4 Scaling Struggles to 2 Million with Molly Moran

I brought Molly Moran onto the Smart Cleaning Tribe in December 2021 as the 4th expert in the 7-Figure Series. Molly started Green Sweep NM in 2009. She lives in Albuquerque, NM. She grew her business to $600k in 6 years with basic systems and a split of 50/50 commercial & residential. Molly decided to sell the commercial side of her company to focus on houses. After 2 more years, she built the residential only portion back to $450k, but she was burnt out! Her business was unsustainable because she had few systems. She was working like crazy and the thought of this business at $1M revenue made her sick as she’d have no life. Molly was scrolling late night on Indeed and Facebook when she stumbled upon Debbie Sardone and CBF. She joined Debbie's coaching program in 2017 as a last-stitch effort to salvage her company and regain her peace of mind. CBF usually helps businesses with $100-$300k businesses get to $1M. Molly was way past that, but needed help. She implemented the necessary systems in a year and turned it around.  Molly grew from $450k to $1.2M in 4 years and closed 2021 closing in on $2M in annualized revenue. Molly has opted to be more top-heavy in admin, to sacrifice profit for time. Others opt to be more involved in the business (less admin) and more profit to the owner. This investment allowed Molly to step away more from her business and today she is a certified CBF Coach and helping others turn their residential cleaning companies around and on-track toward a 7-figure absentee business. 

There were many amazing lessons that Molly taught us on this Tribe call. I wanted to extract just a few. The first 15 minutes of this podcast are highlights from Molly's overall business journey and lessons along the way including her decision to join CBF. The last portion of this episode answers a Tribe member's question about her struggles along the way. Molly's answer is delivered in a classroom format, where she systematically unpacks the 4 struggles at 4 distinct revenue levels a cleaning company owner experiences. It is fascinating. Here are some notes from the 4 struggles.

• First struggle: $300-$400k. You have 8 people with field staff. You’re working your face off in your business and you can’t afford to hire someone in the office. This is the fist valley of despair. This was a profit issue and needed to hire office staff to grow.
• Second struggle: $600-700k. She was F/T in the business. This was a people power. You have office staff and need more to get to the next level. There is an insecurity of “is this growth going to continue”? You probably need to add a new admin team member every $300-$350K
• Third struggle: $1M-$1.2M. The people you start with aren’t always the people to get you to the next level. It’s a leadership issue. Be very careful with the titles you give people. Using the word manager can limit people. The manager at $500k can’t manage at $1M.
• Fourth struggle: $1.5M-$2M. Capacity. Certain things that scaled at $700k don’t scale now. Customer service and technology are examples. The communication log (ComLog) - they track incoming and outgoing conversations with staff and customers. The CommLog is the running text of the day. There used to be 10-15 entries and now there are 40-50 per day. This has not scaled. 

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 to see if CBF could be the right solution for you.