It is so critical for each one of us to align or be congruent with how people see and perceive us as a business person in our communities. Before there was an online aspect of doing business, all we had to do was be out in the community building valuable relationships and adding value wherever we could.  This got us referred. Our branding was all about who we were and what we did in person in the community. In the early 2000's, websites started becoming a prominent branding component for cleaning companies along with Google, Yahoo, and even (dare I say it) MySpace. Social media then erupted on the scene in the 2010's and now our online branding may be the most important side of our branding.  The reality is that for most cleaning companies, more and more people are finding us through our online branding first. I want to keep this episode short and sweet. There's two scenarios that can happen:

In March 2021, I brought my wife Teresa Carfagno onto the Smart Cleaning Tribe as an expert to talk about our decade plus of homeschooling. The call went 2 hours and we ended up covering 4 topics that were of interest to Tribe members, which included Living with an Entrepreneur, Work / Life Balance, Healthy Eating Habits with the Kids, and Homeschooling. As this podcast approaches 300 episodes, I wanted to FINALLY introduce my secret weapon. Teresa keeps me grounded. She nurtures me and helps me when I'm feeling overwhelmed and under stress. She loves me no matter what. She walks the life of a disciple of Jesus Christ with me so we can bring up our kids in the way they should go. We are a team. This podcast wouldn't be possible without her. In fact, many of you know that it was Teresa that started Carfagno Cleaning in 2005. 

This episode is mostly for C3 Team Members, but I wanted to share it with the Smart Cleaning School. In the episode, "Introducing the C3 Experience", I laid out the company mission, vision, and values. When I first released that episode, I had no idea it would become a mandatory piece of the C3 Team hiring process. I truly believe that episode was the single most important one that I recorded in the past 18 months! It shares so much about who I am as a follower of Jesus Christ and steward of His business. I remember starting my career with General Electric in 2000. I was so excited to work for GE. I joined the Edison Engineering Development Program (EEDP) and was thrilled to pursue my dreams in my new career. The onboarding process was basically checking off boxes and part of that process included me getting the GE core values on an index-sized piece of card stock. I glanced at it and then pinned it to my cubicle wall. I never looked at it again. I didn't care. That wasn't important. The work was important. The engineering was important. I mean, that's why I was there. Most of America enters corporate settings the same way. Core values are part of the onboarding process, but no one really "lives" them out. That's a problem and most don't even realize it. 

I shared this episode as a personal C3 business update and hopefully serve as a teaching lesson on how to incorporate core values into your company. I never imagined that this podcast would become a keystone piece in our C3 Team hiring process. Shortly after the original release of this episode, C3 added 6 new locations totalling $4,000 per month in new revenue just 2 months left before the Carfagno Family left for Florida. How would we find amazing people to fill the C3 Team spots? That was a question that Coach Josh and Ken talked about a lot. In the end, we decided to use this podcast episode to my advantage. Make it a required listen in the hiring process to even qualify for an interview. It worked so well. Here's what I've discovered. I put my mission, vision, and values out there to such a level in this episode that C3 prospects either wanted to be a part of the team or wanted nothing to do with us. There weren't any luke warm candidates. Thus, this podcast has served as a tool to filter the right people in and wrong ones out. What does that mean? This podcast shares our team culture and the right ones are attracted like a magnet. The wrong ones are repelled. Needless to say, this episode is the most  downloaded of 2021/2022 in the Philadelphia Area. My hope is that you'll get an idea from this episode on how you could incorporate a podcast, video, or even a blog on your website to serve the same purpose.

If you're interested in our C3 Experience and want to check us out. Our website is www.C3xNow.com. We are professionals that clean professional spaces with ownership, excellence, and safety.

