December 2021 Freedom Report with Coach Josh

I ended the November Freedom Report with peace. We had brought our plan to go to Florida to God and asked Him to show us the way. We had over 20 job applications come in with no new hires. I personally connected and made initial connection to 240 local office cleaning prospects and followed up with close to 100 phone calls to find out if they had a cleaner in house or outsourced and if they were happy. This lead to 7 interested prospects and 4 proposals sent. But the net result of all of this effort was 0 new team members and $0 in new revenue with 65 days left before Florida. Josh gave me a challenge. "1 & 1 and we're having fun." Can I add 1 new office and 1 new team member by the end of November. I recorded the November Freedom Report just prior to month end. Let me just say this. God answered our prayers and broke the dam loose! A lot has changed in 30 days!

2 exciting things happened on November 30th. Around lunchtime, I got a call from the HR manager from one of the 4 proposals I sent to an insurance agency. They accepted my proposal, signed the contract, and wanted to start service on January 1st! And get this! It was one customer and two buildings for a total of $950 per month. I interviewed a promising candidate named Joanne the day before. I talked it over with my wife and Coach Josh. We decided to send Joanne a job offer on Tuesday afternoon. She accepted. For the first time in months, things were looking up. That's 1 new customer and 1 new employee. We met Josh's challenge of "1 & 1 and we're having fun" with hours to go in the month.

We were ready for December... we thought. Let's do the bad first. I did a poor job with selecting Joanne. She worked with us one weekend. Her work was good, but something about the job wasn't a culture fit with Joanne. I can only speculate that she wanted complete autonomy sooner and that she didn't like the family business aspect. I had two of my kids working and helping me teach Joanne our cleaning system. Ultimately, I made a bad hire and this will happen a lot. I just need to keep working my hiring process to attract and repel for culture. Josh helped me work through so much of my hiring system in December.  He helped me turn a bad into a good! The clip for this month's Freedom Report is an epic step-by-step on what Josh is looking for and how he attracts them. Here's a recap of the elements of my hiring system we added in December. Josh also issued a new challenge. "2 & 2... it's only a few."
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1. We added a 2nd job on Facebook and Indeed. The first was for "Weekend Side-Gig Office Cleaning". The second one we added was "Weeknight Side-Gig Office Cleaning". Josh predicted I'd get more applicants looking to do side work after their full-time job during the week. He was right. Our Indeed ads alone captured over 30 leads in December.
2. I set up multi-step process to get to an interview. I had 5 no-shows in a row in November, then 1 that showed up after setting up a few hoops. I offered her a job in late November but she ghosted me. I had 7 more interviews in December with only 1 no-show or 8 total booked. Each of these candidates completed a 15 minute questionnaire, 15 minute DISC assessment, and 30 minute podcast sharing my company's culture (mission, vision, and values). I wanted to hire each one of them.
3. I incorporated my amazing wife into my hiring process. She watched every one of the December interviews and noticed things that I didn't like clothing, professionalism, eye contact, confidence, background of room, dodgy answers to questions. Teresa diced up 2 of my 4 definite hires. Her feedback was that I was talking too much to explain the job and that I wasn't asking enough questions. We sent follow up questions to 1, who changed his mind and no longer interested. We rejected one and offered 2 jobs. One accepted. One took another full time job and had to turn down the job.
4. I took Teresa's advice and checked with Josh on implementation. I took one of my better interviews where I explained a lot about the job and edited the audio file to a 15-minute "How the Job Works" podcast. Then I created a C3 Team interview hidden page of my website where I could send candidates ready for the interview step. They could listen to both podcasts (company values & how the job works) as well as schedule their interview with me on Zoom through my Calendly link. It's pretty slick. The last 2 interviews of the month came through the new process. I learned a few things. One professional candidate was turned off by my company values as she didn't like the religious undertones and was just looking for a side job without any hoops to jump through. I learned that although she was professional, she wasn't a culture fit with my core values of ownership and excellence. Another candidate was also professional but loved my core values. She was a home run and will likely get an offer.
5. Josh coached us to look at the final month of January differently. GETMO is a Craig Rochelle term for Good Enough to Move On. He helped me brainstorm a new temporary assistant manager position to run the business while I'm gone. They would hold all the master keys, take care of all cleaning supplies at the halfway point of the month, and fill in on any emergency cleanings another team member couldn't make. I had my cousins in mind who are all entrepreneurial and trustworthy, plus they could use an extra $500! This isn't my long-term plan, but it solves a few problems I was running into as I planned.
6. In general, as much as I have a tight process for finding great team members, I've also let some slide. I've reached out to candidates that fell in the cracks but were professionals. We need team members to be able to  leave.
7. This change was on the pricing side of things. Josh helped me redo my entire proposal template, which I shared in November. We took that to the next level by changing my quoting methodology from solo cleaning to a large business model. I used to calculate how long it would take me to clean and multiply an hourly rate. Instead, I pulled my Quickbooks Online P&L and created a spreadsheet that calculated weekly, biweekly, and twice weekly monthly prices based on the cost to clean the building. I would estimate manhours based on my experience with Leah's cleaning in September. Leah was so helpful because she kept great notes of each clean. I was able to surmise that Leah cleaned 25% slower than me. This employee manhour calculation goes into the top of my spreadsheet and it pumps out prices.

