7 Fundamentals for Business Success with Debbie Sardone

It was an honor to interview residential cleaning industry legend Debbie Sardone a second time. At the time of this recording, Debbie's first interview "A Buffalo Charges the Storm" was the third most-downloaded interview of the Smart Cleaning School's 45 published interviews. Debbie really barred all and shared personal stories she's never shared. It was a powerful episode with powerful stories and lessons.

I wanted to re-connect in the beginning of this interview and ask her some follow-up questions on two quotes I loved from her first one. They were.

"When you are confident in your beliefs, you're not really wavering or shaking in your beliefs. It's much easier to shield off the bullets from your haters... much easier."
 
"Anyone can succeed when it's east, but will you still be standing when it's hard?"

 Debbie and I really dig into these topics in the first half of this interview. Here are some additional quotes from Debbie that are powerful.
 
"We are all influencers. Some of us have bigger platforms, but we're all influencing somebody for good or for bad. An influencer is neutral."
 
"You do desperate things when your business is a broken mess."
 
"It was the shame of what I did that helped me decide that I will never let my business get me to the point that it gets me to do something that I know is wrong."
 
"Leave people better than you found them. Treat people the way I should treat them, not the way they deserve to be treated."
 
"Learning produces results and results produce confidence."

This last quote lead Debbie and I to discuss knowledge versus confidence. We agreed that having more confidence than knowledge is called arrogance. They talk a big game, but have nothing to back it up. The opposite is called Imposter Syndrome. They have more knowledge than confidence and are afraid to speak up as they feel they don't belong. This is equally detrimental to arrogance because it hurts people. The arrogant can lead people into making them worse off. The imposters have the ability to help many, but are afraid to do it. This hurts people because they never actually help them.

"You need to break the pattern of quitting. Most of the people who quit in business. They go on to quit another business and another business. And when you see people that say they are serial entrepreneurs. Often times, they are serial quitters."

The 7 Fundamentals for a Successful Cleaning Business

1.      If it's all about the cleaning, you have a job. You need to scale.

2.      You can do anything. You can't do everything. You need to specialize. If you're not the best, it's a race to the bottom.

3.      Great people are free. Mediocre people are expensive.

4.      Stair step your skill set. Keep growing personally to get to the next level. You have to be a million dollar leader to be a million dollar business.

5.      If you are not making what you want to make, you know less than you think you know. The "Four Windows" episode of the Smart Cleaning School captures this well.

6.      You can be a victim or you can be a victor, but you can't be both. Take ownership of the good, bad, and the ugly. If you got yourself into this mess, you can get yourself out.

7.      The fallacy of the perfect pick. Just because you've always done it that way, doesn't mean it's the best way to do it. If it isn't working, change it. NAIL YOUR BUSINESS MODEL.

Today's episode was brought to you by Cleaning Business Fundamentals or CBF. Do you want to start a house cleaning business and never have to do the cleaning? Are you a residential solo cleaner wanting to scale your business to earn your freedom? Are you a residential cleaning business trapped in the Valley of Despair with a team but no profit for yourself and close to quitting? Check out the Smart Cleaning School's CBF Exclusive Deal. Get Debbie's impactful "Succeeding on First Time Cleans" for 50% OFF and a free CBF discovery call with Debbie or one of her certified CBF Coaches! Just go to smartcleaningschool.com/resources and you'll find "Featured Sponsor" at the top of the page. If you want to scale your residential cleaning business to a million dollars, get CBF now!