In the last episode, we touched on a few controversial subjects. I encourage you to check out "Poor Character Produces Long-Term Pain" and let me know your thoughts. I want to take a more positive approach in this episode. Just as poor character produces short-term gain and long-term pain, good collaboration produces short-term pain and long-term gain. Before I share my stories, let me explain. It's hopefully clear that the 2 example stories from last episode created a short-term solution. It made the cleaning companies more money in the short-term. But in my opinion, it hurt them long-term in reputation and ultimately revenue. When a company is less referable, they will create less revenue. Collaboration is an act of generosity and focuses in on one of the "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey. Stephen calls it, "Habit 4: Think Win-Win". When we collaborate with another local company, we build a bridge between us. Our customers can become their customers and vice-versa. It allows us to stay in our lane and service the areas we are best able to serve, while allowing our collaborator to do the same. This ultimately creates a better outcome for the customer that we share as well. Let's go back to the past example. The house cleaner that decided to add carpet cleaning was able to earn more revenue on each customer, but she wasn't providing the best carpet service. She was also spreading herself thin and potentially watering down the quality of the main lane she served. If this occurs, the customer receives a lesser house or office cleaning along with a lesser carpet cleaning. This customer is less happy and less willing to refer the business. Let's examine these two stories from the C3 Experience.

Over the next 2 episodes, my desire is to show you real stories from my local business network of how we can control whether we experience long-term pain or prosperity. This episode will focus on two stories where poor character produces long-term pain. The next podcast will focus on 2 stories where collaboration produces long-term prosperity. Each of these episodes has the thread of selfishness vs. generosity woven through them. Let's go!

When I started this podcast, I predicted certain themes would come up often like pricing, people skills, leadership, business owner mindset, and cleaning efficiency. But I never saw the theme of overcoming fear emerging so often. In "Yeah, That's Fear", we explored the 3 Failure Diseases of Excusitis, Detailitis, and Procrastination. Go back and listen to that episode to refresh. Fear disguises itself in so many ways. Fear causes us to stop taking action or never start. I want to share a story in this episode from my friend James Hardy of the Carpet Guys. He is such an expert in floor cleaning and carpet & upholstery restoration that it's preventing him from scaling his business to the next level. This was me for years as a solo cleaner. First I'll share the story and then we'll unpack it. This will become part 4 of the Perfection Series, which includes "Excellence Vs. Perfection", "Accept the Uncertainty", and "Perfection is the Enemy". Each episode has covered different angles of how perfection crushes our productivity and growth.  I encourage you to go back and re-listen to the previous 3 episodes as you have the opportunity.

In part 1 of this 2-hour interview, "Conspiracies in the Cleaning Industry with Ed Selkow", Ed shared an incredible 50-year career in our industry. He shares so many great stories and lessons that will help you in your business. Ed also shared some incredible criminal stories that I called "conspiracies" that are a must listen! In this episode, we dive into the second half our interview.

I sat down with cleaning industry legend Ed Selkow for a 2-hour interview. We covered so much ground that I had to break it into 2 parts. In this first part, you'll learn about Ed's 50 years in the cleaning industry which includes owning 4 janitorial companies and working as an employee for a few of the largest janitorial firms in the country. He weaves in great stories and lessons that make this episode well worth the listen.

Oh, and then you have the other stories... Ed also shares what I called "Conspiracies in the Cleaning Industry" ranging from subcontracting for NY street guy "Joey Floors" to stolen equipment and being on the payroll of a Russian dog in Chicago to how cleaners were partially responsible for Watergate and causing a U.S. President to resign! Do not miss these stories as we build up for part 2 of this interview on the cleaning industry, past, present, and future.

Check out my interview with the T-Bag Company Founder, entitled "Respectful, Reliable, Responsible with Damon Washington". You can purchase any of the T-Bag products at a 10% discount through the Smart Cleaning School Resources Page.

There aren't many things that really get me angry anymore. I will share two. The first is when I have a comedy of errors, where one thing after another goes wrong and frustration builds up. The second one is if you challenge my integrity. The second one happened recently at a Honda service shop. It was my first time there after hearing great things about this particular shop. My initial experience after dropping the car off was very good. They gave me a loaner car that was beautiful. They took my inconvenience and made it convenient for me. A great initial customer service experience just like I heard about. The next morning something happened that threw off my day for a few hours. I got a call from the service technician. "Ken, you took some keys from the counter that weren't yours. We have you on camera. We checked it out and we know it's you. We need you to bring those back." 

​I have a few stories to tell you and I won't take much of your time because your time is worth a lot! The first one is about a little boy who desperately wanted time with his Daddy. The second is about a Daddy who desperately wanted time with his little boy. This second story lead to the creation of a metric I've used in my business for a decade. It's called the Work Day Value (WDV). What are you earning for a day away from your family? Or what are you earning per hour working away from your family nights and weekends as a side hustle. It's okay to make $25 - $30 per hour as a beginner with a plan to grow. But if your still there after a year, you're losing time that you'll never get back. What is your work day value? What is your time worth because you are trading it for time with your little boy. Some of you will feel that question more than others.

