out the many free & paid resources available on the website as well. I look forward to helping you!

I attended my chamber's Fall Forum event at a local theater with four business leaders sharing on the state of the economy and business. For the purposes of this podcast, I'll keep the panelists nameless, but will share their backgrounds. Their backgrounds were the following: an analyst from the FED, a chief lending officer from a local bank, a machine shop owner, and the owner of a construction engineering company. I listened to each of the men talk on the state of the economy and business and the lessons they've learned and implemented. A theme emerged in my mind.  The construction engineer noticed that customers in residential real estate were more interested in energy efficient homes than ever as they wanted less expenses to operate the home. In past years, people didn't care about this as much. The machine shop owner struggled to get good tradesman to work for him. He was reluctant to take on new work. Therefore, instead of growing the bottom line, he focused on taking care of what he already had. He focused on his existing team and doing the work he could handle. He gave increased compensation and benefits and intangibles. He focused on relationships with his team and his vendors. I thought this was incredible as his culture is now booming and morale is way up and it's more desirable to work for him than ever before. All of this happened because he couldn't grow. The loan officer shared the point of view from his customers that he lends to. He notices that businesses are doing more tightening of the budget and watching their expense lines. They are watching their cash flows also to make sure they can handle what's coming next with increasing interest rates. He mentioned one customer that normally would do a single projection for the next 12-24 months. That same business owner is doing 3-5 projections at any point similar to a meteorologist tracking a hurricane on weather.com.

The Smart Cleaning Tribe has been a fun membership to run these last 4+ years. Our founding members have grown significantly as they set goals and hold each other accountable each month. Every month, I bring a subject-matter expert into the Tribe to resource the members. Our very own, Kate Sloan of Chicka Chicka Broom in Montgomery, MN, stepped up to lead the call in September 2022. She has a superpower of utilizing standard operating procedures (SOPs) so well in her business. Kate has been such a resource to the other members. We were all grateful for her sharing so much that day with us. This clip is the first 25 minutes of the 100 minute call where Kate describes her business at the different stages. It's very helpful and encouraging. It's sort of like the 45-year-old without a retirement plan yet that suddenly puts it all together at 50. That's me by the way! Ha! That was Kate as well with SOPs in her business. This 25-minute clip is a SOP story with Kate Sloan.

If you're interested in leveling up your goals each month and having a tribe to hold you accountable as you achieve them, the Smart Cleaning Tribe is for you. Check out the videos and testimonials on our Tribe page and apply to join the 1% Club! You can also book a free coaching call on the Smart Cleaning School website at www.smartcleaningschool.com. Make sure to check out the many free & paid resources available on the website as well. 

Coach Josh and I use Marco Polo to communicate during the week. He allows me to send questions as I have them. He listens and responds when he gets the chance. I'm very grateful to have Josh Melton in my corner as we grow C3 to the next level in 2023, which is to add the second building block and earn over $100,000 income from the cleaning business.  Josh and I had an exchange on November 8th and 9th of 2022 that was so interesting to me. I've never heard it talked about before in the cleaning groups or other podcasts. I had to cover it here.

Have you ever had a customer or an employee that ghosted you and you didn't know why it happened? When this happens early in your business, it really affects your confidence and your heart. Some of you may have had this happen with a first girlfriend or boyfriend.  It makes you question whether you should be doing what you're doing. It's natural. Rejection is very difficult.

​I met a young lady named Brittany Holter on a Zoom call in December 2022. Brittany is a mom, military wife, and new cleaning business owner. She is growing fast and starting to struggle with the good problem of too much work. Her niche is in AirBnB. Brittany reached out to me by booking a free coaching call on my website. Our conversation was wide-reaching and I certainly asked her permission to record in case we talked about anything that could help other listeners like herself.  Brittany agreed and we did! There were 3 topics that we touched on that I wanted to share in one episode. They are how to deal with hazardous material or HazMat, scaling, and the do's and don't with 1099 subcontractors. I have included a clip from our hour-long free coaching call to give you the highlights.

