Best Of - Monday and Friday Mugs

I remember this season of life like it was yesterday. I was overwhelmed with cleaning work, cleaning all the time, and we had no money either! The business that was supposed to be my way out of the nine to five had turned into a nightmare. Yes, I loved serving people. Yes, I had flexibility to go later or move appointments around. But I was a slave to our house cleaning business. I was solo, and I was feeling SOooo LOW.
 
Can you relate to this? Are you working endless hours in your house or office cleaning business with little to no hope for a way out? Are you feeling stuck? Do you want your time back? I did bad. I didn't just WANT it. I NEEDED to have time back with my family. And that made all the difference. Most solo cleaning companies believe the only way out is to delegate their cleaning through a team of employees or subcontractors. This is absolutely a path and it's a great one IF you do it right. However, I was wise enough to understand my numbers. I studied them, I tracked my times, evaluated my customers and their locations, and I realized something. There is another way

It's called the ISO Model for solo cleaners. Did you know that you can earn $50,000 profit cleaning less than 20 hours per week without any employees or subs? It's true and you CAN do it. I know because I've done it twice now in two different states. Our first solo house cleaning company in Upstate New York earned our family $60,000 profit on 2 days per week cleaning by myself. Our second house and office cleaning company earned us $70,000 profit cleaning 2 days per week by myself. I was solo for 16 years. The ISO Model works! Today, we're growing a team to clean professional, financial, and medical office spaces in the Indian Valley of PA through Carfagno Commercial Cleaning. This best-of episode is a flashback from the early days around 2011, right after my wife and I made the decision to optimize instead of scaling. It was an inflection point in our lives. I couldn't keep driving full-speed toward a cliff I couldn't see... overwhelm, overwork, injury, no money bankruptcy, you call it what you want. But that's where we were and the change we made, changed our lives.
 
I really loved my Monday and Friday mugs that I had in my cabinet. Oh my goodness. It's sad to say now, but I don't have them anymore. One cracked and broke. It was the brown Friday mug with beige lettering. I think one of my kids did it. The beige Monday mug with brown lettering lasted until 2021. I was still using it on Monday mornings. But it cracked somehow and Teresa eventually persuaded me to part with it. It was very sad because I knew what those mugs represented. As you'll see in this best-of episode, these Monday and Friday mugs were only allowed out of the cabinet when I was home with my family on a Monday or a Friday. You see, it was always my dream to be home with my family. These mugs represented slice of that dream. It was amazing! That's what optimizing my solo cleaning business allowed me to do. But I'll tell you... I'm not too sad anymore about losing my Monday and Friday mugs. Today, I could celebrate all 7 days of the week. I have a Captiva Island mug and my wife has an Oasis Church mug now. These represent the two month-long family trips we took in February 2022 & 2023. I like these mugs way more than the Monday and Friday ones. We've earned the dream we once held of being home together as a family. I am so grateful looking back at where we were and now experiencing what we've already accomplished. But we're not done! We're heading toward another dream now! Check out this best-of episode and see if you can find some kind of a mug or anything that represents your dream and keep it in front of you like I did.
 
An Update on the Smart Cleaning School Podcast
 
Thank you so much for listening to the Smart Cleaning School Podcast. Over the past three and a half years, I have been reflecting over my time in the cleaning industry, my many notes and journals, recalling so many lessons I've learned. Some lessons were through others' experiences. Most were through paying the price and learning them the hard way. I started an Evernote entry called "Podcast Ideas" in July 2019 to start capturing these thoughts and lessons. I knew a podcast was coming very soon and I wanted to have enough to talk about. It's been amazing! My list of ideas has surpassed 200 and I've already recorded over 370 episodes. That's incredible to me. I never run out of content.
 
I've been teaching you two days per week for these last three and a half years. It's been so much fun, but it's also quite exhausting. I've been giving you the why the WHY, the HOW, and the WHAT of building a cleaning business to move you closer to your dream. I've also been bringing you interviews from industry leaders that sometimes go 90 to 120 minutes! I have thoroughly enjoyed doing it. But it also takes a lot of my time, money, and energy. At least one of my precious Fridays each month, I leave my family from 7am to 2am Saturday morning to sit in a rented office and produce this podcast for you for free. And that doesn't count the time or the cost of doing the interviews, paying my editor, or breaking up the podcast into bite-sized social media chunks so I could share it more on social media so others that don't know about this podcast can know about it. Why am I sharing this?
 
I have been pondering this for months and have finally come to a decision. The Smart Cleaning School Podcast will change its release frequency to weekly episodes every Monday morning. These Monday episodes are going to have more WHY meat on the bone. Why would you start a business? Why would you optimize a solo cleaning business? Why would you scale a business, I'm going to continue bringing on industry experts to inspire you with their stories of struggle and victory. I'm going to increase the value of the content to keep you inspired to keep going. This is how I can make a greater difference, while spending less time working on the podcast overall. I hope that makes sense to you!

I'm excited to make this shift because it will allow me to invest MORE of my time into teaching the nuts and bolts of initializing, stabilizing, and optimizing your solo cleaning businesses. This is called the ISO Model. I already have a full course walking solos through weekly lessons with tangible action steps and homework, which moves them along my ISO Model toward the dreams they have. My dream was fueled in the beginning by those Monday and Friday mugs because I wanted to stop cleaning so stinking much with nothing to show for it. I wanted freedom. The ISO Model is how you can do this too. I also have over 200 unreleased podcast ideas and dozens of industry leader interviews and expert calls that I've facilitated that I will be offering as bonus content to the solo cleaners ready and willing to invest in their future.
 
Would you like to optimize your solo cleaning business to earn over $50,000 profit cleaning less than 20 hours per week without employees or subs? You need to get access to this game-changing training system for only $57 per month in the Solo Elite Membership at smartcleaningschool.com/elite.
 
And I also want to thank today's episode sponsor, Cleaning Business Fundamentals (CBF). Would you like to scale your residential cleaning business to seven figures and not be a solo cleaner? That is totally awesome. Your best opportunity is only a few weeks away. CBF Live 2023 is where the best and brightest in the industry are gathering led by top residential cleaning coach Debbie Sardone from "A Buffalo Charges the Storm". CBF is offering all Smart Cleaning School Podcast listeners this exclusive deal. Get 50% off your CBF live ticket (savings of $348). Use the coupon code "KENHALF". This is a great decision for you if you want to scale to the million-dollar mark. You will not regret it!
 
Thank you!
 
Thank you so much again for being a loyal listener of the Smart Cleaning School Podcast. I've heard so many great comments and feedback from the many listeners that tell me that this is making a difference. I rarely ask anyone to do this... Wherever you listen to your podcasts like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google, please leave a review for this podcast. Please let other potential listeners know how much this has impacted you. Also if you feel led, email me with your story. How has this podcast impacted you? You can email me at ken@smartcleaningschool.com. I hope everyone enjoys this new podcast format and I certainly look forward to helping those that invest to get to the next level with the ISO Model.