In my "January 2022 Freedom Update with Coach Josh", I inferred that we qualified for the trip to Florida that we booked after "A New Freedom Vision". I had just onboarded my fifth and final cleaner to cover our tenth and final building. The other 4 C3 Team Members were all doing well and Florida was inevitable. We had fought hard for several months and especially over the past 60 days to make this dream a reality. However, there was still 10 days to go...

I was so honored when Kevin called me after crossing the one million dollar mark. That conversation lead to an expert call on the Smart Cleaning Tribe and a podcast interview with Kevin. I took clips of both and created this "best-of" episode. After hearing Kevin's take on stewardship, I completely changed my pronouns as well. It's not MY business. It's HIS business and I'm the steward or manager. That is the major heart shift that propelled Kevin's rise and it's been a major one for us as well. Enjoy this 2-part conversation replay with Kevin Smith of Grace Home Cleaning in Omaha, NE.

As I mentioned in the episode, Kevin is a student of Cleaning Business Fundamentals. Would you like  to scale HIS 7-figure company for great income and freedom, 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.

I met a new friend recently from Newcastle, South Wales, AU. Dave Reeks is the owner of The Finest Clean in that area and is a new Solo Elite member. Dave has a ministry background and recently moved. He found the cleaning industry and got super excited about the potential of having his own house cleaning business. We were able to connect on Zoom with the goal for me to help him. But really Dave... you helped me 

In "Building My New Cleaning Network I", I shared my marketing strategy from the summer of 2018 after moving back to the Philadelphia Area. I was scrappy and willing to knock on doors to say, "Hi, my name is Ken Carfagno." My friend Kevin Lacombe did the same thing in his new solo cleaning business when I was coaching him in late 2018. I knocked on 13 doors in the same town where my first new office was located. It worked! I had a few interested companies and one hired me! We then moved our family to another part of the suburbs and wanted to attract new clients. I followed the same strategy of knocking on doors, except I added a personalized piece to my information drop-offs and follow up process that I got from my friend Gustavo Fernandez. He showed me a few ways to stand out and I implemented them. In the month of May 2019, I knocked on 25 doors and generated a few interested prospects. Again, one hired me.  I would have continued this guerilla marketing approach each month to add one new customer each month. But it didn't sit right with me. I realized that I needed to serve the community and create a name for myself. Thus, I poured into my newest customer and became friends with his family. We started meeting for breakfast to connect, pray, and mastermind together. That's Mr. Dennis Gehman of Gehman Design Remodeling in Harleysville, PA. I've mentioned his name a dozen times on this podcast because he was that much of a help to me! We still meet for breakfast to connect, pray, and mastermind. This process taught me a huge lesson. I wanted to change my approach from cold door-knocking to attracting warm leads. The only way to do that was through service.

In "Building My New Cleaning Network I", I shared the mindset of how building your network is similar to building a water well. You can't just turn on the faucet to get water. Here is the conclusion to this October 2019 episode.

​This episode was recorded in October 2019 as I launched my new cleaning business in the Philadelphia Area. We are so accustomed to turning on the faucet and immediately getting water. But that's not how it worked for our early settlers. They had to dig water wells and later, water pumps. They had to put in the work first to build the system for obtaining water. That's what this Best-Of illustrates. I had to prime the pump or dig the well. It's called building your network. Your network is your net worth. This episode and the next are meant to bring you back to the foundation of my current 6-figure commercial cleaning business that just allowed my family to go to Florida for a month! Pay attention to the seeds and small decisions I made to dig my water well.

After these two Best-Of episodes, I'll share an update episode to show how the seeds from this 2019 work turned into a harvest in 2020 and 2021. 

I have been fortunate to interview several visionaries in our industry over the past year. This interview with Ricky Regalado was different. He is such a visionary that he inspired me to do greater things in this amazing industry. Take the time to listen to this one all the way through and then listen again. You will not be disappointed.

Over the past several months, you have seen a tremendous shift in my personal cleaning brand as it moved from Carfagno Cleaning (50% house cleaning / 50% office cleaning) to Carfagno Commercial Cleaning and the C3 Experience (90% office cleaning). When I cleaned houses in my first solo cleaning business, I had a certain type of house and customer that I wanted. This is what made me so successful as a solo cleaner. The only aspect that I didn't master was geographic optimization as I was still traveling on my cleaning days up to an hour each way. I sought to change that in my second solo business in PA and was on the right track. I took on houses and offices in a tighter geographic window that I did in NY. However, I wasn't getting the most optimized customers. Some were low profit. Some were high drama. In fact, I made a hard decision in early 2021 to fire a customer because they were not a good fit for my company. I explain this process in "Why I Fired My First Client"The people were very kind and the mission of the organization was awesome. However, we were spending 2 hours there for $500 per month when I had other offices earning $600 per month for 1 hour of work. As a side note, I was working with my oldest 2 kids as my helpers. I knew it was a process. Therefore, I was willing to work through my ISO Model until total optimization was achieved per my goals.  "A New Freedom Vision" interrupted this.

About a year ago, I had a conversation with Carrie Miyazono. She is the owner of Kaizen Cleaning in Chanhassen, MN and a Black Belt in taekwondo. Her solo cleaning business is highly niched to clean martial arts dojos. These schools have students sweating up the mats every day of the week. In many cases, the owners are either cleaning themselves or have a staff member do it. Therefore, Carrie found a niche that she could serve with excellence. It was so much fun guiding her to pick up her first gym for $400 per month. But she got discouraged after that as no one new was hiring her service. Carrie was working an overnight job at the time that she desperately wanted to quit to have better pay and hours with her new solo cleaning business. 

There is only one true video game console. It's called NES or Nintendo! And within the NES world, there is only a few real games. They are everything Super Mario, Mike Tyson's Punch Out, and Contra! Where are all my Gen X'ers? And yes, Gen Y'ers too? Let's talk the brilliance of the game Contra in this episode. No. It's  not going to be this. "Ken, it's up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start." That's a different podcast!