This is a powerful follow up to my last episode, Building Blocks, I shared a story about Legos and building your cleaning company in blocks that are duplicatable. I had developed a building block as an optimized solo cleaner, but there was no scaling needed. I shared in Building Blocks that we created our first scalable building block in 2022 which was comprised on 16 commercial locations and 8 employees. This block earned my family $40,000 income on $166,000 in annual revenue. This is not a good percentage to keep because the first block is very unprofitable. The second block nearly triples our income. There is something vital that I did not mention that really deserves its own episode. How was I able to trust others after being a solo cleaner for 15 years? How was I able to delegate, create systems, and get others to do just as amazing a job cleaning as I did solo? Do you ever find yourself asking that question? Here's the simple answer. You must let go of your control or you'll never succeed with a team. 

My boys love to build Legos! It's one of their favorite things to do. You should see the look on their faces when they open a brand new 3-in-1 set on Christmas Day. It's even more awesome to see my 5-year-old building that same Christmas Lego set on the kitchen floor a few hours later while his brothers are working on theirs. Once and a while, I'll even help them if they let me. A few years ago, we got them Ikea furniture for Christmas. Boring, right? Nope. They each got 9 pull-out organizer bins with a table top for their Legos. Oh my, did they run with that one. They spend hours taking every Lego and carefully placing them into the right color-coded bin. It was a win for the boys as they could build their own projects easier with the organizer like a true Master Builder and it was a win for mom and dad as it kept their Legos in one place...sort of. Legos are kind of like a virus. They spread. Legos end up everywhere. Since getting them the Ikea organizers, my boys have used all available flat space on the family room hard floors, kitchen table, and certainly their bedroom tabletop areas and floors to construct massive Lego ciites. They combine other building materials like Duplo and wooden blocks from games we have like Giant Jenga and Kapla blocks. They bring their stuffed animals and plastic animal toys into the creation and then play for hours. It's mesmerizing. Boys love to build.

Action Unlimited Story: "Our founder, Alan Glazar, joined the Marine Corps at age 17. Wounded in Vietnam, the Marine Corps trained him in heating and cooling where he worked for the remainder of his service. While he didn’t enjoy working on HVAC systems, it exposed him to mechanical skills and a field where he was involved in inspections, repairs, quality control, and maintenance. After leaving the military, he became a janitor for a company that distributed cleaning supplies. His responsibilities quickly expanded from sweeping floors to making coffee, adding up invoices, and calculating daily profits. One day the owner said, “Kid, I want you to go out and sell.” That day Alan discovered his calling—helping customers. And boy was he good at it. The competition soon noticed and another company grabbed him. Throughout his time at the company, Alan rose to fill the shoes of general manager, purchasing manager, and sales manager before eventually running the company as the right hand for the owner.  In 1982, Alan founded Action Paper & Chemical Co, a company founded with the mindset of a salesman on the street with a simple guarantee: 100% Customer satisfACTION! As time progressed and our product line expanded, a name change was necessary. Today, as Action Unlimited Resources, we are still family-owned and operated and we continue to handle customer needs with a sense of urgency – just as Alan founded the company.

This episode has turned out to be one of the most important in my entire podcast episode catalog. I had just joined the Indian Valley Chamber of Commerce after meeting with our Chamber Director, Steven Hunsberger in "I'm the Only Cleaner". A few short months later, I was sitting with new Chamber mentor Ken Byler of Higher Ground Consulting.  Ken is a leadership coach and amazing listener. I was asking him how I should approach my chamber membership. In this episode, Ken tells me the best advice I've received for the C3 business. "Ken, get a name for doing." It was a selfless strategy to build a reputation in the chamber and business community as someone that cared, that got involved, that made a difference. I took that advice and applied it. Now, I serve on the chamber membership committee and have an outstanding reputation with the membership and leadership team. This reputation has also increased our local commercial cleaning business revenue by over $25,000 per year directly and probably another $40,000 per year indirectly. I highly encourage each and every one of you to soak this episode in and take action!

My boys are really into rap music and my second son Kolby has a legitimate passion to become a rapper. He's 11. Kolby is writing, composing, and performing his own material now and wants to get better. We've began studying other successful artists in the Christian rap genre to learn what they did to reach the pinnacles they've reached. These rappers include Lecrae, NF, Andy Mineo, KB, TobyMac, and others! Personally, I'm a big fan of Lecrae. 