Teresa and I were struggling big time in September 2008. We had a 3 year old son and infant daughter. At the time, we lived in a rented house that took 40% of our income and we still had over $125,000 in debt. It wasn't pretty. I was working like crazy with 5 part time workers. I had no systems, no money, and no clue. I got on this coaching call with my Amway upline Herb Eplee desperate for a change. I was not happy about Herb's advice, but I was receptive. He told Teresa and I that we were top heavy. All of our profit was going to payroll. We needed to either grow our revenue really fast to make money. Herb told us this is what most business owners do when they are in trouble. They try to outgrow the problem. Some make it. Herb's advice was simple. Go back to working solo. Build up your profits. Then add more revenue incrementally and hire team members. This was solid advice and we took it. I never realized we'd stay solo for 13 more years! I can't complain. We did alright having built 2 very profitable solo companies, sold one for $80k, and built a course to teach others how to start and optimize a solo cleaning company.

This Best-Of episode needed to be re-released so I could say this to Herb. Hey Herb, we did it! We have that team of 5+ part timers again. However, this time we can afford them!

The first area that Josh and I touched on were our stories and how they intersected.  Josh and I were friends first. We had mutual respect and trust for each other. That's why I invited him onto the Smart Cleaning School Podcast in June 2021. That episode is called, "The Cleaning Road to Nineveh with Josh Melton". That episode was a mirror to me and I saw another guy with the same story. He had aspirations outside of cleaning. He tried to run away from cleaning like Jonah ran the opposite way of Nineveh. Once Josh turned his heart in obedience back to the cleaning business he was supposed to build in 2019, everything changed! I saw that and realized that it was true for me too. Within 2 weeks of that interview, I asked Josh Melton to come Coach Josh in my life. He accepted.

Dr. David Schwartz shares the 3 Failure Diseases in "The Magic of Thinking Big" that hold masses of people back from their dreams. These failure diseases are Excusitis, Detailitis, and Procrastination. I have addressed these failure diseases in various episodes of the Smart Cleaning School. One such topic is perfectionism. This is a form of Detailitis that causes people to spin their wheels. You see it most in writers who can never quite get that chapter to sound the way they want it. This is why over 97% of writers NEVER finish a book! It happens with cleaners too. They scrub and scrub and brush and brush, hoping to make an area look perfect to them. They can NEVER get there and it ultimately kills their business. Do you relate? Go back to part 3 of the perfectionism series entitled, "Perfection is the Enemy". This will help you overcome this failure disease.

​This is an episode that has been on my podcast ideas list for over a year. It's funny to me that I was afraid in the beginning that I might run out of ideas to keep a viable podcast about cleaning. I was bad wrong as my list of ideas is over 200! I've been wanting to tell this story for a while and now is as good a time as any. In May 2019, I attended a conference called Growth Now hosted by my friend Justin Schenck. At this point, Justin's Growth Now Movement Podcast had over 2 million downloads. He built had a tight community that Justin brought together in Reading, Pennsylvania for a weekend. I found out about this conference from my friend Andy Storch. He lives in Orlando and said this. "Ken, I just interviewed this guy Justin for my podcast. Cool guy. He's having an event in Reading. You wanna go with me?" My response was this. "Reading! There's nothing in Reading except a Pagoda and outlets!" I yielded as the event was an hour from my house and Andy was flying in from Florida. I had no excuse not to drive 60 minutes if Andy was flying across the country! Not long after, Vincent Pugliese joined the fun and drove in from Pittsburgh. That turned Reading upside down with the 3 of us walking into this conference. I don't know what Justin was thinking inviting us! It was a fun event and it turned out that Reading was a much cooler town than I remembered. I'm only poking fun because my mom lived in the Reading area while I was in college. The 3 Amigos absolutely had a blast that weekend, plus we made the walk to the Pagoda for our epic selfie.

I shared a clip from an expert call in our Smart Cleaning Tribe last episode. I have another clip to share. This one is important. I want you to stop what you're doing and ask yourself an important question.

If something rocked my very existence tomorrow and I needed time to deal and heal, would I have the margin in my business to take that time?