Are you ready for the amazing?! We added a new office the final day of November. One week later, I got a call from another of my original 4 proposals. They accepted the proposal and signed the contract for 2 more buildings at $1,400 per month! I had to stop doing marketing because we just added 4 new buildings in 2 weeks. That shifted my priority to adding team members. But wait, there's more. I got a call from a local realtor. He wanted a quote for deep cleaning their office. They accepted a $300 deep clean and $250 quarterly recurring service. There's more. I changed my Google My Business listing from house cleaning to office cleaning in late November. The next day after the real estate office, I get a call from a local insurance company. I answered with jubilation because I was generally very happy. The man on the other side was surprised, but it made a good impression on him. He set me up for an estimate for their 10,000 square foot office and a rented house down the road for weekly cleaning. The house fell through. I did the estimate and made a big impact with the team. Before I sent the proposal a week later (as I was busy), the chief operations officer who initially called me told me point blank. "We'd like you to clean for us, so we hope you can beat $900 per month." This is where Josh came in again. We talked prices and came up with this strategy. This office was going to cost me $7,500 to clean in year 1. If we came in with a low option under $900 at $875, I'd get the job. This would be a revenue of $10,500 for the year with $7,500 of expenses. We'd still profit $3,000 in year 1 and $4,500 ish in year 2. This was a good deal. I offered a $875 option, $1,175 option, and $1,375 option thanks to Josh's help. Within 2 hours of the proposal, I got the signed contract for $875 per month. Just like that, our monthly revenue grew from $5,250 in commercial cleaning to $8,550. That's a 63% increase in 30 days. Oh wait, there's more. The next day, the newest office changed their mind and opted to upgrade from the $875 to the $1,375 monthly service. This blew my mind as they wanted me to beat $900 and ended up choosing the $1,375 option! Now our revenue for commercial cleaning jumped to $9,050 per month starting in January 2021! I was shocked.

We ended up adding $850 in new client cleanings for December to close our year at $90,000 in cleaning revenue. This is up from $70,000 in 2020 and $30,000 in 2019. Our 2022 total cleaning revenue (including house cleaning) if it stayed the same all year would close at $130,000 in 2022! Oh wait, there's more. My Google listing is attracting commercial cleaning prospects and I'm not marketing right now! I got a lead for a 4,000 square foot office connected to a laboratory,  a lead for 3 car dealerships, and a small insurance agency lead all through Google SEO in the final week of December. I'm doing one of these estimates on the 30th just after recording this podcast update for December. The leads don't seem to be letting up. I don't want to get greedy, but you never know. I have a feeling that many companies are looking to replace their cleaning companies in the new year and my little commercial cleaning company is getting picked! I am getting this feedback. "I searched for commercial cleaning and you came up as a local company." Another said. "I'd like other quotes, but I can't get anyone else to call me back."

Let's put a wrap on this month's and final Freedom Report for 2021. I'll have my "2 & 2, it's only a few" complete by the challenge date of January 15th, 2022. In fact, I'll probably hit "4 & 4, I'm so floored" My hiring and quoting processes are so much stronger. I've ordered $4,500 in cleaning supplies to fully setup 10 buildings. This is all part of initial cost of these buildings. I have new uniforms with the C3 logo, name tags, master keys & team member copies for each building. We have new team members training and close to $4,000 in new monthly revenue to sort out. Our New Freedom Vision is much clearer now, but we're not there yet. I hope to reveal the final bit of good news in the January 2022 Freedom Report with Coach Josh.