Do you remember Claudia Adriazola of CMA Cleaning and Organizing in Onalaska, WI? I did a free coaching call with her, which became "The 4-Week Rotating Schedule". Claudia took my advice and implemented it quickly. Then she joined the Solo Elite Membership and began my ISO Model Course. I offer quarterly coaching in this membership, so Claudia and I were back on Zoom for coaching. She had changed so much since our last call just a month prior. She added 8 new clients at higher prices and sent out price and schedule changes to others. This lady is on a mission to change her family's future. I'm so blessed to get the opportunity to help her.

I've been in the cleaning business for 17 years. I was a solo cleaner for 15 of those 17 years. As I was first exploring the cleaning groups in 2016, I got the impression that solo was viewed as "so low". We are just trunk slammers that buy our cleaning supplies at Walmart and advertise our services on the laundry mat tack board. We are amateurs without any real knowledge of how to run a business. In fact, we aren't real businesses at all. We have cleaning jobs and yet we say that we own a company. A solo cleaner is thus a lowly title to many. If this is you, you're not alone. There are over 50,000 new cleaning companies entering the industry each year right now. In all likelihood, probably 40,000 or 80% are new solos. There are definitely companies that start with the intention to build teams from the onset as well. My point is that we are an army and for the most part feel like we're alone and the minority. We really feel like we're below the other companies. We are SO LOW cleaners. Do you relate? I know you do because I surveyed over 100 solo cleaners in 2019. I found the top struggles then to be #1 lack of money & time, #2 lonliness, and #3 feeling so low.

I grew up with a mom that corrected all of my spelling and grammatical mistakes. It was painfully annoying, but she taught me that sending your draft is not what professionals do. Professionals send the edited and final version of their work. This was taught and backed up in my schooling too. I always checked my work and would be embarrassed if my work that I turned in had spelling mistakes. Enter 2022 and the age of social media, instant feedback, communication through a gazillion devices, and automatic text correctors. Many of these communication formats still rely on the written word and professionals are caring less and less on accuracy. I am totally guilty of this and so are you

Recently, I had the opportunity to share an educational piece with a local networking group. It was a follow-up to a talk I did a few weeks prior on setting new habits that would transform their lives. It was 2 weeks later and I started out purposely finding out how accountable the members were to their new life-changing habits. The outcome was encouraging as over half had taken action. They were accountable and for a local group of successfully run companies, I was not surprised. These members knew I was doing a second talk 2 weeks later and perceived that I may ask the accountability question. They were prepared. I have done this same talk in other venues. The overwhelming #1 habit people want to change relates to their health. I observed a similar result. The groups that I returned to had over 50% implementation and accountability. The others had less than a 10% rate of implementation. Accountability is vital. Let's link this back to "Goal-Setting IV - The Accountability Roadmap" Only 17% set goals! 3% write them down and less than 1% have accountability around their goals. The success rates are as follows: 10x for goal-setters over non-goal-setters, 30x for written goals over non-goal-setters, and 100x for accountable to goals over non-goal-setters. 

These initial episodes were done before the 2020 pandemic. They were important then and I believe they are even more important now.  We need to have  purpose in what we do or we'll never have the passion and commitment to see it through. In this replay episode, I help you identify the Why in your life so you can jump onboard the goals train! Have fun!

These initial episodes were done before the 2020 pandemic. They were important then and I believe they are even more important now.  We need to have  purpose in what we do or we'll never have the passion and commitment to see it through. In this replay episode, I help you identify the Why in your life so you can jump onboard the goals train! Have fun!

These initial episodes were done before the 2020 pandemic. They were important then and I believe they are even more important now.  We need to have  purpose in what we do or we'll never have the passion and commitment to see it through. In this replay episode, I help you identify the Why in your life so you can jump onboard the goals train! Have fun!

These initial episodes were done before the 2020 pandemic. They were important then and I believe they are even more important now.  We need to have  purpose in what we do or we'll never have the passion and commitment to see it through. In this replay episode, I help you identify the Why in your life so you can jump onboard the goals train! Have fun!

​These initial episodes were done before the 2020 pandemic. They were important then and I believe they are even more important now.  We need to have  purpose in what we do or we'll never have the passion and commitment to see it through. In this replay episode, I help you identify the Why in your life so you can jump onboard the goals train! Have fun!