I'll never forget a coaching call I did with a cleaning company owner doing $400k in revenue. I was an optimized solo cleaner and new in coaching. My view of the cleaning business landscapte was very narrow and I had a bit of pride to contend with. Here's the scenario. The co-owners, a husband and wife team, were both working 6 days per week in this $400k revenue company. They weren't cleaning, but lived in their office managing the business. That was foreign to me. Then I heard this part. "Ken, we are profiting $35,000 per year for the family." I clarified by asking how much owner's compensation they pulled. I was assuming they had a salary of $35k and then kept the bottom line profit as well. "$35,000 is our everything." I was floored. How could this possibly be? I responded with snark. "I'm a solo cleaner with 1/6 of your revenue. I work 1/3 as much as you and keep almost double what you do. Something is badly off with the math at your company." I was sharing truth and they knew it. Nevertheless, they didn't like my answer and we never talked again. In "A Buffalo Charges the Storm with Debbie Sardone", Debbie gives this a name. It's called the "Valley of Despair". I did not realize such a valley existed in my narrow view of cleaning business growth curves. I had read the "E-Myth Revisted" and "Clockwork", which are 2 amazing books on developing business systems to scale your company. Yet, I didn't know these valleys existed until an expert series I facilitated on my Smart Cleaning Tribe called "The 7-Figure Series". I interviewed 4 recent 7-figure cleaning business owners in 2021 with questions from the Tribe with the goal of deconstructing the million dollar cleaning company. Each of these experts have allowed me to share snippets of their calls on my podcast. Here are the episodes

Teresa and I place a high value on our marriage and making sure to not only date each other, but to take annual honeymoons to connect. We have 5 kids and it's very difficult to get the 1-to-1 time we need as a couple. We have been doing these Annual Honeymoon Retreats for a decade. Each one is different and we've gone to different locations. This year we went to the Glasbern Inn in Fogelsville, PA. In fact, we love this place so much that we've made this our 3rd visit. They have a fancy restaurant on site that is included in the package we buy 

Vincent is first and foremost, a husband, father, and homeschooler.  Vincent and Elizabeth live in Bradenton, Florida with their 3 sons Andrew, Nolan, and Dylan. They are active in their community and church. Vincent is a friend to many and certainly to me! We go way back. You'll hear that story in this interview. Professionally, Vincent spent 22 years as a nationally-acclaimed & recognized photojournalist and sports photographer. But this career started to bore Vincent. Today, you'll see Vincent speaking on stages, leading masterminds & retreats, and hear him on hundreds of podcasts. He is the founder of Total Life Freedom and author of "Freelance to Freedom" and "The Wealth of Connection". Vincent and I have been close friends for nearly 8 years. I have personally watched him apply EVERY one of the 5 C's from the book he released today. This book is the life that Vincent has lived for decades. This process is different from the churn and burn funnels out there for creating business. Vincent has created a human approach to making business personal. It's called The Wealth of Connection. 

Let's go back to the beginning. This introduction episode is still the most downloaded of the podcast. Thank you for joining me on this journey.

Would you like more information on CBF and the potential of growing your residential cleaning business beyond 7 figures? 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 was asked by the members of the Smart Cleaning Tribe to be the March 2022 expert to talk about real estate presentation cleaning. This is where I cut my teeth in cleaning. I was taught in Upstate New York by the realtors and stagers of Coldwell Banker how to clean professionally for realtors. I learned so many important lessons like this. There is a clear 80/20 Rule with real estate agents. 80% are looking to just get a cleaner in there to make it look nice. They want cheap and fast. Do not go after these customers. There are also 20% of realtors that understand that selling a house that they worked very hard to earn the listing requires a team. They need and collaborate with this team to sell at maximum price. I also learned how the real estate business works and how to communicate with realtors to show them I understood how hard they worked to get a listing. I learned about the emotional buyer and the emotional seller and how vital first impressions were. I learned the language of the real estate presentation cleaner and worked with the 20%. This partnership allowed the realtors I worked with to sell their homes at a 10% higher sales value before the inflated time period of Covid. They made higher commissions and I earned some of the highest cleaning rates in the country, earning between $100 - $150 per hour cleaning houses! This knowledge lead to a membership and eventually a course that I sell on my website. I hope you enjoy this clip from my expert call with the Smart Cleaning Tribe over the next 2 episodes. 

