Get a Smaller Plate

I thoroughly enjoy giving these business updates. On the last update, $10,000 Watches and The Four Windows, I shared how important it is for me to have mentors and people showing me my blind spots. I attended the Total Life Freedom Mastermind Retreat in Pittsburgh, PA last week. I've been cleaning non-stop and I'm exhausted, but the sacrifice is totally worth it! I've been cleaning offices with my kids every Saturday, but this past weekend my son was on a Royal Rangers Canoeing Action Camp. I had to clean 7 offices on Saturday and Sunday after a crazy week. I've been tracking the cleaning times of every office since July and this weekend opened up my eyes. My son has been doing bathrooms, some kitchens, and mopping. My daughter does dusting and glass cleaning. I do kitchens and vacuuming. I ended up doing the work of me and my son and identified a few areas to speed up. Each time one of my kids cannot help, I notice things that can be done better or faster. I train this into my kids and ultimately we got faster at the same level of quality.

I'll be talking about this on an upcoming episode, but this week I started a major overhaul and redesign of my Carfagno Cleaning website. It's a ton of work and every change was inspired in some way by my trip to Pittsburgh.

Okay, let's wrap this episode up with an audio recording that I did on my phone during an incredible discussion at my MCBA networking group this week. I've mentioned this before, but I'm the co-education chair with Shelby Miller of Keller Williams to generate excellent discussion and ideas between growing local business owners. I enjoy it. This week's topic was a TED talk by Mike Michaelowicz and his book "Profit First". I opened up the meeting by playing a 3-minute clip of my podcast episode "Kill Parkinson" to introduce the topic of plate sizes and our human psychology to finish the plate regardless of the size. We do this with time and money. Review that episode for more background. Then we opened up the discussion to members of the group and I only wish that I started the recorder sooner! Here's what I did get!

Each person gave me permission to use the recording to help others, so I wanted to personally recommend each of their businesses!

Tom McKee, Edward Jones
Gary Volpe, Volpe Enterprises
Marsha Poust, Signs by Tomorrow
James Hardy, The Carpet Guys 
Lisa Reiss, Optivia Health
Melissa Brindley, Quakertown National Bank