These initial episodes were done before the 2020 pandemic. They were important then and I believe they are even more important now.  We need to have  purpose in what we do or we'll never have the passion and commitment to see it through. In this replay episode, I help you identify the Why in your life so you can jump onboard the goals train! Have fun!

Courtney Wisely is the founder of Magic Maids (Festus, MO), Rescue My Maid Service, and Spotlight Community Theatre (Festus, MO). I have known Courtney for over 4 years including a few years where we were in a mastermind together. Courtney is relentless in her work ethic and service toward others. She has achieved a very high level of success in her community and the cleaning industry. She has achieved her dreams and enjoys freedom with her son and daughter. This interview deconstructs her success from her highly dysfunctional roots in Bellville, IL and every where in between. After this interview, you will absolutely believe that if Courtney can do it, I can do it.

Let's wrap up this 2-part interview with my wife Teresa. She is the secret sauce and secret weapon in our family to keeping us healthy. I am excited to share her knowledge, so your families can benefit too.

Resources mentioned by Ken & Teresa:

• Podcast - "The Model Health Show" by Shawn Stevenson
• Podcast - "The Genius Life" by Max Lugavere
• Blog - "The Wellness Mama"
• Article - "The Proper Way to Make Elderberry Syrup" by the Franklin Institute of Wellness
• Courses & Blogs - "Cold Care" by Learning Herbs

Check out my interview with the CBF Founder, entitled "A Buffalo Charges the Storm with Debbie Sardone". Debbie is offering free consultations to listeners of this show through the Smart Cleaning School Resources Page  at smartcleaningschool.com/resources to see if CBF could be the right solution for you.

My wife Teresa has been a mom for 18 years. She has always had an interest in wellness and specifically, natural remedies. I have always supported her in this approach. Over these last 8 years, I have seen her transform into a mom that knows how to treat her children and husband. She has been the secret weapon in our family to keeping us healthy. She is not a medical professional, so any advice she shares in these back-to-back episodes is general advise to our family. You should absolutely do your own research and consult with your doctor before any changes. Teresa has also learned and was mentored by medical professionals in the areas of integrative medicine, homeopathics, and naturopathics over the years. She reads books and listens to podcasts on wellness topics all the time. It is her hobby and she has helped every member of her family be healthier.

I first shared my wife's knowledge in the episode, "Healthy Home Boundaries with Teresa Carfagno II" She touched on health topics and healthy eating for your family.  At the same time, my friend Dave Reeks in our Solo Elite Mastermind asked me to do an episode on solo cleaning longevity. I released a double. Here's the link to episode 1 and 2 of "Keys to Solo Longevity". These episodes focus on a multi-channeled approach toward caring for your cleaning machine to last a long time. Since we've only touched on the health topic and it was currently cold & flu season, I wanted to bring my wife back for a follow up. Our interview on natural remedies to boost your immune system and help to heal you of viruses went 40 minutes so I divided it into a double as well.  I hope you find these 2 episodes helpful. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me at ken@smartcleaningschool.com.

Before I even begin, let me first share the context of this episode. There are so many people struggling financially in America, which used to include us. I did not come from money. I have never made a lot of money. I am not currently a millionaire. "Ken, why are you teaching this topic?" In a matter of speaking, I am teaching it through my podcast. But the real credit goes to my friend Greg Shepard of Dallas Maids. His interview called "Sail Around the World" was a powerful example of how to think and solve problems in your business. Several months ago, I had the opportunity to hang out with Greg in Dallas for a few hours. Greg is a millionaire, many times over. He is very modest, so I clearly won't share his numbers. I will, however, share his mindset on money and becoming a millionaire. It was the simplest and most believable path I've ever heard to attaining wealth. His mindset is not unique. In fact, most money guides and gurus teach it already. Greg taught me 3 simple steps that every single person can take (no matter where they are from) to attain wealth during their lifetime. And that's the key  word... "lifetime". Wealth can be overnight and fast, but not usually. The prevailing mindset now on wealth now is that it's lucky and immediate... right place, right time. It's the lottery mentality. Greg taught me a powerful lesson that day in Dallas. I started implementing it and teaching it to my kids. Now I want to share it with you. This will rock you with its simplicity.