I was asked by the members of the Smart Cleaning Tribe to be the March 2022 expert to talk about real estate presentation cleaning. This is where I cut my teeth in cleaning. I was taught in Upstate New York by the realtors and stagers of Coldwell Banker how to clean professionally for realtors. I learned so many important lessons like this. There is a clear 80/20 Rule with real estate agents. 80% are looking to just get a cleaner in there to make it look nice. They want cheap and fast. Do not go after these customers. There are also 20% of realtors that understand that selling a house that they worked very hard to earn the listing requires a team. They need and collaborate with this team to sell at maximum price. I also learned how the real estate business works and how to communicate with realtors to show them I understood how hard they worked to get a listing. I learned about the emotional buyer and the emotional seller and how vital first impressions were. I learned the language of the real estate presentation cleaner and worked with the 20%. This partnership allowed the realtors I worked with to sell their homes at a 10% higher sales value before the inflated time period of Covid. They made higher commissions and I earned some of the highest cleaning rates in the country, earning between $100 - $150 per hour cleaning houses! This knowledge lead to a membership and eventually a course that I sell on my website. I hope you enjoy this clip from my expert call with the Smart Cleaning Tribe over the next 2 episodes.

Are you new to the Smart Cleaning School Podcast? If not, please bare with me. I started as a solo apartment cleaner in 2005 and moved into real estate presentation cleaning in 2006. This opened up the doors for solo house and small office cleaning in late 2006. I grew and optimized my first solo cleaning business through 2017 to a 2-day per week cleaning job earning over $50,000 per year in profit. I loved having 5-day weekends to spend time with my family.  Check out the introduction episode to hear more of my story. We sold that business in 2018 for $80,000 so our family could move back to our hometown closer to family. I have fully detailed my selling process in the double episode, "How I Sold My Cleaning Business I & 2". We started and grew a new business in the Indian Valley of PA from 2018 to another optimized solo business working 2 days per week and earning $70,000 per year in profit by early 2021. This podcast documents that entire process if you'd like to learn how to do it yourself.  Everything changed when we got our "New Freedom Vision", which was followed by numerous monthly calls with Coach Josh, and culiminating with the victory episode called "The Fight was Worth It". Here's the short version. We desired as a family to take the ultimate trip. We wanted to go to Florida for a month in the middle of the Pennsylvania winter. It was a fight, but it was worth it. I encourage you to to back and listen to the episodes I've mentioned. I believe it's important to walk beside me as we scraped and struggled to build the team that would allow us a month away. In this episode, I want to hone in on one statement my wife Teresa said to me as we were packing up on the last day in Florida. 

This episode was inspired by my friend and upcoming guest on the Smart Cleaning School. Vincent Pugliese is a coach, speaker, author, and mastermind leader. I was at his Total Life Freedom Retreat in St. Augustine in February as I've mentioned in a few recent episodes. It was so helpful and inspiring to be around 20 other entrepreneurs from around the country with ranging backgrounds and experiences. Together, we brainstormed and helped each other solve many of our current challenges. I'll be diving into one major takeaway I got in an upcoming episode called, "Yeah, That's Fear". Stay tuned. I want to share a breakout session that Vincent lead that really stretched me. 

I was in a 4-person mastermind breakout group that I mentioned in "Confidence Creates Success", where we each helped the others grow the next level. One of the members was Matt Peet. Matt has become a good friend and is a conference videographer extraordinaire! He does all the video work for one of my favorite conferences, Podcast Movement. You've got to check out his website, Re-Peet Productions, to get a flavor or how talented he really is.  I'd even recommend you check out his portfolio section and scroll down. The actual wrap-up video from our Total Life Freedom Retreat is on there. It's so good! As we were unpacking his goals to attract other conference venues as clients, I sensed a little apprehension. We challenge each other in these Freedom Zones! I could tell that Matt wanted to grow and gain more clients. I could tell Matt wanted to hit some personal goals. But that's what I heard. He WANTED them. I said this. "Matt, I sense that you really want your goals to happen. That's awesome. Over my lifetime, I've only ever accomplished the goals that I needed to happen. Do you need these yet?" It was a question that got each of us to reflect, including me. Let me share what I mean.